AGU Ecohydrology
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MEET A LEAF: Sara Sheri Karimi

11/23/2020

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Sara Sheri  Karimi is a PhD candidate in the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences at Macquarie University, Australia. Twitter: @SaraSh_Karimi
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What does ecohydrology mean to you?
I'm a hydrologist with six years of experience working as an irrigation system designer, so to me, ecohydrology means considering ecological assets in our water resource allocations. I specifically study inundation-vegetation interaction in the hope of a better understanding of flood characteristics effects on floodplain vegetation distribution and productivity, which is foundational information for interpreting the implications of water sharing plans, dam operational rules, and environmental flow strategies on floodplain biota at the flow event or flow regime scale.
 
What are your undergraduate and graduate degrees in?
My undergraduate degree is in Water Engineering from Shahid Chamran University in Iran. I have a Master of Science degree in Hydraulic Structures with a specialization in Environmental Flows from Urmia University, Iran. I'm currently finishing my PhD in Environmental Sciences at Macquarie University, Australia with a focus on Inundation-Vegetation association.
 
How did you arrive at working in/thinking about ecohydrology?
It stemmed from my grad studies whilst I specifically started working on environmental flows in rivers for my master thesis. Although Iran has many rivers and wetlands, the concept of environmental flows was a relatively new notion at that time, as such, my master's degree was innovative in an area with little ecological data. Consequently, I focused on hydrological methods for assessing eflow requirements conscious of a huge lack of ecological knowledge for a realistic eflow estimation. This experience served as a solid foundation for my ecohydrology research leading me to pursue a PhD in a robust ecology focused team. Later on, I joined the lab of Neil Saintilan, a leading figure internationally in water and wetland management, where I am completing my PhD and learning more about the ecological assets of dryland floodplains and the effect of water development strategies on flood-dependant vegetation communities.

My research background in environmental flows enables me to comprehend the necessity of ecological aspects for effective water allocation, and my work experience has made me a conscious engineer especially concerning the lack of study of the environmental effects of water projects on our ecosystems.
 
What do you see as an important emerging area of ecohydrology?
Having studied and obtained work experience in the field of water engineering, I am aware that an integrated multidisciplinary approach to the sustainable rehabilitation and maintenance of aquatic ecosystems together with population dynamics, will dictate this century.
 
Do you have a favorite ecohydrology paper?  Describe/explain.
There are lots of papers I like, but one of the first ecohydrology papers which framed my understanding of the interaction between hydrology and aquatic biodiversity is Altered Flow Regimes for Aquatic Biodiversity by Stuart Bunn and Angela Arthington (2002). They beautifully highlighted the effect of altering flow regimes on aquatic biodiversity in streams and rivers by developing useful guiding principles.
 
What do you do for fun (apart from ecohydrology)?
I like swimming, and I'm fortunate to be able to enjoy the beautiful transparent Caribbean sea in Barbados where I am located since the pandemic. I also enjoy globe-trotting with my husband when possible.
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MEET A LEAF: Diane Pataki

11/16/2020

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Dr. Diane E. Pataki is a Professor in the School of Biological Sciences, Adjunct Professor in the Department of City & Metropolitan Planning, and Associate Vice President for Research at the University of Utah.
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What does ecohydrology mean to you?
For me ecohydrology helps us understand the two-way interactions between ecosystems and the water cycle. I’ve always been very interested in the role of vegetation in the water cycle, but over the years my focus has expanded to include other components of ecosystems and how they interact with water, such as cities, people, and the built environment. There are many definitions of ecology (some definitions include humans and some don’t) but if we define ecological processes very broadly, then the many ways in which humans and the rest of the biosphere interact with water all fall within the scope of ecohydrology.

What are your undergraduate and graduate degrees in?
I grew up in New York City and stayed there for college, majoring in environmental science at Barnard College. Throughout college I had a part-time job at the headquarters of the Environmental Defense Fund, where I worked for Fred Krupp, the Executive Director (who is still there!). I was interested in studying how global change affects ecosystem processes, and I asked Fred for advice about graduate programs in that area. He recommended the Duke School of the Environment (now the Nicholas School), which at that time was a new interdisciplinary merger of the School of Forestry, the marine lab, and the geology department. I ended up in the lab of Ram Oren, a tree ecophysiologist working on forest water relations. I got both an M.S. and a Ph.D. with Ram, though to this day, I’m not actually sure what these degrees are in! They’re basically in ecology (with a certificate in hydrology), except at that time the Ph.D. program in the Nicholas School was brand new and the details hadn’t quite been ironed out. My transcript just labels my degrees as “Environment.” Appropriate enough for an interdisciplinary field like ecohydrology!

How did you arrive at working in/thinking about ecohydrology?
I originally went to Duke to study the effects of elevated CO2 on forest ecosystems. At that time the Duke Free Air CO2 Enrichment (FACE) experiment was under construction. While I was waiting for the experiment to be completed I worked on Ram’s other projects, many of which were collaborative studies of water and energy fluxes with Gaby Katul. I got very interested in their work on the effects of water stress on local forests, and ended up focusing my dissertation on the effects of drought on canopy conductance. Unfortunately, once I decided to measure the responses of tree transpiration to drought, the weather stopped cooperating (as is usually the case with field work). Conditions in the Duke Forest were fairly wet for the next few years, and I never really got to study severe drought. So for my postdoc I decided to study an ecosystem where I was almost guaranteed to find drought stress - I took a position at the Desert Research Institute’s Nevada FACE site in the Mojave Desert. This was in 1998, and that year there was a very significant ENSO event. And wouldn’t you know it? It wouldn’t stop raining in the southwest that summer! I did eventually encounter severe droughts in my research projects (and then some – water scarcity has reached crisis levels in the western U.S.), but in my early career severe drought stress was a bit elusive!

What do you see as an important emerging area of ecohydrology?
During my postdoc my research transitioned from studying the effects of atmospheric change on ecosystems to studying urbanization. The transformations of land, water, and ecosystems by human domination of the land surface is central to global environmental change. I’m very interested in the study of the two-way interactions between people and the environment. Humans don’t just influence the environment; we’re influenced by the environment as well. This emerging field of “socio-ecohydrology” is very exciting, because it offers the possibility of developing and testing feasible and equitable solutions to socio-environmental problems. Socio-ecohydrologic studies are increasingly shedding light on the inequities in water consumption, drought impacts, and effects of climate change on vulnerable populations. This works shows the need to integrate justice and ethical concerns into studies of the water cycle. An example of what an ethical code for water might look like can be found here: https://www.thenatureofcities.com/2020/10/31/the-need-for-an-ethical-code-for-water/ If you have comments about it, please let us know!

Do you have a favorite ecohydrology paper?  Describe/explain.
The paper “Water in a Changing World” by Rob Jackson et al. (2001), Ecological Applications v.11(4) 1027-1045 was eye-opening for its estimation of the human influence on the water cycle. The authors calculated that over half of the freshwater runoff available on earth is already appropriated for human use. Over half! And that was 20 years ago – the proportion is undoubtedly larger today. This paper was a wake up call for me about the urgency of ecohydrologic and socio-ecohydrogic research. There is no time to waste – we need solutions-oriented research on water equity, quality, and quantity right now.

What do you do for fun (apart from ecohydrology)?
I’m very fortunate to live in one of the most beautiful places on the planet. For fun my husband and I, along with our two dogs, hike and explore Utah and the surrounding states, especially in the area around Moab where we’ve lived part-time for a number of years. Luckily, outdoor recreation is still possible during the pandemic. I miss seeing my friends and colleagues in person, but at least we have our national parks and public lands. Utah is a long way from the city where I grew up, but it’s become home.
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MEET A LEAF: Jeff McDonnell

11/9/2020

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Dr. Jeff McDonnell is a Professor of Hydrology in the School of Environment and Sustainability and  Associate Director, Global Institute of Water Security, University of Saskatchewan CANADA.
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What does ecohydrology mean to you?
Ecohydrology for me is a blend of “contemporary forest hydrology” and “contemporary hillslope hydrology”. Prior to Ignacio Rodriguez-Iturbe’s field-defining commentary in Water Resources Research in January 2000, hillslope hydrology was decidedly non-ecological in its approaches. His commentary brought focus to the links in space and time between climate, soil, and crucially, vegetation. This is the essence of ecohydrology to me. While certainly broader definitions exist, this is how I have viewed it in the context of my own work on the age, origin and flowpaths of storm runoff. I am old enough to remember an AGU Hydrology Section that existed before the additional of an Ecohydrology Technical Committee. As Past-President of the section, it’s been a delight to watch this group lead the section on so many levels with such enthusiasm especially from the committee’s early career members. Go LEAFS! Coincidently, that was also my chant growing up as a fan for the Toronto Maple Leaf hockey team.

What are your undergraduate and graduate degrees in?
I came very close to doing an undergraduate degree in music. I even took a year off to contemplate the decision. Realizing that for me music should remain a hobby and not a career path, I started off my undergrad with interests in geology and geophysics at University of Toronto. Following a summer job as a geophysics technician in the Yukon, with several close encounters with grizzly bears, I came back to Toronto and changed my major to physical geography. The following two summers I worked as a SCUBA diver and eventually my interests moved from coastal geopmorphology to hydrology. I mention all this because I think that students starting out need to know that many of us have followed meandering, exploratory paths. I talk about this in a recent mentoring book (shameless self-promotion alert!). My MSc was in the Watershed Ecosystems Program at Trent University in Ontario. It was a joint Physical Geography-Biology degree. My MSc advisor, Colin Taylor, was a Kiwi. He encouraged me to do my PhD in New Zealand, following up on an ongoing controversy at the Maimai watershed. I went, and worked with Andy Pearce at the NZ Forest Service with a focus on Forest Hydrology, with my PhD from the University of Canterbury.

How did you arrive at working in/thinking about ecohydrology?
My interdisciplinary collaborations in ecohydrology started well after my PhD when I started working with collaborators coming from geochemical and biogeochemical backgrounds: Carol Kendall and Rick Hooper. Those interactions opened my eyes to new ways of looking at hillslopes and headwater catchments. Then, when I was an early career faculty member at SUNY-ESF in the 1990s, Myron Mitchell, Charlie Hall and Charlie Driscoll graciously let me in to their biological and biogeochemical worlds. I learned much from them. At Oregon State University, where I taught from 1999-2012, I found the HJ Andrews LTER site a rich environment for incubating ecohydrological thinking. There, I started working with plant physiologists. I learned much from Barbara Bond—a plant physiologist with exceptional patience for a hydrologist who, then, barely knew the difference between xylem and phloem. So too, I learned a lot from Renee Brooks with her unique blend of plant physiology and isotope geochemistry. Together, these colleagues helped show me new ways of morphing my hillslope hydrology interests into more coupled ecohydrology questions. Later collaborations on an NSF project in Mexico with Heidi Asbjornsen and Todd Dawson helped further my ecohydrolgical education. I’m still learning. But one thing I know for sure: I want to come back in my next life as a plant ecologist!

What do you see as an important emerging area of ecohydrology?
For me, the important emerging area of ecohydrology is still the one that was defined by Ignacio 20 years ago: the space-time links between climate, soil, and vegetation. And now, with the use of dual isotope tracing of these linkages over the past decade, so much new understanding has developed. But, many challenges and questions remain—and for a field-based person like me, these include: How to sample? Where to sample? When to sample? What to sample? There are extraction techniques now that affect our ability to link plant water with its source water. There are fractionation issues associated with transpiration that are throwing a monkey wrench into our mixing models. It will be interesting going forward, to explore how plant traits influence source apportionment; how plant water status drives water use decisions in the plant. All of this will be better understood with better combinations of isotope tracing matched with careful measurements of things like soil matric potential (using tensiometers) and sap flux (measured with internal heat sensors and dendrometer bands). Georg Ohm wasn’t an ecohydrologist, but his Ohm’s Law still appears to rule—and using it to guide new experiments on water source will be useful.

Do you have a favorite ecohydrology paper? Describe/explain.
There is no question that my absolute favorite ecohydrology paper is Hewlett and Hibbert (1967) “Factors affecting the response of small watersheds to precipitation in humid areas”. While perhaps not ecohydrology senso stricto, the paper laid out a manifesto for change in forest hydrology that endures to this day. It was a proceedings paper from the “First International Symposium on Forest Hydrology” at Penn State University. I love this paper so much I even wrote a tribute to it. One great quote from the Hewlett and Hibbert paper is: “usually a discussion of runoff from a watershed begins with the assumption that direct runoff is a product of overland flow and that other types of flow are mere exceptions to the general rule. Perhaps the opposite approach is more logical in the case of forest land; that is to begin with the assumption that all flow is subsurface flow unless there is evidence otherwise”. Wow. Powerful stuff. And great reading for any newcomer to the field of ecohydrology, hillslope hydrology, critical zone science or forest hydrology. I did not ever meet Hewlett. He retired a couple of years before I started my first academic positon. He is perhaps ecohydrology’s greatest unsung hero. I hope that one day we could push through a new AGU early career award in our section with his name on it.

What do you do for fun (apart from ecohydrology)?
I’ve been riding motorcycles since I was a child. When I was a PhD student, I rode a dirt bike around the Maimai watershed to my various sampling stations. I now ride to explore: new research sites, new nooks and crannies of Scotland following my annual Birmingham summer school shortcourse; scoping field sites on the Saskatchewan Prairie, and on my annual ~2,000 km ride between Saskatoon and Corvallis. Beyond motorcycles, I love to sail; beer can races on a nearby reservoir and adding bareboat charters onto conference and research trips in different sailing grounds. I love to ski in the winter and golf in the summer—with all these activities being better when done with my wife and now-adult kids. Lastly, I still bang away on the piano most days and one day imagine playing Elton John or Billy Joel songs in a piano bar; or perhaps more realistically, in an old folks home.
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MEET A LEAF: Youngryel Ryu

11/2/2020

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Dr. Youngryel Ryu is a Professor in the Department of Landscape Architecture and Rural Systems Engineering at Seoul National University, South Korea.  He has been running the Environmental Ecology Lab since 2011.
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Lab Group photo at the AGU 2019 Fall Meeting.
What does ecohydrology mean to you?
Apparently simple, actually complex, so fascinating. My field site during PhD course was a savanna ecosystem in California. When I first visited the site with my adviser, Dennis Baldocchi, my first impression was this: simple! There were only two species; oak trees and annual grassland on a flat terrain. Growing up in South Korea where 70% of the country is mountain forests, I never saw such simple ecosystem. Then, shortly after, I realized it is so complex. Deciduous oak trees only held leaves from Mar to Oct while grassland was active from Nov to May. Annual rainfall varied two fold (400~900 mm). It was the ideal place for ecohydrology. Indeed, my first journal paper was about evaporation in this ecosystem.
 
What are your undergraduate and graduate degrees in?
My undergraduate degree (BS) was Landscape Architecture, and master degree (MCP) was Environmental Management, both in Seoul National University. Then I got the PhD degree of Biometeorology from UC Berkeley.
 
How did you arrive at working in/thinking about ecohydrology?
In 2005, I was involved in a research project, HydroKorea before going to the US. There was a project evaluation meeting. The invited scholars included Jeff McDonnell at Oregon State University (now University of Saskatchewan) and Lu Zhang at CSIRO. At that time, I didn’t know the term, ecohydrology, and I didn’t know who they are. They recommended focusing on scale, and aligning observation and modeling in evaporation. It really helped me to shape my SOP for PhD course, which was about monitoring evaporation from plot to the global scales. Luckily, I was offered from UC Berkeley, and kept this topic for NASA Earth System Science Fellowship. That topic has been in my central research theme. 
 
What do you see as an important emerging area of ecohydrology?
Urban. Many previous studies on ecohydrology focused on natural ecosystems. Urban is unique as a large fraction of surface is impervious and ground is filled with infrastructure such as pipes. I am very curious how trees in urban develop their roots and access to soil moisture and ground water. Although not published yet, one of my former students, Jina, did an interesting experiment on the source of tree water use grown in pervious and impervious surfaces. She used stable isotope analysis and found trees growing through impervious surfaces used shallower water sources. This gave me a new perspective on ecohydrology by including human dimension.
 
Do you have a favorite ecohydrology paper?  Describe/explain.
One recent paper (https://doi.org/10.1111/gcb.15414) attracted my attention strongly. This paper offers compelling evidences that a savanna ecosystem in California is resilient to droughts via altering their phenology and accessing ground water. This paper is beautiful in a way that it is based on long-term flux tower observations (20 years) in tandem with many in-situ observations that include continuous ground well monitoring datasets. The authors found no trend in evaporation and water use efficiency over the two decades that experienced +40 ppm [CO2] and +1C. This is inconsistent from previous literature that reported stronger [CO2] fertilization effects in dry regions which must lead rising water use efficiency. In view of ecohydrology, this paper clearly demonstrates that one has to understand carbon-water-energy interactions from ground water to the atmosphere across diurnal to decadal scales.
 
What do you do for fun (apart from ecohydrology)?
My life is simple. Work and family. I love family trips. This is particularly difficult period due to COVID-19. 
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MEET A LEAF: Travis Huxman

10/26/2020

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Dr. Travis E. Huxman is a Professor of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the University of California, Irvine.
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What does ecohydrology mean to you?
Ecohydrology is the beautiful, contemporary convergence within the natural sciences reconsidering our approach to systems and units of study at a moment when a century of reductionist traditions has led us to highly contextualized, divergent explanations for how the world works. I know that’s a mouthful and a broader definition than what most folks consider. But I find that this is what the community is operationally tackling. Our units of study in science are arbitrary, and within our disciplines, they are anchored to tradition. I have found it extremely useful to extend my approach to questioning beyond the narrow hierarchy of life (organisms, population, communities, etc.) and to explicitly consider how the environment is an important system feature where biology and physical sciences collide. Ecohydrology highlights how we need each other’s histories, theories, and techniques to understand how the world works, and a focus on the linkages provided by water among organisms, geochemistry, substrate, and transport has been important for inspiring creativity. Some folks focus on the narrow definition of the term and its origins, but to me ecohydrology encompasses an area of scholarship that is about confronting contrasting world-views head to a greater extent than just linking hydrology and ecology.
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What are your undergraduate and graduate degrees in?
I’m a first generation college student, who had no idea what I was doing when I went to school. I began my undergraduate work at Chaffey Community College in California as a Spanish Literature major, but quickly changed to Biology when I found a charismatic professor who really helped young people find the connection between their interests and their aptitudes. I attended California State University, San Bernardino, where I received a Bachelors and Masters degree in Biology. I then studied under Stan Smith at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas for my Doctorate.

How did you arrive at working in/thinking about ecohydrology?
While I know now that I was always drawn to the types of questions we tackle in ecohydrology, the focus on water balance associated with my time at UNLV, working on the Nevada Desert FACE Facility and at the Niwot Ridge Ameriflux site with Russ Monson at the University of Colorado, were the foundations in physiological ecology that prepared me for the kind of science I now tackle (and have for the last several decades). A cynical scholar might say that the field of plant water relations was re-named ecohydrology (as might other disciplines!), but training as a physiological ecologist provided me a good balance of history and approach in preparation for the modern science we now carry out. When I came to the University of Arizona, where the NSF Science and Technology Center SAHRA was running full speed ahead, I was welcomed to table by a group of leading Earth scientists, who understood the big questions and the need for interdisciplinary scholarship. Dave Goodrich, Soroosh Sorooshian, Jim Shuttleworth, Tom Maddock, Roger Bales and others made a place for a whole cohort of ‘early career’ folks like myself, that felt empowered to ask questions without the restraint of discipline (this included folks like Russ Scott, Tom Meixner, Paul Brooks, Dave Breshears, Peter Troch, Jon Chorover, among others). As such, we found a community, organizing questions (surrounding water balance), research sites, and graduate students that helped us look at how the world worked from many different angles. I like to think that we also passed along this approach and environment to the faculty that came after us. It was an amazing, creative time that compelled me to grow as a scholar.

What do you see as an important emerging area of ecohydrology?
The area that excites me is the question of how far eco-evolutionary principles can extend to explain ecohydrological phenomena. Inherent in many of the ways we approach ecosystem and landscape processes, extends concepts illuminated with science focused on individual organisms through the lens of evolutionary ecology. A great example is the concept of optimality in stomatal behavior or the safety-efficiency debate in plant hydraulics. These ideas are embedded in such issues as response the the earth system to rising atmospheric CO2 and temperature, ecosystem susceptibility to mortality associated with drought, and the issue of responding to changes in nitrogen deposition. But how robust are the concepts and are they indeed predictive of behavior at higher levels of the life hierarchy? Included in this are the ways that humans modify the landscape and contribute to other aspects of global change.

Do you have a favorite ecohydrology paper?  Describe/explain.
I’m the guy who hears the next song on the radio and says, “This is my favorite song!” So my favorite ecohydrology paper is the one I’ve most recently seen!

However, like many of my colleagues I was inspired by Noy-Meir (1973) as a student, but more directly by Smith et al. (1995) [Soil-plant water relations in a Mojave Desert mixed shrub community. Journal of Arid Environments 29:339-35]}. Noy-Meir helped me think about dynamic systems and how diversity contributed to process in a variable environment, but I simply loved the Smith et al., description of landscape components of a coupled, soil-plant context and the use of mass balance to understand a limiting resource in an ecosystem that I could understand.

I am also drawn to the contributions of early career folks, so I thought that the review provided by Jenerette et al., (2012) Organization of complexity in water limited ecohydrology. Ecohydrology 5:184-199 was outstanding.

I recently find myself also diving into old literature in trying to understand the foundations of our science. As a result, there is a treasure-chest of old literature from the Carnegie Desert Laboratory at Tumamoc Hill in Tucson, Arizona, especially the early work of Burton Livingstone and Forrest Shreve - they produced amazing data on plant-soil-water dynamics with very limited instrumentation!

What do you do for fun (apart from ecohydrology)?
For me water is the solvent for all fun. So, with my wife and daughters, I focus on the ecohydrology of surfing, sailing, and skiing as much as possible!
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MEET A LEAF: Juan CAmilo Villegas

10/19/2020

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Dr. Juan Camilo Villegas is an Associate Professor at Universidad de Antioquia in the School of Environment, Medellín Colombia.
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What does ecohydrology mean to you?
Ecohydrology is an open, interdisciplinary field that explores the biological, biogeochemical and, ultimately, ecological connections within and between ecosystems including “natural" (note the quotation marks) and human-dominated systems. Ecohydrological knowledge is central to addressing the most fundamental challenge humanity is facing today, the climate crisis.  

What are your undergraduate and graduate degrees in? 
I finished my undergraduate in 2000 on Environmental Engineering from the Antioquia School of Engineering, a small private engineering College in Medellín, Colombia.  I got my MSc in Forests and Environmental Conservation from the National University of Colombia, in 2006, and my PhD on Watershed Management and ecohydrology from the University of Arizona in 2010.

How did you arrive at working in/thinking about ecohydrology?
It all started with my undergraduate thesis, or perhaps before, when I was undecided which class I enjoyed better: basic hydrology or Ecology. For my undergraduate thesis, I did a review of local studies that addressed soil-water-ecosystem relationships. In my master’s thesis I studied fog interception in tropical montane cloud forests in the Andes.  Later, I moved to Arizona to study microclimate, energy and evapotranspiration partitioning in response to changes in vegetation cover in semiarid systems. I could say that all my scientific career has revolved around ecohydrology in different types of ecosystems.  I would summarize my research as understanding environmental change (including land use and climate) effects on ecosystems and their services at multiple spatial and temporal scales, through an ecohydrological lens.

What do you see as an important emerging area of ecohydrology?
More than an emerging area, addressing the fundamental challenge of the climate crisis requires the participation of all disciplines, particularly Ecohydrology.  Among the multiple aspects that are needed to address this challenge, understanding the potential feedbacks between climate change and ecosystem function, structure and composition is particularly pressing to determine the future of biodiversity, ecosystems and their services to society.  Such task, requires the integration of disciplines. I see “functional ecohydrology” as an emerging area integrating principles of functional ecology with ecohydrology to understand and predict global change effects and feedbacks with ecosystems globally,

Do you have a favorite ecohydrology paper?  Describe/explain.
Hard question.  However, I always come back to G.G. Bonan, 2008 in Science (Forests and Climate Change: Forcings, Feedbacks, and the Climate Benefits of Forests) as it has, for me, the most compelling conceptual figure on the connections between ecosystem function, energy, water and carbon, in the context of global change. Also, L.A. Bruijnzeel (2004) Hydrological functions of tropical forests: not seeing the soil for the trees? (Agriculture, Ecosystems & Environment) was sort of my formal entering point to Ecohydrology, and over 15 years after I see myself revisiting it all the time. 

What do you do for fun (apart from ecohydrology)?
I have the fortune to live in a rural area, very close to a nicely preserved area that covers Andean Forest all the way to Paramo. I live with my partner Pilar, our 7 dogs, 10 chickens and one cat and wildlife that visit us every once in a while.  We are trying to restore native forest in the previously intensively grazed area of our 3.5 ha property. Planting trees, figuring out combinations of potential restoration strategies, trying to grow our own food occupy most of our fun time, and it is really fun. Brewing beer with a group of friends (though that has been stopped by the current situation) has been also my hobby in the past few years. We have had great batches but some have come out horrible (reminds me of some some paper reviews…). 
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MEET A LEAF: Molly Cain

10/12/2020

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Molly Cain is a PhD Candidate at Indiana University in the O'Neill School of Public and Environmental Affairs.
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What does ecohydrology mean to you?
To me, ecohydrology is hydrologic research put in the context of living things. It relates the movement and storage of water, as well as the things that are transported by water—nutrients, pollutants, energy—to the ecological consequences of those fluxes and stores. Essentially, by emphasizing interactions between water quality/quantity and ecosystems, ecohydrology makes the connection between hydrologic processes and “why it matters.” This view is certainly biased towards my experiences. However, at its core ecohydrology is a malleable, multi-disciplinary science which seems to continually grow, encompassing more perspectives to achieve an increasingly holistic view of the feedbacks between water and ecosystems.

What are your undergraduate and graduate degrees in?
I received my B.Sc. in Geosciences from Penn State and am currently working on my PhD in Environmental Science at Indiana University, with a focus on hydrology.

How did you arrive at working in/thinking about ecohydrology?
During a prospective student visitation day at Penn State, I was profoundly affected by a statement made by a professor. "For geoscientists," he said, "the outdoors is our laboratory." What began as a desire to work outside while pursuing my degree propelled me into a journey that would lead to a passion for discovery and problem-solving, particularly related to water resources. I had influential mentors who provided opportunities to work in hydrologic systems early in my academic career. As an undergraduate research assistant through the Critical Zone Observatories program, I monitored the effect of dam removal and restoration on groundwater-surface water exchange. As a summer intern with NOAA, I worked to develop techniques to monitor wetland elevation change with respect to rising sea levels. These experiences introduced me to the concept of ecosystem services and the idea that I could contribute to the improved management of natural systems through my research. This led me to pursue a PhD focused on understanding how human modification of landscapes for agriculture alters the transport of water and nutrients to downstream waterways and, in turn, assessing the role of natural systems like floodplain wetlands in transporting and transforming water and nutrients. While I was working on questions related to the effects of hydrological processes on ecosystem functioning all along, I did not identify the research as ecohydrology until later on.

What do you see as an important emerging area of ecohydrology?
I hesitate to call it emerging because I know there are folks doing interesting work in this area, but I think there is a growing call to incorporate ecohydrological principles into decision-making and management of water resources. An exciting challenge will be to develop frameworks that integrate physical and social science, and models that incorporate both ecohydrological processes and social science data. One such approach is to model future scenarios that reflect preferred management choices of landowners and local citizens, as well as policy interventions based on ongoing political and regulatory discussions. These strategies provide an opportunity to view future outcomes, such as land-use changes and implementation of nature-based solutions, through an ecohydrologic lens and could be key to bringing ecohydrology to the forefront of the planning process.

Do you have a favorite ecohydrology paper?  Describe/explain.
There are too many great ecohydrology papers to mention! I will highlight one paper that was critical in shaping how I approach ecohydrologic research, especially at the beginning of graduate school: Savenije (2009) “The art of hydrology.” The author discusses how the process of scientific discovery, particularly hydrologic modeling, entails an element of art. Accordingly, it requires “imagination, inspiration, insight, field experience, creativity, ingenuity, and skill”—all qualities primarily associated with the field of art. While this may seem obvious, explicitly recognizing the art in ecohydrology has helped me to embrace this aspect of my role as a scientist, and I believe it is at the heart of addressing issues at the interface of water and living things.

What do you do for fun (apart from ecohydrology)?
When I am not wading through streams or chasing storms to sample, you can find me running or playing the saxophone with local swing/jazz ensembles. I also love to travel. Exploring new places and meeting people continually inspires me. Many of my experiences traveling have been facilitated by research/education, and I have found that the uniting purpose of science is one of the most powerful ways to engage with people and form meaningful connections.
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MEET A LEAF: Eli R. Perez-Ruiz

10/5/2020

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Eli Perz-Ruiz is a ​Professor at the Departamento de Ingenieria Civil y Ambiental in Universidad Autonoma de Ciudad Juarez and Ph. D. student in Geological Sciences at the School of Earth and the Space Exploration in Arizona State University.
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What does ecohydrology mean to you?
As I always define it when someone ask me what I work with, ecohydrology is the study of the relationship between hydrological and ecological processes. But to be honest, to me it is more than just that. Growing up and living all my life in desert areas of northwestern Mexico and southwestern USA, the relationship or interaction with water availability or scarcity is just a way of living. From the smell of wet earth before a storm and the creosote scented afternoons after the rain, to the ascent and senescence of vegetation with the arrival and departure of the monsoon and everything in between, I see ecohydrology as part of my life, a really enjoyable part of my life.

What are your undergraduate and graduate degrees in?
I obtained a degree in Chemistry and a master’s degree in Natural Resources from the Instituto Tecnologico de Sonora (ITSON) in Mexico. I am currently studying a Ph. D. in Geological Sciences in the School of Earth and The Space Exploration in Arizona State University (ASU).

How did you arrive at working in/thinking about ecohydrology?
I started my path in ecohydrology during my master’s studies. Initially I was focusing my efforts in chemical analysis of plants, however I wanted to do something more challenging, so I met Prof. Jaime Garatuza-Payan, who became my advisor, and I started working with water and carbon fluxes over a tropical dry forest under the influence of the North American Monsoon (NAM). During my master I also met Prof. Enrico Yepez, who became part of my dissertation committee and his energy and enthusiasm towards ecohydrology ignited even more a growing interest in the field. Prof. Garatuza-Payan and Prof. Yepez were my inspiration to study ecohydrology.

After I got my master’s degree, I continued working at ITSON as a research assistant, getting involved more and more into ecohydrology and interacting with excellent researcher from Mexico and the US. I started focusing more and more in the study of the role of water availability and precipitation variability of land surface-atmosphere interactions in arid and semi-arid landscapes.

During my doctoral studies in ASU, I have continued working with land surface-atmosphere interactions, but I have combined the study not only of natural landscape but also urban landscapes, and I have expanded the research tools I use. During my Ph. D. I have worked with carbon fluxes of urban patches in Phoenix, AZ, the landscape and environmental controls in land surface-atmosphere interaction in ecosystems of the NAM area and the interannual variability of water-energy-carbon fluxes in two woody-lant encroached ecosystem of the southwest of the US, one in the Santa Rita Experimental Range and one in the Jornada Experimental Range. My advisor, Prof. Enrique R. Vivoni has been also a fundamental inspiration in my academic and scientific life. His neatness, support and advisory have been fundamental to enhance my skills and research vision.

After finishing my Ph. D., I pretend to continue with my efforts trying to understand the role of climate variability in land surface-atmosphere interactions, involving more and more into urban landscapes but continuing with natural ecosystems as well. I hope I can ignite the ecohydrology spark to my future students in the same way my mentors did with me.
 
What do you see as an important emerging area of ecohydrology?
I think there are two fundamental areas that represent important paths to follow in ecohydrology. The first one is the urban ecohydrology, and from my point of view it represents important challenges for the scientific community. The impact of cities in the water cycle is enormous and the role of the built environment in ecohydrologial processes is still not clear due to the heterogeneity and patchiness of urban landscapes or also called “urban ecosystems”.

The second area is the social ecohydrology. I think it is important to start considering ourselves, the human beings, as part of the ecohydrological processes and not as something foreign to natural systems. I think we should understand not only how ecological and hydrological processes relate to each other but how those processes affect us and how we affect them.

Do you have a favorite ecohydrology paper?  Describe/explain.
I have two favorite papers that I like to read very often. The first one is Huxman et al., (2004) “Precipitation pulses and carbon fluxes in semiarid and arid ecosystems”. I think this paper is fundamental for the understanding of the ecoydrological processes in arid and semi-arid ecosystems as it conceptualize in a really clear way the response of ecosystem’s biophysical processes to precipitation pulses.

For the second paper, in fact I have two that are closely related and belong to the same author. Baldocchi (2003) “Assessing the eddy covariance technique for evaluating carbon dioxide exchange rates of ecosystems: past, present and future” and Badocchi (2008) “’Breathing’ of the terrestrial biosphere: lessons learned from a global network of carbon dioxide flux measurement systems”. I think these are a couple of “must read” papers for everyone working with ecosystems fluxes (not only carbon fluxes).

What do you do for fun (apart from ecohydrology)?
What I like the most is to spent time with my two kids, but when I have time, I also enjoy jogging during the nights, stargazing, visiting natural places (field sites, national parks, national forests, etc.), playing pc games (GTA V, Starcraft II, etc.) and watching sports (Football and Futbol).
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MEET A LEAF: Sarah H. Ledford

9/28/2020

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Dr. Sarah Ledford is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Geosciences at Georgia State University. Twitter: @SLedford_
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 What does ecohydrology mean to you?
 The interaction between ecological processes and water quality and quantity. How does the ecology of a system (from microbes to mega-fauna to algae to trees) impact where water is coming from, the timing of the water, the associated dissolved (and particulate…and bigger!) material in that water, and where that water and material in the water end up! I think it’s important to frame ecohydrology as a topic to be studied for all fluxes and reservoirs of the hydrologic cycle. 

What are your undergraduate and graduate degrees in? 
I have a BA in Earth Science from Vassar College and a PhD in Earth Science from Syracuse University.

How did you arrive at working in/thinking about ecohydrology?
As for many of us, running around in streams, picking up rocks, and poking bugs was one of my main past-times, even in high school, because I grew up in the suburbs. My sub-topic of ecohydrology really focuses on anthropogenic impacts, so Walter and Merritts’ 2008 paper on the impact of mill-dam ponds on sediment legacies and stream structure what the paper that made the light-bulb go off for me- I wanted to understand what humans have changed about rivers and streams. My undergraduate department was small, so we didn’t have hydrology, and given our location in the Hudson Valley, geomorphology really focused on glacial impacts.  This paper was the one that made me think about how large our physical impact has been on the landscape, even in places we think are ‘natural’. After reading this paper, I worked on an honor’s thesis that looked at the impact remanent ponds on my campus had on DIN. It was a massive failure, but the questions about human impacts on water chemistry persisted! When I got to graduate school, my advisor’s main specialty at that point was hyporheic exchange, but we started sampling a local stream for a field method’s class and found some fascinating patterns.  My PhD work evolved into digging into those patterns to figure out their drivers (which end up being strongly controlled by anthropogenic impacts on surface water-groundwater interactions). Since then, my work has expanded to think about other systems where human influence dominates (small streams receiving wastewater treatment plant effluent for my post-doc and extremely urbanized environments now in Atlanta).  

What do you see as an important emerging area of ecohydrology?
High-temporal loggers and the massive collection of data without understanding what we are collecting and the questions we are asking (and I’m guilty here, too!). There have been some great calls-to-arms on this, including Burns et al. 2019 in WIRES Water.  Suddenly the world is pretty wide open as far as data collection goes, but I think we need to step back, make sure we are framing solid questions, before we dive in.  We also need to acknowledge how much ‘bad’ data may be collected and separate it from ‘data that does not make sense’.  ‘Bad’ data are due to poor QAQC, poor siting, etc., and really can’t be used.  ‘Data that does not make sense’ are much more exciting and will lead to new questions! And, I think there are important regulatory implications for high-temporal data: when we suddenly see how much daily variation there is in water quality, how can we best advise a sampling regime that measures the over-all health of a system? Have we been mis-representing the health of systems from grab samples? Does this start to explain the disconnect between ecological indicators of health we’ve seen in cities (such as poor EPT counts) despite the fact that our water quality is ‘improving’?

Do you have a favorite ecohydrology paper?  Describe/explain.
I love AJ Reisinger and all’s 2019 Ecological Applications paper about the impact of stream restoration on in-stream metabolism.  It is such a clear example of how people have gone in, ‘fixed’ a problem, but not thought about the other ecological implications of their ‘fix’ (in this case, removal of riparian vegetation and the impact increased light availability has on the stream). And on the opposite side of the argument, Pennino et al 2014 (in Biogeochemistry) thinks about the impact stream burial and removal of light has had in cities! 

What do you do for fun (apart from ecohydrology)?
Talk long walks around Atlanta with my dog, drink beer around a fire-pit, read books, and watch too much TV! I also love to cook and try new recipes. And as a new home-owner, I’m up to my elbows in small home improvement projects, especially getting garden beds up and running and working on building raised beds for tomatoes!
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MEET A LEAF: Marccus Hendricks

9/21/2020

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Dr. Marccus D. Hendricks, Ph.D., MPH is an Assistant Professor of Urban Studies and Planning 
and the Director of Stormwater Infrastructure Resilience and Justice (SIRJ) Lab in the School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation at the University of Maryland – College Park, MD.
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What does ecohydrology mean to you?
The study of the relationship between water and green spaces and flow and permeability dynamics that support the natural management of water, both in terms of water quantity and water quality. Processes that if replicated and restored can play a critical role in addressing stormwater runoff, groundwater recharging, nutrient treatment, and other ecosystem services, particularly in human-built environments. 

What are your undergraduate and graduate degrees in? 
My undergraduate work is in psychology and health promotion. My masters is in public health and my Ph.D. is in urban and regional science. 

How did you arrive at working in/thinking about ecohydrology?
My pathway to ecohydrology was quite serendipitous in some ways and systematic in others. Growing up in a community plagued by flooding planted a seed of questioning the management of water and related infrastructure. As a first generation college student, however,  I wasn’t quite sure what a career in that space looked like. Nevertheless, I did know that emergency and paramedicine was one layer of support, particularly in response to these events. So my original plan was to pursue a career as a firefighter/EMT. Toward the end of my undergraduate career I was encouraged by some of my professors to look into public health and building on the health promotion background within the context of public health emergencies. Upon completing my masters I realized that public health still wasn’t getting after the root cause of the issue of flooding, but certainly played a part in public exposure and impact. When looking into PhD programs with a focus on hazards and disasters, I learned of a center focused on hazard reduction and recovery that happened to be located in the landscape architecture and urban planning department. I went on to discover that there were issues related to land use, infrastructure, and the development of the natural and built environment that essentially set the stage for urban hydrology and water management, particularly stormwater runoff that leads to flooding. The rest is history.  Since my PhD studies I’ve expanded my research program to explicitly include ecohydrology within a stormwater infrastructure planning and management research program toward flood hazard mitigation and improved water quality. 

What do you see as an important emerging area of ecohydrology?
I see environmental and climate justice as an important emerging area in ecohydrology for both its human and social implications in general and the justice specific narrative in terms of ensuring that ecological restoration and resilience are applied fairly across all segments of the population irrespective of race, ethnicity, national origin, or class, particularly when ecohydrology intersects with urban environments. 

Do you have a favorite ecohydrology paper?  Describe/explain.
I’d have to say Amy Vanderwarker’s report chapter on water and environmental justice because it was one of those earlier pieces for me that provided an overarching framework for issues of water specifically including ecohydrology within an environmental justice framework. In her piece she touches on everything from water and land management to drinking water quality and provides policy and case study examples demonstrating the human justice side of water, infrastructure, and hydrology. 

Vanderwarker, A. (2012). Water and environmental justice. A Twenty-First Century US Water Policy, 52.

What do you do for fun (apart from ecohydrology)?
Outside of work, I enjoy running and biking around Washington DC, specifically the tidal basin. During what I like to call BC (Before COVID), I enjoyed live music and attending concerts. 
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