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MEET A LEAF: LAUREN LOWMAN

2/24/2020

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​Dr. Lauren Lowman is an Assistant Professor in the Engineering Department at Wake Forest University.
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What does ecohydrology mean to you?
Ecohydrology means uncovering the fundamental role of vegetation in the hydrologic cycle. Plants govern a large part of the water and energy budgets. Under similar conditions, changes in leaf density, leaf color, and canopy height can alter the partitioning of water and energy cycle pathways. I find it fascinating that these changes in vegetation can have large impacts on water resources.

What are your undergraduate and graduate degrees in?
I took a non-traditional path. I have a B.A. in Public Policy Studies from Duke University. My M.S. and Ph.D. degrees are in Civil & Environmental Engineering from Duke University.

How did you arrive at working in/thinking about ecohydrology?
As an undergraduate, my interests centered on health and education policy. I was also interested in studying languages so I majored in Public Policy and minored in Spanish and Italian. In my first job out of college, I worked as a research assistant for a behavioral economist at Duke. This helped me develop a love of pursuing research questions but also piqued my interest in building my quantitative skill sets. My PI at the time was supportive of my desire to expand my quantitative knowledge and permitted me the time to take classes in calculus and linear algebra. These classes focused heavily on applying math to real-word problems. The problems that interested me most were those related to the environment. Instead of going on to pursue graduate studies in Sociology, which was my plan, I ended up applying for a M.S. program in Civil & Environmental Engineering. I picked this field because the idea of applying math to model physical environmental processes excited me.

My first research project as a master’s student was in geomorphology but focused on land-atmosphere interactions. This introduced me to the role of land-surface dynamics in mediating the responses that we see belowground and in the atmosphere. Once I started my Ph.D., I began working with land-surface hydrology models and investigating the role that vegetation plays in estimating key components of the energy, water, and carbon budgets. As I delved into this work, I focused on plant-specific processes and investigating how small changes in their representation can have large effects on how we interpret model results.


What do you see as an important emerging area of ecohydrology?
An important emerging area is the development of models that cross or incorporate processes that occur at different spatial and temporal scales. There is a critical need to represent fully the nonlinear dynamics of not only the water and energy cycles, but also to incorporate the nutrient cycles and other biological and chemical processes that govern how vegetation interacts with its surroundings.

Do you have a favorite ecohydrology paper?  Describe/explain.
I recently read “Eagleson’s optimality theory of an ecohydrological equilibrium: quo vadis?” by Hatton et al. (1997), and its central thesis really resonated with me. As someone whose research involves modeling ecohydrology processes, I believe that it is always important to state our fundamental assumptions. Ultimately, this involves having some larger theory upon which to base our hypotheses. Because ecohydrology as a field is highly interdisciplinary, we often neglect to state clearly how all of the disciplines come together to provide a unified explanation for what we observe in the data. Eagleson’s optimality provides an underlying theory that attempts to unify hydrology and ecology by hypothesizing how vegetative states equilibrate with their surrounding environment at different timescales, conditional on climate, soil, and transpiration efficiency. It gives ecohydrologists something to react to - to determine whether the data we collect or the results we gather conform or conflict with this explanation for the interrelatedness between hydrology and ecology. I like this reminder to consider the bigger picture and that ultimately we are all working towards a similar scientific goal to understand better the world around us.

What do you do for fun (apart from ecohydrology)?
I play tennis and run. I enjoy the competitive element of tennis and the meditative aspects of running. I really enjoy being outside. I currently live in a neighborhood where I can walk to downtown Winston-Salem and frequently spend my weekends exploring the city or hiking in the nearby Piedmont and Blue Ridge.
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MEET A LEAF: JOHN STELLA

2/17/2020

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Dr. John C. Stella is a Professor in the Department of Sustainable Resources Management at the State University of New York College of Environmental Science and Forestry.
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What does ecohydrology mean to you?
From a background in riparian ecology, I approach my research in ecohydrology primarily from the ‘eco-‘ side. To me, ecohydrology comprises not only the movement of water through the biosphere, but also water’s influence on dependent biotic communities, both aquatic and terrestrial. In riparian ecosystems, the influence of flowing water and what it carries—sediment, solutes, organic matter—is manifest in many processes: the global and local distribution of vegetation types, traits and life history strategies; critical demographic processes such as seedling recruitment and adult mortality from drought and floods; ecophysiological function and growth; and riparian community dynamics and succession, to name a few.

What are your undergraduate and graduate degrees in?
I majored in Architecture at Yale University, and earned my MS and PhD in Environmental Science, Policy and Management from UC Berkeley. With stints in design firms, high-school teaching, non-profits and environmental consulting firms in between, my path has been anything but linear.

How did you arrive at working in/thinking about ecohydrology?
I came to ecohydrology from an applied and practitioner’s perspective. After my undergrad degree I worked for five years in an urban youth conservation corps in Oakland, California as a crew supervisor and project coordinator. Working with young adults on stream restoration and flood channel maintenance projects made me curious to ‘pop the hood’ on these ecosystems and understand their underlying mechanisms. I went to grad school to study riverine and riparian ecosystems and the reciprocal interactions between their physical and biological components. My doctoral co-advisors were critical in helping me retool my background in design to an ecosystem perspective. Joe McBride inspired me to observe how streams and riparian zones interact and change over time, and John Battles taught me how to translate those observations into research questions to test using rigorous quantitative approaches.

Since then I have worked in water-limited ecosystems in the southwestern U.S. and southern Europe, as well as water-rich regions like the Adirondacks in New York State. Wherever there is wood and water, there are always fascinating questions to pursue. In drylands, I think about how human drivers such as water infrastructure (dams and diversions), land use and climate change interact to threaten the stability of critical riparian habitats. In the Northeast, my students study how ecosystem engineers such as beaver and muskrat transform not only the region’s hydrosystem, but also the structure, function, and biodiversity of adjacent forests and wetlands. I feel very lucky to work in these environments that are so important for both people and nature.

What do you see as an important emerging area of ecohydrology?
One emerging area is how to disentangle the effects of multiple, interacting stressors on water-dependent ecosystems. Riparian areas in drylands, for example, are subject to an increasingly damaging mix of longer and more frequent droughts, declining groundwater, changing fire regimes, non-native species invasions, new pests and diseases, and impacts from human land and water use. New research seeks to understand the influences of these multiple stressors on ecosystem structure and function, and whether the effects are additive, synergistic, antagonistic (mutually-canceling), and/or non-linear (e.g., thresholds and hysteresis). Riparian ecosystems, because of their complexity and critical functions and services, need new frameworks and models for quantifying these complex dynamics and predicting future trends.

Another promising area is the development of new sensors and monitoring tools with increasing resolution and their application to ecohydrological processes. The proliferation and greater usability of remote sensing approaches such as hyperspectral imagery, LiDAR and UAVs is allowing us to gain a more refined understanding of how plants express ET and water stress at a landscape scale. The smaller pixel sizes and denser time series of these new platforms promise to transform how we understand riparian zone response to physical drivers, especially on low-order streams, which are too small to effectively monitor at the previously standard 30m pixel scale. At the scale of individual trees, low-cost sap flux and other sensors, combined with emerging dendroisotope techniques help us better understand plant responses to short and medium climate events. combining these technologies to get an integrated view of vegetation sensitivity to climate and other drivers at multiple scales is really exciting, and allows us to ask new questions and make better predictions with mechanistic understanding.

Do you have a favorite ecohydrology paper?  Describe/explain.
I don’t have just one seminal paper that inspired my scientific interests, but several stand out at key points in my career. When I first started studying Mediterranean ecosystems, Nate Stephenson’s 1990 paper Climatic Control of Vegetation Distribution: The Role of the Water Balance (Am. Nat. 135: 649-670) made me appreciate how seasonal timing of water availability, not just annual surplus and deficit, is a critical control on vegetation distribution, composition, and ecosystem productivity.
Starting with my doctoral research and ever since, Stew Rood’s papers have been very influential in my thinking about hydrological controls on riparian trees, both in terms of their ecophysiological responses (Tree Physiology 23:1113-1124) and how their life history timing and traits interact with fluvial processes (Wetlands 18:634-645). He, along with several other colleagues working on aridland rivers (collectively dubbed the “Dead Cottonwood Society”) continue to inspire and challenge my understanding of riparian ecosystems’ function, vulnerability and resilience in this era of global change.


What do you do for fun (apart from ecohydrology)?
At play as at work, I love water in all its phases. Swimming and skiing are two of my favorite pastimes and sustain me across all the seasons. In summer I love open-water swimming in Central New York’s many beautiful lakes, and in winter, nordic and telemark skiing are my go-to activities. At this time of year I enjoy skate-skiing along the Old Erie Canal near Syracuse where I can marvel at both the natural hydrosystem and humans’ amazing feats of engineering before the age of steam. As a family, my wife, kids and I love traveling to new places together and immersing in new languages, cultures and cuisines.
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MEET A LEAF: KYOTAEK HWANG

2/10/2020

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Dr. Kyotaek Hwang is a Postdoctoral Scholar in the Department of Geology at Wayne State University.
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What does ecohydrology mean to you?

I see ecohydrology as understanding how ecological drivers affect the hydrological processes. Vegetation controls transportation of water in various ways particularly between different spheres and by the phase change. Understanding how vegetation interacts with various ecosystem settings including natural and urban is a center of my interest. As exploring the interdisciplinary studies, I value an opportunity to learn how people in other fields use their own thoughts and languages.

What are your undergraduate and graduate degrees in?
All of my degrees are in civil and environmental engineering. I received my BS and MS (focus in hydrological remote sensing) from Hanyang University in South Korea and PhD (focus in ecohydrology of wetlands) from Syracuse University. My graduate degrees are with emphasis in ecohydrology.

How did you arrive at working in/thinking about ecohydrology?
While studying remote sensing during my masters, I realized understanding a role of vegetation was needed to characterize its control on water fluxes at various scales. This led me to pursue my PhD for a closer look at various ecosystems in the field. While working with my PhD advisor, David Chandler, I learned extensive experimentation and intensive observation techniques for various ecosystems including wetlands, headwater streams, and urban areas.

Working in a metropolitan area provides another perspective to my understanding in ecohydrology associated with a social context. My postdoctoral studies keep up with local contemporary environmental issues in Detroit, MI while introducing various aspects in ecohydrology to students with my advisor, Shirley Papuga. I am learning how we develop interesting ideas to innovative techniques to test a range of hypotheses in urban ecohydrology.

What do you see as an important emerging area of ecohydrology?
Development of a phytoscreening tool in the urban ecosystem is critical to tracing environmental pollutants. This is particularly imperative in urban systems where the invasive monitoring is not readily available.

Do you have a favorite ecohydrology paper?  Describe/explain.
Allen et al. (2019) gives me an insight of how stable isotopic signatures of water sources is interpreted in ecohydrological perspectives. In this paper, winter precipitation was demonstrated as a predominant source to multiple tree species by analyzing xylem water. This challenges common knowledge that signatures of plant tissues can be used as seasonal proxies. This study is published recently, but provides detailed information on how the hypotheses were tested with carefully selected figures.
Allen, S.T., Kirchner, J.W., Braun, S., Siegwolf, R.T. and Goldsmith, G.R., 2019. Seasonal origins of soil water used by trees. Hydrology and Earth System Sciences, 23(2), pp.1199-1210.


What do you do for fun (apart from ecohydrology)?
My biggest joy is to play with my 4-month old daughter and watch her trying to roll over. I also swim for refreshment.
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MEET A LEAF: ANDREW MURRAY

2/3/2020

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Andrew Murray is a graduate student at the University of North Carolina – Chapel Hill.
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What does ecohydrology mean to you?
For me, ecohydrology describes the intersection of the water cycle with both the physical and biological environment. I think of watersheds as the units for ecohydrology and tend to look for ways to scale up to the region and look for similarities and differences across space. I have always been fascinated by the way water moves across the landscape, and how it is capable of both staying put for thousands of years or traversing thousands of miles. Specifically, I think mostly about the ways in which carbon interacts with water and how streams contribute carbon to the atmosphere.
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What are your undergraduate and graduate degrees in?
I hold a B.A. and an M.A. in Geography which I received from the University of Cincinnati in 2012 and 2015 respectively. I am currently working towards my Ph.D. in Geography at the University of North Carolina – Chapel Hill.

How did you arrive at working in/thinking about ecohydrology?
About a year and a half ago I started working on researching carbon fluxes and streams with my advisor, which is when I first started contextualizing my work as being under the umbrella of ecohydrology. However, I trace my interest in researching water to high school where I was required to take a field methods course that I really did not want to take. I ended up loving the course and designing my own final project studying water quality in Philadelphia streams. The next year I took A.P. Environmental Science and pretty much knew I was going to do something with water. I also grew up playing in the stream in the woods across the street from my house and always wonder if that had some sort of lasting impact!

What do you see as an important emerging area of ecohydrology?
As a geographer I’m always interested in the spatial aspect of hydrology. My first thought whenever I am looking at new data always goes towards how I can apply this to a larger area and give it greater relevance. At the same time, I try to remain mindful of the dangers of making grandiose statements based on limited data. That being said, I am looking forward to the growth of spatial models in ecohydrology, especially regarding machine learning. Data is becoming more and more accessible making research we once thought impossible a real possibility.

Do you have a favorite ecohydrology paper?  Describe/explain.
While not technically focused on ecohydrology: Jones, N. L., Wright, S. G., & Maidment, D. R. (1990). Watershed delineation with triangle-based terrain models. Journal of Hydraulic Engineering, 116(10), 1232-1251. This was one of the first things I read in a digital terrain course I took as an undergraduate that sparked my interest in watershed and computational hydrology, certainly helping me on my course to where I am today. I have always been impressed by the power of modelling the natural environment.

What do you do for fun (apart from ecohydrology)?
When I’m not on campus you might find me with my wife and son at one of the many playgrounds around Chapel Hill or at Durham’s museum of life and science. I also like to spend time in the White Mountains in New Hampshire and I’m a big ice-hockey fan, Go Flyers!
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