Mary Grace Lemon is a currently a PhD candidate at Louisiana State University in the School of Renewable Natural Resources and a Coastal Scientist at Pontchartrain Conservancy. Follow her on Twitter @swampsciqueen.

What does ecohydrology mean to you?
To me ecohydrology is the study of how water shapes ecosystems and biological processes and how ecosystems and organisms affect hydrological processes in return. My first experiences in ecohydrology studying how oyster reefs altered the flow of water and affected the geomorphology of tidal creeks fell in the latter part of this definition.

What are your undergraduate and graduate degrees in?
I have a BS in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology from Tulane University and a MS in Marine Science from University of North Carolina at Wilmington. I recently defended my dissertation in the School of Renewable Natural Resources at Louisiana State University. I really appreciate the diversity of ecological systems that I have studied and I think that has given me a unique perspective.

How did you arrive at working in/thinking about ecohydrology?
My first introduction into ecohydrology was during my masters studying oyster reefs. My previous experiences working with birds and learning about ecological processes did not emphasize the intimate connection between ecosystems and water that is so obvious when working with immobile oysters. Sessile organisms like oysters are subject to local environmental conditions after they settle out of the water column and recruit to an oyster reef. The structure of the oyster reef alters the hydraulics of the flowing water to the general benefit of the oysters. The characteristics of the flowing water are in some ways much more important to the success of an individual oyster than other ecological processes such as predation and competition. This realization piqued my interest in the role water plays in shaping ecosystems and really got me started in the field of ecohydrology. This perspective also got me more interested in the world of plants.

What do you see as an important emerging area of ecohydrology?
Like other featured LEAFs, I think the further incorporation of the role of humans in hydrological processes is an important area of study. This is not necessarily an emerging field but I think better representation of humans and urban hydrology in models will be a productive area of work in the future. Secondly, I think a better understanding of rooting characteristics and the interaction between rooting and water uptake is an important and emerging field. Hopefully new technologies, machine learning, and satellite products will enable an improved understanding of this previously unobservable interaction. Lastly, I think it is really important that we better understand the potential fractionation of stable isotopes in soils. My dissertation research involved the use of stable isotopes of water to study water uptake in some heavy clay soils. Through this process, it became apparent that the continued, widespread application of stable isotopes to study water movement in shallow soils and water uptake requires a much better understanding of potential fractionation of the stable isotopes of water in all soil types.

Do you have a favorite ecohydrology paper?  Describe/explain.
Rather than my favorite paper, of which there are many, I will offer up one of the most important papers for me in completing my dissertation. This was the review paper by Sprenger et al. titled “Illuminating hydrological processes at the soil‐vegetation‐atmosphere interface with water stable isotopes.” This paper provided an extensive and complete review of the application of stable isotopes in the critical zone particularly in shallow soils. It is a good foundation of our current knowledge of stable isotope transformation in shallow soils of upland areas and it taught me how to interpret soil water isotope data with regards to hydrological processes in shallow soils. From this review paper, I was able to form robust hypotheses about stable isotopes patterns in shallow soils of lowland areas.

What do you do for fun (apart from ecohydrology)?
Like most featured LEAFs, I really enjoy water activities. I have spent most of my time on the coast so I really enjoy diving, swimming, and sailing when I have the opportunity to do so. I enjoy exploring the swamps and coastal rivers of the northern gulf coast looking for critters and I also like to hike when I get out of the swamp. In New Orleans, I enjoy gardening and exploring local music venues and restaurants. 

​Charles Scaife is a PhD Candidate in the Department of Environmental Sciences at the University of Virginia and a 2020 Knauss Marine Policy Fellow at the US Department of Energy in Washington, DC. You can find him on Twitter: @wateryousayin

What does ecohydrology mean to you?
To me, ecohydrology is a framework for examining feedbacks between ecologic and hydrologic systems. The novelty of ecohydrology is its flexibility across spatial and temporal scales. Whether you’re studying water use efficiency of a single tree during a summer drought or exploring impacts of ecological fragmentation from regional urbanization on hydrologic flows, you’re likely employing principles of ecohydrology.
 
Ecohydrology also provides a framework for examining how processes at one spatiotemporal scale impact processes at another spatiotemporal scale. For example, when the transpiration response of a single tree during a summer drought is scaled to an entire catchment, the aggregated ecosystem stress may manifest into measurable changes in streamflow response at storm event, seasonal, or annual time steps. System responses, like these, increase in complexity when ecohydrologic feedbacks intersect human systems. At this nexus, we can begin asking questions about management or policy interventions as a means for mitigating land cover or climate change impacts on ecohydrologic systems. Exploring this nexus could be vital for many ecosystem services including reliable drinking water supplies.
 
What are your undergraduate and graduate degrees in?
I received a Bachelors in Environmental Sciences and a Masters in Geography from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. I’m currently finishing my PhD in Environmental Sciences at the University of Virginia with a focus in hydrology.
 
How did you arrive at working in/thinking about ecohydrology?
As a child, I thought I would grow up to save the Amazon Rainforest. As it turns out, that’s no easy feat, so I did the next best thing and became an ecohydrologist. Unfortunately, you couldn’t major in ecohydrology or even hydrology at my university, so I figured environmental sciences and marine sciences were close enough. After courses in coastal ecology and oceanography, I quickly learned that there were two water worlds – the saltwater one and the freshwater one. It wasn’t until my third and fourth years of undergrad that I took my first watershed hydrology course and started working in an ecohydrology lab. It was these early experiences that taught me two important lessons: 1) I could study both rain and forests; and 2) I was very wrong about the two water worlds.
 
Working in an ecohydrology lab in graduate school took me to the mountains of North Carolina to collect monthly samples at the Coweeta Hydrologic Laboratory. Our early efforts to characterize spatiotemporal soil moisture and groundwater dynamics led to papers on quickflow response and streamflow recession characteristics. In 2016, the area around the Coweeta Hydrologic Laboratory – known to be one of the wettest places on the US East Coast – caught fire. A record-breaking rainless period in an otherwise average year led to early leaf senescence, tree mortality, and intense fires. Rainfall variability is predicted to intensify across the region creating conditions suitable for worsening ecosystem stress and mortality. If correct, these projections could reshape our understanding of ecology and hydrology at Coweeta and in many other well-studied systems. Since 2016, I’ve shifted to focus my research on understanding how discrepancies in drought response across species in biodiverse forests scale to impact streamflow dynamics across entire catchments.
 
What do you see as an important emerging area of ecohydrology?
Drawing connections across scales and sites is a theme in ecohydrology, and recently, I’m finding more research emerging on how plant physiology and drought response impact short- and long-term streamflow dynamics. One question that has been posed, is whether trees ‘remember’ drought, and if so, how this impacts hydrology? Integration of physiology and drought response into ecohydrologic models is in its nascence, but could be vital for understanding future impacts of precipitation variability on streamflow generation. Feedbacks between these tree-level responses and landscape hydrologic patterns could also impact how we manage forests, and potentially forest fires, for water resources.
 
Do you have a favorite ecohydrology paper?  Describe/explain.
One of my favorite papers is Jim Dooge’s 1986 manifesto, “Looking for Hydrologic Laws”. In this paper, Dooge outlined the need for hydrologic theories that relate landscape properties to hydrologic response across watershed scales. He challenged the field to look past heterogeneity towards a framework for prediction in ungaged basins. To date, many hydrologists and ecohydrologists invoke his work when synthesizing their research more broadly. For me, this paper is a reminder that the value of my research is not in showing that my watersheds are simply unique, but instead contextualizing and quantifying why and how they vary from other watersheds across the globe. 
 
What do you do for fun (apart from ecohydrology)?
When I’m not in the field or behind a computer, I’m usually getting lost in nature. I love hiking, but I love running more, so most weekends you’ll find me killing two birds with one stone by trail-running. Shenandoah National Park was my weekend home in Charlottesville, Virginia, but since I’ve relocated to Washington, DC for my science policy fellowship I’ve struggled getting out of the city. If anyone has great trail-running or hiking spots nearby, let me know!

​Dr. Nei Kavaguichi Leite is an Associate Professor in the Department of Ecology and Zoology, from the Graduate Program in Ecology (https://poseco.ufsc.br) at the Federal University of Santa Catarina, Brazil and co-responsible for the Laboratory of Inland Water Ecology (www.limnos.ufsc.br).

What does ecohydrology mean to you?
Ecohydrology means INTERACTION between several areas such as hydrology, ecology, biochemistry, plant physiology, social sciences, among others, requiring professionals with multidisciplinary training or having cooperation with people from other disciplines. In addition to integrating several areas, ecohydrology also associates the different components of the ecosystem, such as water, soil, vegetation, organisms, atmosphere, as well as humans. It is an area widely used today that seeks to solve problems associated with the distribution and quality of water resources in ecosystems, and at multiple scales. This is particularly important because water is a strategic resource for humanity, requiring a better understanding of its role in the functioning of ecosystems and the ecosystem services it provides.
 
What are your undergraduate and graduate degrees in?
My undergraduate degree was in Mathematics at the Federal University of Rondônia (UNIR), followed by a MSc and PhD in Ecology, both from the University of São Paulo (USP) and a post-doc at the Federal University of Mato Grosso (UFMT), all carried out in Brazil.
 
How did you arrive at working in/thinking about ecohydrology?
I was a privileged person at the beginning of my academic career. During my graduation course in Mathematics I had the opportunity to participate in an international scientific collaboration project in the Amazon region called LBA (http://lba2.inpa.gov.br), where I worked initially with prof. Jurgen Kesselmeier of the Max Planck Institute for Biogeochemistry, with precipitation and emission of greenhouse gases and later with researchers from CENA / USP studying aquatic biogeochemistry. In these projects I got involved with many field activities in terrestrial (canopy, soil, riparian forest) and aquatic (rivers and streams) environments in the Amazon. I took the opportunity and decided to do the master's degree with aquatic biogeochemistry, supervised by prof. Alex Krusche (USP), evaluating the effects of land use and land cover change with the hydrochemistry of the Ji-Paraná River, an important tributary of the Madeira River, which in turn is one of the main tributaries of the Amazon River. After studying this river, I decided to better understand the connections between the terrestrial environment and river systems through the dynamics of hydrological flowpaths and their relationship with the nutrients fluxes within a riparian forest with strong anthropic pressure, which was the focus of my PhD project, supervised by prof. Vicky Ballester. At the end of my doctorate, I attended the Fundamentals of Ecosystem Ecology course (https://www.caryinstitute.org/eco-inquiry/undergradgraduate/graduate-opportunities) at the Cary Institute where I had the opportunity to meet some of the major ecosystem ecologists, such as Gene Likens, John Cole, Bill Schlesinger, among others, improving my concepts of Ecology much more deeply. From these experiences, I followed my academic trajectory working with Ecohydrology in a post-doc supervised by prof. Mark Johnson (UBC / Canada) involving carbon dynamics in one of the largest wetlands in the world - the Pantanal Mato-Grossense. Since 2012 I have been an associate professor at the Federal University of Santa Catarina, in Brazil and currently I have been exploring the influence of urbanization and tourism in the hydrochemistry of streams in the southern region of Brazil (Atlantic Forest biome) and also have evaluated bioinvasions in artificial reservoirs by the golden mussel, supervising students in the Ecology Program at UFSC. Ecohydrology has been present throughout my academic career and will continue to have a strong influence on the work that I will do and on the students that I mentor and guide.
 
What do you see as an important emerging area of ecohydrology?
I think that interesting studies are coming up, mainly relating urban ecohydrology to emerging contaminants. Man's actions have drastically altered the urban hydrological cycle and many substances / pathogens have reached watercourses, influencing aquatic communities and compromising water quality and people's health. In this context, recent studies have observed a large quantity of the new coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 in stool samples (YANG et al. 2020), which with poor or inefficient sanitation (as in many places here in Brazil), could already be present in wastewater (NADDEO & LIU, 2020). Even though there is no evidence that this virus can be transmitted by water or sewage (MEDEMA, 2020), the evaluation of its presence and quantity in environmental samples (water, sediment, aquatic organisms) can be used to monitor its circulation in the human population or even as an important early warning tool to check for an eventual increase in the number of cases or even a recurrence of the epidemic.
 
Do you have a favorite ecohydrology paper? Describe/explain.
I have several favorite Ecohydrology papers, such as those in the Ecohydrology Bearings - Invited Commentary series, published in the Ecohydrology journal. But I will highlight the review article “Frontiers in real-time ecohydrology - a paradigm shift in understanding complex environmental systems” by Krause et al. 2015, where they present the possibility of using novel technological approaches for real-time ecohydrological research aiming to capture the spatial and temporal dynamics and complexity of ecohydrological processes. Despite the difficulties and challenges in implementing the use of these technologies, the benefits are high, since the acquisition of a substantial mass of data favors better monitoring of patterns (especially in situations of rapid change), refinement of predictive models (and in analyzes of artificial intelligence), in addition to greater engagement of the public through more effective research communication, made possible by advanced visualization tools, which can culminate in greater interest and concern about aquatic ecosystems. The use of real-time technology is an approach that my research group (http://www.limnos.ufsc.br) is adopting in a study carried out in a coastal lagoon in Southern Brazil with the partnership of prof. Mark Johnson of the Ecohydrology Group at the University of British Columbia (https://ecohydro.ires.ubc.ca).
 
What do you do for fun (apart from ecohydrology)?
​I really enjoy exploring the nature around me with my family. The city where I currently live (Florianópolis, Santa Catarina) is very privileged and offers a heterogeneous mosaic of ecosystems, with forests, beaches, rivers, lakes and coastal lagoons, mangroves, sandbank, among others. Unfortunately, our outdoor activities have been very limited lately due to the new Coronavirus pandemic. In this way, we have watched movies at home, cooked a lot, played a lot of board games and assembled puzzles and LEGOs.

Dr. Naama Raz-Yaseef is an affiliate at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and teaches at the University of California, Berkeley. Over the last several years she has also been working on global development projects, mainly related to irrigation for smallholder’s farmers, climate-smart agriculture practices, and gender equality in the agriculture value chain. 

Dr. Rutuja Chitra-Tarak is a Post-Doctoral Research Associate at Los Alamos National Lab, NM and a Research Associate at the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center.

Dr. Grace P. John is an Assistant Professor in the Biology Department in College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at the University of Florida.  

What does ecohydrology mean to you?
Ecohydrology is a collaborative, interdisciplinary science focused on understanding the interactions of water with ecosystems. More generally I think of it as: Where is the water, where is it going, and why? I think the most important and interesting part of the field is the consistent use of process-based hypotheses to explain natural phenomenon and the most beautiful part is the complexity of those processes. As a result, the science lies at the intersection of climate science, physics, ecology, physiology, and mathematics. There are infinite directions to expand research and so many opportunities to learn from fantastic people with diverse skills and perspectives.

What are your undergraduate and graduate degrees in?
I received my Bachelor’s of Science in Biology from the University of Dayton and my PhD in Biology from the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at UCLA.

How did you arrive at working in/thinking about ecohydrology?
I was incredibly blessed early in my research career. Ultimately, a lot of things just magically came together for me in a relatively brief period. As an undergraduate, I took a fantastic Ecology course taught by Dr. Ryan McEwan at the University of Dayton. His enthusiasm for plant science made me rethink my career goals and I volunteered to do research in his lab. I truly could not have asked for a better mentor. He set me up for success with my first project, ultimately resulting in a co-authored paper in Plant Ecology characterizing changes in the flowering times of native plants over a 30-year period. I was really smitten with the process of collecting and analyzing data, but I was eager to get out into the woods, so we started a project using tree rings to investigate historical climate, fire, and community dynamics in a nearby old growth forest. I absolutely loved this and it no doubt lit the metaphorical spark for my future plant anatomy and hydraulics research.

Around the same time, I was accepted to the River Stewards Program, in which undergrads worked to promote river awareness in the greater Dayton community, through the River’s Institute at UD. I really enjoyed paddling and was interested in ecology broadly, so this seemed a good fit. In retrospect, this was a somewhat lifechanging decision. Despite having lived in Dayton my whole life, I didn’t have a strong connection to the downtown area or the river. The community engagement and focus on interdisciplinary collaboration in that program completely changed my perspective on urban ecosystems and expanded my perception of ecosystem function.

The following year, Ryan encouraged me to apply to NSF REU programs. I was so excited to be accepted to the Biosphere 2 program at the University of Arizona. That experience was incredibly fun for a lot of reasons, principally, that I got to work with Dr. Shirley Papuga studying soil respiration in the Santa Catalina Mountains. I had certainly thought about watersheds throughout my life, but I would say this was my first experience properly studying ecohydrology. This was probably the first time I made the full connection between ground water and respiration and photosynthesis and saw the sensitivity of organisms to microclimatic variation. I loved (and still love) engaging with the complexity of these processes and, ultimately, focused my PhD research on urban plant water use and drought tolerance.

What do you see as an important emerging area of ecohydrology?
I think there are two really important areas emerging simultaneously and I believe they will continue to merge with time. One is the development of high throughput methods for collecting complex and dynamic data and the second is the development of more detailed, physiologically and biologically informed, mechanistic models for scaling plant water use predictions. The demand for accurate predictions of individual plant, species, community, and ecosystem water use and vulnerability to future climate scenarios is only increasing. I find work that integrates these themes across natural, urban, and agricultural ecosystems particularly exciting. There is so much potential there to inform policy decisions, protect at risk communities, and contribute to future food security. My hope is that our community will continue to increase its wonderful interdisciplinary nature to synthesize models of soil, roots, stems, leaves, and atmosphere across organs, individuals, communities, and ecosystems.

Do you have a favorite ecohydrology paper?  Describe/explain.
I’ve always really enjoyed the Oren et al 1999 stomatal sensitivity paper in Plant Cell and Environment. I think it’s just a beautiful summary that clearly explains complex biology and physics. The math is very cleanly laid out, it’s very information and data rich, and it contrasts theoretical and observational responses. It’s very much a physiology heavy paper, but I feel it still falls under the ecohydrology umbrella. I love the parsing of atmospheric and soil drought which isn’t always well defined in scaling theory.

What do you do for fun (apart from ecohydrology)?
Lately, I’ve been pursuing a lot of hobbies from home. I’ve been enjoying gardening, riding my bicycle, playing table tennis, hiking with my dog, cooking good food and drinking good drinks. We’ve only recently moved to Gainesville and have been loving exploring the city, forests, and lakes. I also recently started an aquarium of freshwater shrimp which has been thoroughly entertaining thus far. 

Dr. Valeriy Ivanov is a Professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of Michigan.   Twitter: @hydrowit   Instagram:  valeriy_ivanov2208

What does ecohydrology mean to you?
Together with colleagues (S. Fatichi and E. Daly), we recently wrote a review article for Oxford Bibliographies detailing our vision of the discipline (Ecohydrology. Online reference resource, Oxford Bibliographies in Environmental Science. New York: Oxford University Press, 2019. doi: 10.1093/obo/9780199363445-0120). I will recite it here: ecohydrology is the science that studies how water in all its forms links living organisms and their abiotic environment to define their function, interactions, structure, and distribution. The key point, perhaps, is the multifaceted nature of ecohydrology that spreads its interests across various terrestrial ecosystems in which water plays the crucial linking role. My personal bias is the focus on vegetation water relations.

What are your undergraduate and graduate degrees in?
I received my undergraduate degree (a Diploma) in Hydrology at Moscow State University in Russia. I later moved to the U.S. and did both my M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Hydrology at MIT working with Rafael Bras. 

How did you arrive at working in/thinking about ecohydrology?
Educated as a physical hydrologist at my undergraduate institution, my graduate school period benefitted from the freedom of thought. I was fortunate to be working in the group that was frequented by a diverse cohort of scientists from around the world. There was a continuous flow of novel research insights - the ideas of ecohydrology were ‘brooding’. Personally, I was affected by the passionate seminars by Prof. I. Rodriguez-Iturbe and our subsequent group discussions of ecohydrology papers that started coming out in the early 2000s. The monograph on ecohydrology by Prof. P. Eagleson that exposed the elegant combination of physical and stochastic principles was yet another strong nudge.
 
What do you see as an important emerging area of ecohydrology?
Undoubtedly, the intersection of plant canopy, stem, and root ecophysiology and soil water hydraulics.  As vegetation traits are gradually filtered in response to the transient climate, there is a need to better understand belowground controls of plant ecophysiological function. The coupling between root traits and soil hydraulic relations emerges as one critically less studied domain where colleagues and I are investing research efforts with unexpected discoveries.
 
Do you have a favorite ecohydrology paper?  Describe/explain
Noy-Meir, I. 1973. Desert ecosystems: Environment and producers. Annual Review of Ecology and Systematics 4(1): 25–51. This review article on water-limited ecosystems was perhaps my first read that revealed the amazing plasticity of vegetation and its ability to thrive in environments of scare resource. Despite the qualitative nature of the narrative, this synthesis raised a lot of immediate questions that required a quantitative approach and some form of a model in which water was the crucial element. This created an obvious bridge between my past experiences of being a physical hydrologist and the new realm that no longer required to consider vegetation to be a ‘resistance function’.
 
What do you do for fun (apart from ecohydrology)?
I like to learn, invent, and fix things. My latest projects include a climbing cave for my kids in the house; a mega-swing on a 200-year old oak in the backyard. A tree-house that balances load on a maple tree and uses no nails on its stem or branches. A zip-line. My field experiences are always fun – through them, I learned arborist’s techniques to climb tall trees, how to sleep in a hammock, or choose a path in the jungle. I am looking forward to learn reindeer sledding next year! 

​Dr. Sonia I. Seneviratne is a Full professor in Land-Climate Dynamics ETH Zurich.  Twitter: @SISeneviratne

​Dr. David Reed is a Research Assistance Professor at the Center for Global Change & Earth Observations at Michigan State University.