Dr. Mauricio E. Arias is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of South Florida, Tampa, FL.
Website: watershedsustainability.org
Twitter: @WaSusResearch

What does ecohydrology mean to you?
I like to think of Ecohydrology in a broad interdisciplinary sense: it is the field that seeks to understand the interactions and feedbacks between the hydrological cycle and ecological processes.

What are your undergraduate and graduate degrees in?
My undergraduate and master’s degrees where in environmental engineering sciences from the University of Florida, and my PhD was in Civil and Natural Resources Engineering from the University of Canterbury (New Zealand).

How did you arrive at working in/thinking about ecohydrology?
The first time I heard of ecohydrology was during my masters at UF, when myself and most of my colleagues at the Center for Wetlands were working with constructed wetlands, systems in which the good understanding of ecohydrological processes is a key factor in design and management. I then became interested (ok, obsessed) with how large-scale hydrology affects wetland vegetation. When I had the chance to develop my PhD dissertation in the Mekong River and visited the Tonle Sap wetland in Cambodia, I was certain that was going to be the core of my PhD journey.

What do you see as an important emerging area of ecohydrology?
One important area that still needs much work is the integration of ecohydrology processes with hydrological modeling. Most hydrological models, in particular watershed-scale models commonly used by water resources researchers and practitioners, make faulty assumptions related to land cover dynamics (or lack thereof), surface-driven rainfall-runoff responses, and potential evapotranspiration. There has been much progress in describing these processes at the plot scale, but how to effectively propagate them to a scale that is meaningful to regional water and natural resources managers is something where I foresee much research being needed.

Do you have a favorite ecohydrology paper?  Describe/explain.
Foti, R., del Jesus, M., Rinaldo, A., Rodriguez-Iturbe, I., 2012. Hydroperiod regime controls the organization of plant species in wetlands. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 109, 19596–19600.
This paper described how inundation patterns driven by rainfall seasonality throughout the Everglades where responsible for the spatial distribution of wetland vegetation communities. I was especially fond of this paper because it was published right when I was in the middle of my PhD studying a wetland system of similar dimension, but for which I ended up using a different approach to deal with the limited data collected before my time in Cambodia.   
 
What do you do for fun (apart from ecohydrology)?
I do not get to spend as much time in the water at work as I would like, but I am fortunate to live by the beautiful Hillsborough River that meanders through Tampa. I love kayaking early in the morning or watching the sunset in the canoe with my son and wife.

​Dr. David D. Breshears ("Dave") is a Regents' Professor at the University of Arizona in the School of Natural Resources and the Environment, jointly affiliated with the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, and a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Geophysical Union, and the Ecological Society of America.
Google Scholar: https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=JQOZ4cUAAAAJ&hl=en&oi=ao
Twitter: @DaveBreshears   

Dr. Zulia Mayari Sanchez Mejia is an Associate Professor in the Water Science and Environment Department at the Instituto Tecnologico de Sonora (ITSON) in Sonora, Mexico.

​What does ecohydrology mean to you?
For me ecohydrology means beyond love.  I’ve heard this as a joke in a class or maybe it was in a couple of different courses...when the teacher was trying to motivate us and getting started to talk about fluxes...he/she asked "what is the energy that moves the world?" and suddenly he/she would say "and it's not love".  I guess it’s stuck with me, since I now tell that joke just when I’m about to start talking about the movement of water and energy, and start with examples from a very systematic view of fluxes and reservoirs. So...for me, ecohydrology can be the flux of matter, water and energy from one box to another, where the boxes are the components of our ecosystem, and where we can study the fluxes with various approaches. But it’s also love for science, working together, and appreciation of diverse thinking.
 
What are your undergraduate and graduate degrees in?
I graduated from the Universidad Autonoma de Guadalajara as an Environmental Biotechnology Engineer. I received my masters degree in Natural Resources at the Instituto Tecnologico de Sonora and my doctoral degree from the University of Arizona in Ecohydrology and Watershed Management.

How did you arrive at working in/thinking about ecohydrology?
I didn’t really hear of ecohydrology until my master’s studies. The most attractive part of it was the field work. As an undergrad we did quite a lot of field work: collecting plants and fungus, observing fauna, and describing the ecosystem. But, it was not until my masters that I got to learn about all of the equipment one can have in an ecosystem to actually understand processes, and it all spread from there. We went on a trip to collect precipitation data from Mazatlan to Santiago Papasquiaro; from this I got a sense of spatial scale. By the time I got to the Papuga Lab for my PhD I had so many questions and ended up with even more!  I thought I was only going to work in the desert but found much more in courses and by helping my mates with their fieldwork.

What do you see as an important emerging area of ecohydrology?
I am a little biased, but I think ecohydrology of coastal systems has many opportunity areas. Usually I think about soil moisture and vapor pressure deficit as main drivers of ecosystem processes, but suddenly when working in coastal systems soil moisture is not a limiting factor. In fact, the seagrasses that I’m working with are submerged in a matrix of water so the gas exchange is happening between the plant and the water column. Land surface-atmosphere models lack a good representation of coastal ecosystems. And coastal ecosystems are so important since they connect the continents with the oceans. So, I think the community will be paying more attention to these topics in the future.

Do you have a favorite ecohydrology paper?  Describe/explain.
It would be Charney (1975).  Finally after what felt probably like 100 times of reading it, I actually understood albedo.  I also understood connectivity between the land surface and the atmosphere. For me albedo is such a simple and beautiful concept.
 
What do you do for fun (apart from ecohydrology)?
On the weekends Chris and usually make chilaquiles. I read latino-american literature. We watch movies, visit family, hike, or try a new restaurant.  We love to eat so, we cook a lot. 

Dr. Gabriele Manoli is a Branco Weiss Fellow holding a postdoc position at ETH Zürich (transitioning to a lecturer position at University College London).

Dr. Kelly Caylor is the Director of the Earth Research Institute and is a Professor in the Department of Geography and Bren School of Environmental Sciences at UC Santa Barbara. Twitter: @kcaylor

Dr. Amy Hansen is an Assistant Professor in the ​Department of Civil, Environmental and Architectural Engineering at the University of Kansas.

What does ecohydrology mean to you?
I think of ecohydrology as the study of the interdependence of ecological and hydrological processes. Ecohydrolology accounts for some of the most common feedbacks in a natural system. For example, aquatic plants obstruct the movement of water in streams yet the movement of water also regulates plant growth by changing the supply of nutrients and, in turbid waters, the available light. I really enjoy thinking about positive and negative feedbacks between ecological and hydrological systems and how those might be either dampening or amplifying an external change that is imposed on the overall system.

What are your undergraduate and graduate degrees in?
As an undergraduate, I wanted to design cars to go faster (yeah, I know). To that end, my undergraduate degree is in Engineering and Applied Science from Caltech and my Master’s degree is in Mechanical Engineering from University of Michigan. After 7 years of working in industry, a year-long road trip around the USA and 2.5 years in Peace Corps, I had something of an epiphany regarding how I wanted to use my time and energy and changed direction from the mysteries of the internal combustion engine towards a much more complicated topic; the mysteries of the natural environment. Subsequently, my PhD is in Civil Engineering with an Ecology minor from University of Minnesota, advised by Jacques Finlay in Ecology and Miki Hondzo in Civil Engineering.

How did you arrive at working in/thinking about ecohydrology?
Just before beginning my doctorate program, I was living in Honduras as a U.S. Peace Corp volunteer. In this role, I worked with rural community drinking water organizations who were interested in improving the quality of their water and/or protecting their source watersheds. I was struck by the complete lack of financial resources that made the conventional methods to clean up water, which all have a relatively high associated cost, useless for them. At that time, I was thinking a lot about cheap ways to improve water quality and how poor water quality can impact all organisms, not just humans. I started getting interested in studying the role that vegetation plays in nutrient and contaminant cycling in river networks. It was interesting enough to me that when I returned to the U.S. I left my career in Mechanical Engineering behind to pursue a PhD.    

What do you see as an important emerging area of ecohydrology?
The incorporation of aquatic ecology into water quality models. Aquatic vegetation, floodplain vegetation, and filter feeding organisms can all change hydrological conditions and water chemistry yet are seldom incorporated into water quality models. We represent microbial processes better! For example, filter feeding organisms such as freshwater mussels alter water quality by filtering out suspended particulates. In large enough numbers or in slow enough flow rates, mussels can have a measureable effect on water clarity. I think that experimental researchers recognize that interactions between hydrology and larger organisms can be significant but they are still not yet well incorporated into river network or watershed models.

Do you have a favorite ecohydrology paper?  Describe/explain.
I really like the review paper by Catriona Hurd (2000), “Water motion, marine macroalgal physiology, and production”. This was the first paper I encountered that laid out the interdependencies between the hydrodynamics and the ecology of a system including implications for nutrient and carbon cycling, light availability, productivity and imposed environmental conditions on other dependent organisms within the kelp canopy. In addition, she described eco-hydro connections at a large range of spatial scales which shows how complex some of these questions can be.    

What do you do for fun (apart from ecohydrology)?
I go outside and walk somewhere wild. I bring my binoculars and one of my kids and I see what I can see. Binoculars are great conversation starters – people often stop us and ask what we have seen! I also like to camp, swim, paddleboard and read.  

Dr. Ryan Morrison is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Colorado State University (Twitter: @ryanrmorrison)

Dr. Esteban Jobbágy is a Professor at the Universidad Nacional de San Luis & CONICET, San Luis – Argentina (-33.292, -66.342).  @ejobbagy

Dr. Jia Hu is an Assistant Professor in the School of Natural Resources and Environment at the University of Arizona.

What does ecohydrology mean to you?
Ecohydrology is a field of research that links hydrological and ecological processes by studying the feedbacks that occur between both components. I am completely biased, but I do believe that some of the most exciting hydrology related research is currently related to ecohydrology.

What are your undergraduate and graduate degrees in?
My undergraduate degree was in Integrative Biology from UC Berkeley.
Graduate degree was in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology from CU Boulder.

How did you arrive at working in/thinking about ecohydrology?
My undergraduate and graduate research interests were mainly focused on plant water and carbon relations. However, as I began collaborating more with watershed hydrologists, I realized how important it was to take a broader, landscape perspective. By focusing primarily on plant water cycling, I had been completely ignoring how water got to the plants in the first place. By recognizing that soil, plant, and atmospheric water cycling were inextricably linked, I began to take a more holistic approach to research and begin to ask more exciting questions.

What do you see as an important emerging area of ecohydrology?
Because I come from a background in ecology, I may view ecohydrology differently than most ‘ecohydrologists.’ The discipline of ecohydrology arose from hydrology, and I would argue that a more accurate description of the field in its current state is ‘hydrological-ecology,’ since hydrology is still very much the main focus. However, the field is rapidly changing and the integration of both hydrologic and ecologic processes is becoming more common.

One of the most exciting areas are research in ecohydrology is our ability to begin describing mechanisms that govern how water moves through complex landscapes (e.g. mountain watersheds), and the subsequent response by vegetation once water becomes available. By moving beyond simply describing patterns of water availability and water use, but testing mechanisms on why water moves or how it is used in a particular way, the field of ecohydrology can truly begin to integrate both disciplines.

Do you have a favorite ecohydrology paper?  Describe/explain.
Most of us are taught that water typically moves from the soil, to the roots, and then to the atmosphere (i.e. SPAC); however, it is becoming increasingly common to find studies that show direct uptake of water from the leaves and the subsequent downward movement of water into trunks of trees. This mainly occurs in foggy or cloudy environments, where cloud water or fog can be a critical moisture source. This ‘wicking’ of occult precipitation from the atmosphere is not only important in regulating plant water status, but it can also being an important moisture source in stream and even ground water (e.g. cloud water input, fog drip, etc.). Thus, my favorite ecohydrology ‘paper’ is not a paper, but a book, titled, ‘Tropical Montane Cloud Forests: Science for Conservation and Management,’ Eds. Bruijnzeel, Scatena, and Hamilton. While the scope of this book is about cloud forests, the perspective that fog and cloud water can be important sources of moisture is quite important. Furthermore, if we begin to lose vegetation from these tropical cloud forests, from either deforestation or ‘cloud-lifting,’ then there may be less precipitation inputs into tropical headwater ecosystems, leading to less streamflow in the lowland tropics, particularly during the dry season. These feedbacks between vegetation and hydrology are tightly coupled in these systems, and offers exciting opportunities for research!
​
What do you do for fun (apart from ecohydrology)?
I love being outdoors and working in the field is one of my favorite things to do. When I lived in Boulder, CO and Bozeman, MT, skiing and hiking were my two favorite activities. Now that I live in Tucson, I am trying to take advantage of being able to hike 365 days of the year. I have two kids who are now finally big enough to hike longer distances on their own and it is my goal to explore more of AZ this year. At home, I love to cook, and spending hours on Sunday afternoon cooking a big family meal is a perfect way to wrap up the weekend.