Postdoctoral Fellow
Department of Physics and Astronomy · Western University
Groundwater–Land–Climate Interactions under Global Change
Understanding and modelling the interactions among human disturbances, groundwater, boreal wetland ecosystems, and climate to support sustainable water management and community resilience.
I am a postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at Western University. My research focuses on groundwater–land–climate interactions under global change, linking human water use, cold-region ecosystems, and land surface modelling.
I am particularly drawn to challenging scientific problems where existing modelling frameworks reach their limits. One major focus of my research is understanding how human activities, particularly agricultural irrigation and groundwater pumping, influence the terrestrial water cycle and interact with climate extremes. Another major focus is boreal forest wetland hydrology, where I investigate how soil hydraulic processes, groundwater interactions, and cold-region processes control wetland hydrological dynamics and how these processes can be better represented in land surface models.
My research combines process-based land surface and regional climate models with observational datasets and computational approaches to investigate these complex interactions. More broadly, I aim to improve the representation of terrestrial hydrological processes and human management activities in Earth system models and to develop more physically realistic and predictive modelling frameworks.
My long-term research aims to understand and model the complex interactions among human disturbances, groundwater, ecosystems, and climate through three interconnected and complementary research directions.
Investigating how groundwater pumping and agricultural irrigation alter regional water cycles and feed back on climate, with the goal of supporting sustainable water management.
Exploring how climate change influences cold-region groundwater, wetland connectivity, and ecosystem resilience, with a focus on the hydrological processes linking groundwater and boreal forest wetlands.
Aiming to integrate physical process understanding and artificial intelligence in land surface–groundwater models to improve hydrological and climate prediction.
Dai, D., Li, Y., Chen, L., Chen, F., Li, Z., Zhang, Z., Valayamkunnath, P., Xu, L., He, C., and Ma, Z.
Journal of Hydrology · 2025 · 649, 132362
Zhang, X., Chen, L., Ma, Z., Duan, J., Dai, D., and Zhang, H.
Climate Dynamics · 2022 · 59, 331–355
Zheng, Z., Ning, L., Dai, D., et al.
Physics and Chemistry of the Earth, Parts A/B/C · 2022 · 126, 103141
Huang, Y., Zhang, Z., Li, Z., Dai, D., and Li, Y.
Agricultural Water Management · 2022 · 264, 107498
Dai, D., Chen, L., Ma, Z., and Xu, Z.
Climate Dynamics · 2021 · 57, 557–575
Dai, D., et al.
In revision for Earth's Future
Dai, D., et al.
In revision · Planned submission to Journal of Hydrology
Western University
2024 – Present · London, Ontario, Canada
National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR)
2024 · Boulder, Colorado, USA
Global Institute for Water Security, University of Saskatchewan
2023 – 2024 · Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada
National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR)
2023 · Boulder, Colorado, USA
Global Institute for Water Security, University of Saskatchewan
2022 – 2023
Global Institute for Water Security, University of Saskatchewan
2021 – 2022
Institute of Atmospheric Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences
2017 – 2021 · Beijing, China
Institute of Atmospheric Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences
2016 – 2023 · Beijing, China
Nanjing University of Information Science and Technology
2012 – 2016 · Nanjing, China
CMOS Meeting, 2024
Detecting Canadian Wetland Surface Water Extent:
integrating deep learning, remote sensing data and
high resolution Land Surface Model.
AGU Fall Meeting, 2023
Quantifying irrigation activities in North China Plain
using census data and Noah-MP model.
First International Noah-MP Annual Users' Workshop, 2023
Modeling irrigation activities in North China Plain:
from a realistic perspective.
Department of Physics and Astronomy
Western University
London, Ontario, Canada
Email: danqiong.dai@uwo.ca
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