|
Dr. Chris Zou is a professor in the Department of Natural Resource Ecology and Management at Oklahoma State University.  What does ecohydrology mean to you?
In natural resource and ecosystem management, ecohydrology incites a new way of thinking and disbands the disciplinary boundary of biotic and abiotic focus. The framework and the name illustrate the interdisciplinary nature and importance of understanding the interactive nature and feedback loops among the ecological processes and water in or influenced by any ecosystem. What are your undergraduate and graduate degrees in? I earned my degrees in Biology (1985) and Plant Ecology (1988) from Southwest University (China). After spending years working in the subalpine forest ecosystem in the eastern margin of Tibet, I returned to graduate school studying plant and soil interaction in the context of forest ecology and management and obtained my Ph.D.(2000) from the University of Canterbury, New Zealand. How did you arrive at working in/thinking about ecohydrology? Dr. Steve Archer at Texas A&M University hired me as a postdoc soon after my dissertation defense. I worked on an NSF-funded project to understand the mechanisms underlying the woody plant-driven cluster and patch dynamics in the south Texas savanna parkland. We installed hundreds of soil psychrometers and spent years measuring plant ecophysiology to piece together the elusive interaction among stochastic rainfall input, soil moisture, and species-specific performance of co-occurring shrub and tree species. After digging deep into the ecosystem's dynamic mechanisms, we started to think about its external impact, such as water balance. I recalled many exciting discussions with Dr. Brad Wilcox, our wildland hydrologist, across the hallway, which secured me a seat on the van to the 2002 Chapman conference on ecohydrology which I still think started many discussions and debates that have largely shaped ecohydrology as we see it today. My experience working with Dr. David Breshears at the University of Arizona further shaped my ecohydrology view. What do you see as an important emerging area of ecohydrology? Dr. Zhang at CSIRO (8/24/2020 LEAF) said this very well. One important emerging area of ecohydrology is the coupling of carbon and water at various spatial and temporal scales. Forests are near and dear to many of us. In water-abundant, humid regions, reforestation can increase carbon sequestration and "flat the curve" of the hydrograph, reducing flood risk. However, the impact of afforestation on carbon and water budget can switch from both positive to a tradeoff. The cost of water and effects on other ecosystem services can outweigh the benefit when the region becomes semiarid and arid. Improved understanding of the complex interaction among climate, ecosystem productivity, soil processes, and water availability for non-ecosystem application remains an area of theoretical and applied interest. Do you have a favorite ecohydrology paper? Describe/explain. It isn't easy to nail down a paper. Still, Huxman et al. (2005) "Ecohydrological implication of woody plant encroachment" and Jackson et al. (2005) "Trading water for carbon with biological carbon sequestration" are must-reads for students in my ecohydrology class. Woody plant encroachment, widely observed, is an excellent example of illustrating the interactive effect of the ecological process and the water cycle. The existence of a trade-off between two vital ecosystem services (carbon sequestration and water availability for non-ecosystem use) should be a guiding principle for natural resource managers in the vast semiarid and subhumid ecosystems. What do you do for fun (apart from ecohydrology)? I enjoy fishing and staying close to the water whenever time and weather allow (and I am not traveling). I also regularly spend time gardening, listening to music and audio books, playing card games with friends, and following the Federal Badminton Tournament, in no particular order. Dr. Ben Livneh is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Civil, Environmental, and Architectural Engineering, University of Colorado Boulder and a Fellow in the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences, University of Colorado Boulder.  What does ecohydrology mean to you?
Ecohydrology represents a frontier of knowledge in the broader field of hydrology. By considering the role of the biosphere on hydrology, ecohydrology allows us to see the fascinating interactions between vegetation, soil, and water. This interplay is complex and can even be counterintuitive, as is the case with forest disturbance. Conventional understanding of the impact of forest disturbance on water supply suggests that disturbed catchments will yield more water due to reduced plant transpiration. However, this is not always the case as a number of recent studies have shown. What are your undergraduate and graduate degrees in? I received undergraduate and MS degree in Civil Engineering from the University of Western Ontario in Canada. I received a PhD. in Civil Engineering with a focus on Hydrology from the University of Washington. My MS degree focused on Geotechnical Engineering, so the interesting juxtaposition for me was moving from thinking of soil as a load-bearing “building” material, towards a hydrologist view of soils as a substrate for water. How did you arrive at working in/thinking about ecohydrology? My postdoctoral research was motivated by a string of years with anomalous runoff that really challenged water supply forecasting in the Upper Colorado River Basin. There was a hypothesis that these anomalous runoff events were partly the result of recent bark-beetle disturbances across the region. I investigated this problem using in situ and remotely sensed data together with hydrological models. I was fortunate to work with a diverse team of landscape ecologists, snow and climate scientists. What do you see as an important emerging area of ecohydrology? Understanding the role of increasing CO2 levels on plant transpiration and catchment-scale water yields is an important emerging area in ecohydrology. The degree to which these reductions in transpiration can offset warming-driven increases in evaporative demand are particularly interesting. Do you have a favorite ecohydrology paper? Describe/explain. I learned a lot by reading a 2012 Ecohydrology paper led by Henry Adams titled: “Ecohydrological consequences of drought- and infestation triggered tree die-off: insights and hypotheses”. This paper provided a nice summary of the state of the science up until that point and made the connection between drought and forest disturbance. This paper was eye opening to the possibility that forest disturbance could lead to decreased water yield in some cases, which is in contrast to much of the past literature. This realization motivated my landscape ecologist colleague, Prof. Brian Buma, and I to publish research investigating the causal factors behind decreasing water yield following forest disturbance (Buma and Livneh, 2017; ERL). What do you do for fun (apart from ecohydrology)? I lead a jazz and bluegrass band called Paper Moonshine that records and performs music along the Front Range of Colorado. I also enjoy playing with my two sons and spending time in the local mountains. Dr. David M. Hannah is Professor of Hydrology and UNESCO Chair in Water Science in the School of Geography, Earth & Environmental Sciences, University of Birmingham, UK. @freshwaterflows  What does ecohydrology mean to you?
We have written commentaries and a book about defining “ecohydrology” and “hydroecology”, so rather than revisiting those discussions, I will go for simply… how ecological processes shape hydrological dynamics, how living things are influenced by hydrological processes, and how these two process sets feedback/ interact. We need to frame ecohydrology around coupled systems and, increasingly importantly, add people to the equations. So for me, in a nutshell, it is all about taking a wider perspective to understand complex, variable, interconnected, water-dependent systems and how we can use this knowledge towards sustainable management for the betterment of the environment and society. In terms of application, I try to use this perspective to research snow- and glacier-fed watersheds; river temperature dynamics and impacts; and space-time ecohydrological patterns beyond the individual river basin-scale and under global change. What are your undergraduate and graduate degrees in? My undergraduate degree is a BSc Physical Geography (1994) from the University of Aberdeen, Scotland. I was taught by some outstanding faculty and developed a passion for glaciers, mountains and rivers. Field courses are an integral part of geographical learning; and Aberdeen’s location (between the Rivers Dee and Don and near the Cairngorm Mountains) meant we were spoilt for choice of real world examples to test theory. For my undergraduate dissertation, I travelled to the Italian Alps (beside Mont Blanc) to undertake a project on climate drivers of glacier stream runoff. I was amazed by the dynamism of alpine environments; and this enthused me to do more research. So, I went to the University of Birmingham, England, to study for a PhD Geography (1997) under the supervision of Angela Gurnell (now Queen Mary University of London) and Glenn McGregor (now Durham University) that focused on meltwater generation and drainage in a small glacierized basin in the French Pyrenees. I was fortunate to have great field support from my supervisors and some people who became future research collaborators as well as friends. In my second summer field season, we were joined by a group of aquatic ecologists - which kindled my interests in ecohydrology. How did you arrive at working in/thinking about ecohydrology? As mentioned above, during my PhD, I did fieldwork with ecologists who were working on a European Commission project on Arctic and Alpine Stream Ecosystem Research. This project used similar field protocols to link stream ecology to physico-chemical river habitat along a latitudinal gradient of glacier-fed watershed for Europe (spanning from the French Pyrenees in the south to Svalbard in the north). These harsh, cold river systems are highly deterministic - with aquatic macroinvertebrate communities conditioned (most notably) by downstream patterns in water temperature and channel stability. By quantifying these ecohydrological links, it is possible to predict alpine stream biodiversity response to climate and hydrological change. After my PhD, I gained a lectureship at Birmingham and extended these glacier-fed river ecohydrological studies to other mountain regions and to the Arctic. In addition, I broadened my ecohydrological interests to river water temperature and flow-ecology links in temperate, forested, ephemeral and urban environments. What do you see as an important emerging area of ecohydrology? There are a number of topic areas that I could highlight (some are the same as our commentary in 2007) as ‘new’ and emerging themes: ecosystem sensitivity to hydrological change; aquatic-terrestrial linkages; disturbance - water and ecological stress; modern and palaeo-analogue studies; and applied hydroecology/ ecohydrology at the science-policy interface. In 2020, as an outcome from an international workshop led by Del Levia (University of Delaware), we offered a roadmap to advance ecohydrology. For this blog, it might be most interesting to reflect on the ‘how’ (rather than the ‘what’) we do in ecohydrology. (1) We need to develop and apply new tools - for example, recently we have used drones, high-frequency water sensing technologies and smart-tracers to identify space-time heterogeneity in ecohydrological systems and processes. We need to look to the innovation horizon for new methods to bring from other disciplines into ecohydrology as well as develop our own tools. (2) We need to release the huge potential of intrinsic interdisciplinary collaborations in ecohydrology – extending our teams beyond the natural sciences to include data scientists, social scientists and other researchers. (3) We need to undertake ‘research that matters’ – that is do work of relevance beyond the scientist who is doing it - by working with different stakeholders (leveraging practitioner and indigenous knowledges) to co-create new applications of scientific knowledge and generate important new research questions based on practical need. (4) In terms of new fundamental questions, we need to consider how we are joining the scales to go from our (often) small-scale process understanding to larger-scale proxies, controls and responses (for example, we still do not understand fully why particular times and places have a disproportionate influence on watershed ecohydrological response). In doing so, we may be able to better understand the scales of influence of climate, land management and other drivers of ecohydrological response to inform sustainable water management and develop better mitigation/ adaptation strategies for a changing water world. Do you have a favorite ecohydrology paper? Describe/explain. Sticking to just one paper (such a difficult choice!), I would opt for “How much water does a river need?” by Brian Richter and co-authors. This article introduced a new method (the Range of Variability Approach - RVA) for setting river ecosystem management targets - based the link between hydrological variability and aquatic ecosystem response. It got me thinking about how the five facets of what I often refer to as “wiggly river flow-time series” (magnitude, frequency, timing, duration, and rates of change) can influence aquatic species distributions, communities and biodiversity. This paper inspired a number of our collaborations and publications: on methods for hydrograph classification; searching for ecologically-meaningful hydrological variables; and the underpinning scientific basis for river management and conservation practice. What do you do for fun (apart from ecohydrology)? We spend time together as a family - usually outdoors (walking, cycling and in the garden) or at football/soccer matches. We all enjoy travelling to see new places and peoples, but that has been put on hold for the moment. I listen to a wide range of music, although classic and alternative rock is my favourite. Birmingham is a great city to see headliners as well as emerging bands, so I look forward to doing that once we recover from the pandemic. I still go running, although <20 min AGU Fun Runs were quite a while ago. Dr. Laura Turnbull is an Associate Professor in the Department of Geography at Durham University. Twitter: @ecohydrology  What does ecohydrology mean to you? To me, ecohydrology is the interactions and feedbacks between ecological and hydrological processes, with particular emphasis on geomorphology and biogeochemistry. Within ecohydrology, I am particularly interested in how system structure (such as vegetation distribution and [micro]topography) affects the lateral redistribution of water, nutrients, sediment and seeds around the landscape, which in turn control where vegetation can continue to persist, or where new seeds will germinate. What are your undergraduate and graduate degrees in? My undergraduate degree was in Physical Geography at Durham University, UK (which I’ve now returned to!). During this degree I undertook my first independent research in drylands (where most of my work is now focused), on the hydraulic geometry of ephemeral channels in Spain. Following this, I moved to Kings College London where I completed a MSc in Environmental Monitoring, Modelling and Management, which led to a PhD in Physical Geography at Sheffield University, UK. How did you arrive at working in/thinking about ecohydrology? I had always been fascinated in tropical forests and I was really sure that I would end up doing research in this area during my MSc, but this wasn’t to be the case, and I ended up back in drylands – this time in New Mexico – where I undertook research on hydrological connectivity in grassland and shrubland at the Jornada Experimental Range. I was really intrigued by this environment, and the widespread vegetation transitions that have occurred over the last century, and I was keen to learn more about how these transitions actually happen. This led to my PhD research on ‘Ecohydrological interactions across a semi-arid grassland to shrubland transition’ which really reinforced the importance of considering both vertical and lateral fluxes of water, nutrients and sediment when thinking about feedbacks between vegetation and hydrology. What do you see as an important emerging area of ecohydrology? At the moment I am particularly fascinated about the potential to refine our understanding of the ecohydrology and resulting structure and function of drylands by applying tools from network science. For example, can we identify “critical nodes” in the system where ecohydrological feedbacks increase or decrease the resilience of a given system state? And through identification of these critical nodes and their associated ecohydrological characteristics, can we manipulate/manage them to alter system structure and function to maximize the provision of ecosystem services? Of course, the application of network science tools to ecohydrology extend far beyond drylands, but as a complex system characterized by patchy vegetation, they certainly make an interesting starting point. There’s also a lot of progress to be made in the area of ecohydrological modelling, in order to take into account sufficiently well both the vertical and lateral fluxes of energy, water, nutrients and sediment. Do you have a favorite ecohydrology paper? Describe/explain. Although not strictly an ecohydrology paper, Schlesinger’s 1990 paper on “Biological feedbacks in global desertification” was particularly influential for me earlier on in my research career, in terms of thinking about how patterns of vegetation, and soil nutrients arise due to the complex interplay between lateral and vertical ecohydrological processes, which in turn affect the ongoing structure and function of the system. The paper by Cadenasso et al (2006) on “Dimensions of ecosystem complexity: Heterogeneity, connectivity and history” is also one that I view as being particularly useful for thinking about the role of ecohydrology in the structure and functioning of water-limited systems. This paper presents a ‘biocomplexity framework’ outlining how complex ecological systems can by understood better with a focus on connectivity, heterogeneity, and contingency, which is directly relevant to understanding ecohydrologial processes and how they change in response to climatic or anthropogenic disturbances. For a more classical ecohydrology paper, I’d probably have to choose the paper by Newman et al (2006) on “Ecohydrology of water-limited environments: A scientific vision” which I still find particularly useful because it outlines some of the key challenges facing research in ecohydrology, which still apply 15 years later. What do you do for fun (apart from ecohydrology)? Pre-children I really enjoyed triathlon. Nowadays I’m lucky if I can get out for a bike ride but I try to as much as I can! I spend a lot of time outdoors, walking with the dog, playing with the children or working on the vegetable patch! Dr. Marco Maneta is an Associate Professor in the Department of Geosciences at the University of Montana (Missoula, MT).  What does ecohydrology mean to you?
It means the foundations of the environmental system. To me water is the currency that is traded between processes in the ecosystem, providing strong couplings between its components. In a broader sense, the field of ecohydrology provides a convenient framework to understand the environment that is intuitive and appealing to a wide range of environmental scientists from disparate subdisciplines. The composition of the Leafs in this blog are proof of it. Whether we are biologists, biochemists, ecologist, plant physiologists, geomorphologists… water is a common resource consumed by the processes that are of interest to us and therefore unify us. What are your undergraduate and graduate degrees in? My undergraduate is in Geography (2001) from the University of Extremadura in Spain with a year at the University of Kent at Canterbury and a year at the Autonomous University of Barcelona. My PhD (2006) is also from the University of Extremadura (Sustainable Development and Land Planning program within the Geography department), with stints at the University of Utrecht and at UC Davis. My dissertation presented the development and application of a ecohydrologic model to simulate the hydrology of semi-arid rangelands with shallow, degraded soils. How did you arrive at working in/thinking about ecohydrology? I did an undergraduate senior thesis estimating the magnitude of historical floods in an ungauged watershed close to Barcelona, which steered me toward the field of hydrology. Then for my PhD I was interested in understanding the spatial and temporal dynamics of runoff generation in degraded landscapes of Southern Spain (dehesas). In my study site, runoff and reinfiltration occurs in ‘hot spots’ determined by variations in soil properties associated with microtopography. This, in turn, organizes the hydrologic connectivity of the landscape and the spatial patterns of transpiration and vegetation growth. These observations gave me an appreciation of the feedbacks between hydrology and ecology. What do you see as an important emerging area of ecohydrology? I see two fronts that I think are starting to develop. One of them is the integration of more realistic plant physiology in our understanding of the hydrologic cycle. Plants are no longer seen by hydrologists as mere ‘straws’ in the soil that suck up water back to the atmosphere. Hydrologic models are starting to incorporate more sophisticated descriptions of plant hydrodynamics that tie together the hydrologic, energy and carbon cycles and better explain ecosystem-level stresses and vulnerabilities to drought and climate change. A second critical front is the emerging recognition that humans are part of the hydrologic cycle (much like plants are) and that human decision-making regarding water use needs to be incorporated in our models (much like we are starting to incorporate plant physiological processes). Individual human behavior is hard to simulate, but as a group we are kind of predictable. I have had the pleasure to work with agricultural resource economists to understand how farmers allocate land and water under different socioeconomic and environmental scenarios and integrate this human behavior component into hydrologic models. Do you have a favorite ecohydrology paper? Describe/explain. Apart from the work of Peter Eagleson, foundational to the field, I think I will choose to mention here the series of papers published in 2001 by Porporato, Laio, Ridolfi and Rodriguez-Iturbe In Advances in Water Resources, and their book Ecohydrology of Water Controlled Ecosystems. These papers and book articulate very well the feedbacks between vegetation and soil water availability using statistical and mechanistic perspectives. What do you do for fun (apart from ecohydrology)? Apart from hiking Montana with my wife and my son, and playing my ukulele on the beach (that eternally underappreciated instrument), I like sailing (cruising) and all aspects of traditional navigation (coastal piloting and navigation by sun, planets and stars with a sextant). We recently traded our Athena 34’ sailboat that I used to sail in Flathead lake (MT) for a smaller cruising sailboat in the Bay Area, which is where I used to sail when I was a postdoc at UC Davis. Hopefully we will be cruising the California coast soon! Dr. Genevieve Ali is an Associate Professor in the School of Environmental Sciences at the University of Guelph, Guelph, Ontario, Canada.  What does ecohydrology mean to you?
I like the fact that I am not being asked to provide a definition of ecohydrology but rather to say what it means to me… :-) To me, ecohydrology is an umbrella term that best illustrates the two disciplines I mostly draw from in my teaching and my research. Ever since I started my Ph.D., I have been looking for new or different (statistical) analysis tools or models to address hydrological questions, just get a different perspective. I have found that regardless of whether we think of catchment classification, flowpath network topology or hydrologic connectivity, there are interesting tools we can borrow from computer science, ecology, or neuroscience. It just so happens that a lot of the tools and modeling frameworks I use are borrowed from ecology. Using the ecohydrologist label for myself means that I am not just borrowing from another discipline; I am rather merging disciplinary views and allowing myself to benefit from a greater diversity of opinions and approaches to frame my own work. What are your undergraduate and graduate degrees in? I did a B.Sc. in Environmental Geography at the Université de Montréal (Québec, Canada). I found it to be a great first program because even though I was enrolled in the physical geography stream, I was required to take a bunch of human geography courses as well, and those courses really broadened my horizons early on. I then moved on to do a Ph.D. in Geography, still at the Université de Montréal. How did you arrive at working in/thinking about ecohydrology? By force of circumstance, I would say. My Honors thesis was focused on the modelling of a small forested catchment, and we knew that whenever we got that model to perform OK, we were getting the right answers for the wrong reasons. Together with my Honors thesis advisor at the time, André Roy, I came to realize that it could be because the model was incapable of resolving the complex hydrologic connectivity dynamics driving the catchment response, and that is how my Ph.D. thesis topic was born. When I started working on connectivity in 2005-2006, I really had to dive deep into the ecology literature because that is where most of the connectivity research was reported at the time. So, that is how I initially got into eco-hydrology work, and my interests just grew from there. Looking at ecohydrological systems as complex systems with their thresholds and other emerging properties, studying plant-soil-water relations in agricultural regions, and trying to quantify multi-material connectivity (i.e., water, nutrients, sediment and biota) in human-impacted landscapes, are just a few areas of ecohydrology that I focus on in my teaching and research. What do you see as an important emerging area of ecohydrology? There are lots of emerging areas and/or issues in ecohydrology, but the one I see as maybe the most urgent to tackle is ecohydrology at the science-policy-practice interface. Even before ecohydrology was officially called a “new discipline”, there had been fantastic theoretical developments about how water influences biota and vice versa. The “new discipline” has greatly accelerated the rate at which mechanistic process explanations are being put forward, confirmed with new data or models, or infirmed with new data or models. What we still seem to be missing, though, is a broad discussion of what those new findings mean for land, water, nutrient or ecosystem management (take your pick!). How should threshold-driven ecohydrological systems be managed? Should ecohydrological systems displaying weak emergence be managed differently than those exhibiting strong emergence? How can the concepts of hot spots and hot moments (sensu McClain et al., 2003), or the idea of ecosystem control points (sensu Bernhardt et al., 2017), be used to guide the timing and method of fertilizer application on agricultural land? Is there an optimal multi-material landscape connectivity level that environmental managers should aim for? How can community watershed models be designed in a parsimonious way to operate at large scales while retaining critical ecohydrological process information? Those are not low-hanging-fruit questions, by any means, but they are key for knowledge translation. Do you have a favorite ecohydrology paper? Describe/explain. There are a few I can think of, on a wide variety of topics, but the one I will mention is the “Watershed functions” paper by Peter Black (1997; Journal of the American Water Resources Association, 33: 1-11). It discusses five key watershed hydrological and ecological functions and how they relate to “attenuation” and “flushing” responses. There are many ways we can assess the health and/or resilience of watersheds, some of them very sophisticated and detailed, but I really like the idea of doing so through five simple, basic “ecohydrological” functions. This paper is one of my favorites because it is very pedagogical/approachable and I can use it as a discussion starter in any context: research, undergraduate teaching, graduate teaching, or discussion with stakeholders and policy makers. What do you do for fun (apart from ecohydrology)? In no particular order, I enjoy going on forest walks, travelling (when we can), watching natural disaster movies (the nerd in me likes fact-checking them), and trying my best at becoming an expert in allergen-free baking. Some of my new pandemic lockdown-induced hobbies include growing vegetables and knitting. Being anywhere with family wins the cake. Dr. John Selker is a Distinguished Professor in the Department of Biological and Ecological Engineering at Oregon State University.
What does ecohydrology mean to you?
That ecological processes (bacteria, plants, digging critters, etc.) are fundamental drivers of the movement and storage of water on earth. What are your undergraduate and graduate degrees in? My undergraduate degree is in physics from Reed College (1981). My thesis presented an exact solitary-wave solution with particle behavior (quantized mass, spin, etc.), to the non-linear wave equation. I took 6 years to roam the world before settling on hydrology, and attending Cornell in the Department of Agricultural Engineering from 1987-91. My masters thesis presented a stochastic precipitation model and the erosion it would provide, and my PhD looked at the theory and physical manifestations of fingered flow in porous media. How did you arrive at working in/thinking about ecohydrology? Working in Chile on sabbatical I saw soil seasonally change its hydraulic conductivity by 5 orders of magnitude. Thinking about what drove this, and later, why many soils of vastly differing textures settled to properties consistent with the climate in which they are found, has led me to believe in the deep linkage between soil, climate, and ecological framework. What do you see as an important emerging area of ecohydrology? I think we need to stop viewing soil and climate as static, and start to view them as dynamic elements responding to the local, regional, and global setting. These non-linear relationships vastly complicate the hydro-ecological response to human perturbations, so we will need to be very careful to develop workable predictive frameworks to show the general trends in hydroecology in the anthopocene. Do you have a favorite ecohydrology paper? Describe/explain. Such an unfair question! Miller and Miller (1956) provide a physically-based unified theory of soil-water which eventually will be extended to ecological processes; Green and Ampt (1911) and Gardner (1958) lay out a framework for thinking about water in soil that illustrate how insightful simplification can yield powerful insight; Eagleson (too many to pick just one, but let’s say his book “Ecohydrology”) hands the baton to the community observing that we cannot simply wish-away complexity, and in fact, should embrace it. Taken together, these luminaries provide my guiding principles for scientific exploration in this area. What do you do for fun (apart from ecohydrology)? Again – completely unfair! I turn wood into bowls, I ski, hike, bike, travel, and try to explore the world of ideas with people who see the world in fresh ways. Amanda Donaldson is a 3rd year PhD student at the University of California, Santa Cruz in Dr. Margaret Zimmer’s Watershed Hydrology Lab.  What does ecohydrology mean to you?
I love that the discipline of ecohydrology is so broad. I think the boundaries between earth systems are blurred and so should be the frameworks we use to study them. I think the field of ecohydrology is simply the study of the feedbacks between ecological and hydrologic processes. What are your undergraduate and graduate degrees in? My undergraduate degree is in Forest Hydrology from Humboldt State University and my graduate degree will be in Earth Science from the University of California, Santa Cruz. How did you arrive at working in/thinking about ecohydrology? I have the opportunity and passion to pursue a career in ecohydrology in large part due to two undergraduate research experiences. I was an “Our Earth Lodge” REU Fellow at Cedar Creek Ecological Reserve under the mentorship of Dr. Jake Grossman. In this experience, I was not only introduced to the field of ecohydrology but the importance of natural reserves to conduct research. Shortly after that experience, at Humboldt State University, I worked in Dr. Jasper Oshun’s Critical Zone Lab and explored topics such as the potential causes of water isotope fractionation and plant-water use. This fieldwork was conducted at the heavily instrumented hillslope named “Rivendell” at Angelo Coast Range Reserve. These two research experiences stand out to me because I was not only able to explore research questions at the forefront of ecohydrology but I learned that interdisciplinary science and collaboration were critical to scientific advancements. At both Cedar Creek and Rivendell, I was inspired by the legacy of hard work by staff, undergraduates, graduate students, and PIs required to explore how water and plants shape the terrestrial landscape – I thought to myself: “wow, I want to be a part of that”. What do you see as an important emerging area of ecohydrology? I would like to break this up into two branches: emerging tools and emerging ideas. Stable water isotopes have been an invaluable tool aiding in our ability to understand the age, origin, and partitioning of water at the catchment scale. I believe this is still an emerging tool in ecohydrology. By examining water extraction techniques, integrating water isotope data with other hydrologic and plant hydraulic measurements, and developing theoretical frameworks such as “StorAge Selection” functions we are still exploring the power and limitations of water isotopes as an ecohydrologic tool. As for an emerging idea…gosh this was a hard one! I think gone are the days that trees are seen as simply straws in the ground. Trees are the “builders and plumbers” of the critical zone (Brantley et al., 2017) and central to this idea are: ROOTS! I think emerging ideas explore controls on root structural patterns, root water uptake and redistribution, and root-rock interactions. Do you have a favorite ecohydrology paper? Describe/explain. My favorite ecohydrology paper is by Brooks et al (2015) titled “Hydrologic partioning in the critical zone: Recent advances and opportunities for developing transferable understanding of water cycle dynamics”. It is a remarkable review paper that highlights the challenges and visions for the future of hydrology/ecohydrology. It reads like a good book that has a section for everyone regardless of your subdiscipline. It is a paper I return to when I need a little inspiration. What do you do for fun (apart from ecohydrology)? I love to go camping, hiking and a good midnight drive to go star-gazing. In addition, I honestly can’t think of a better night than sharing science ideas with friends over good food and drinks. Dr. Manuel Esteban Lucas-Borja is an Associate professor in the Department of Agroforestry Technology and Science and Genetics at the Castilla La Mancha University (Spain). @MElucasborja  What does ecohydrology mean to you?
When I think of ecohydrology, many different effects and functions come to my mind. Initially, ecohydrology is related to the effects of hydrological processes on the distribution, structure, and function of ecosystems. And more in detail to forest ecosystems, in which I work. Secondly, I also consider the effects of living parts of ecosystems on water cycle and water movement among atmosphere, lithosphere, hydrosphere and biosphere. What are your undergraduate and graduate degrees in? My BS is in forestry from the Castilla La Mancha University (Spain) and my MS is in forestry science from Lleida University (Spain). My PhD is in two joint programs: the first in Economy and Social Science from Polytechnic University of Valencia (Spain) and the second in Forestry from Castilla La Mancha University. I also spent one postdoc year in UTAD (Portugal). How did you arrive at working in/thinking about ecohydrology? Since 2005, I have been working on different research projects and teaching activities related to forest management and soil hydrology at Castilla La Mancha University (Spain). I developed my doctoral thesis in Cuenca Mountains working on Spanish black pine (Pinus nigra Arn. ssp salzmannii) natural regeneration and sustainable forest management. After this period studying and reading very interesting papers, I started to think about and work on how forest management may influence water cycle in Mediterranean mountain areas. It is well known how and to what extent the hydrology of the Mediterranean forests strictly depends on infiltration capacity and surface conditions of soils. These features are clearly driven first by the soil characteristics (e.g., texture and organic matter, but also the interactions of soil characteristics with plant composition can play a significant role. Nowadays, I am focusing on the effects of forest stand composition and soil properties on water repellency and hydraulic conductivity in Mediterranean forests, among others (including wildfire affected areas and soil hydrology). What do you see as an important emerging area of ecohydrology? Overall, I think we need to advance efforts to identify differences among key parameters driving the hydrological response of Mediterranean forests according to their biodiversity and soil characteristics. More research is certainly needed, in particular about litter quality (only indirectly considered in this study within the physico-chemical and covers of forest soils) and its feedback with water repellency, since litter quality certainly may influence forest hydrology. Do you have a favorite ecohydrology paper? Describe/explain. I have read many interesting papers and there are many important pieces of work, which all together generate a valuable and attractive ecohydrology science. Talking about one of my favorites, I would like to mention the one presented by John T Van Stan and others in 2020 (Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-29702-2_14). It is titled as “Precipitation Partitioning—Hydrologic Highways Between Microbial Communities of the Plant Microbiome?” This book describes all important water cycle processes in vegetated ecosystems including interception, throughfall, and stemflow and how all these processes may connect microbial communities from the atmospheric boundary layer to the bedrock face via hydrologic ways. What do you do for fun (apart from ecohydrology)? Being at the forest close to the wild and trees are the things I love the most. Life and happiness are about sharing special moments with friends and family in the middle of nature. |
AuthorAGU Ecohydro TC Archives
July 2025
Categories |
RSS Feed
