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MEET A LEAF: DIEGO Riveros-Iregui

5/28/2018

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Diego Riveros-Iregui is currently an Assistant Professor in the Department of Geography at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.  He is also the Deputy Chair of the AGU Ecohydrology Technical Committee.  Web: http://diegori.web.unc.edu/ | Twitter:  @carbonshed
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What does ecohydrology mean to you?
Ecohydrology is the intersection of all the fields that I have always been intrigued by: geology, hydrology, ecology, climate science, and even humans – all interacting over time.

What are your undergraduate and graduate degrees in?
I have a B.S. in geology from the National University of Colombia, an M.S. in geology and geophysics from the University of Minnesota, and a Ph.D. in ecology and environmental sciences from Montana State University.

How did you arrive at working in/thinking about ecohydrology?
I never spent much time thinking about living organisms during my undergrad. In fact, most of my time as an undergrad I spent looking at metamorphic rocks under a microscope. But during my master’s I worked on a hydrogeology project that had a component on surface water – groundwater exchange, and the surface water body involved was a fairly big wetland that did all sorts of great things to the chemistry of the waters I was collecting. Thus, I became very interested in the carbon cycle and decided that if I ever did a Ph.D., the project would have to couple the water and the carbon cycles. That’s how I found - in an EOS ad! - an announcement for a Ph.D. position in Montana, working at the intersection of hydrology and ecology in subalpine forests. I was so fascinated by the ‘eco’ aspect of the project that after my Ph.D., I decided to do a post-doc in an ecology lab in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the University of Colorado in Boulder.

What do you see as an important emerging area of ecohydrology?
There are so many! Ecohydrology conveys interdisciplinary knowledge that is required to address current and future environmental challenges in response to global change. Water is fundamental for biological processes, ecosystem function, and for the coupling of processes on or below the land surface and in the atmosphere. I think ecohydrologists are in a strong position to tackle many of the challenges that humanity faces today, including sustainability of ecosystem services and feeding the world at 9 million.
 
Do you have a favorite ecohydrology paper?  Describe/explain.
Again, there are so many! But I would put Bruijnzeel and Veneklaas (1998) among some of my favorite papers. It was published in Ecology, and it describes productivity of tropical montane cloud forests, involving complex terrain, soil moisture, fog, limited solar radiation (due to high cloudiness), low nutrients, and poor soil conditions. Despite all of this, these ecosystems have evolved to become some of the most biodiverse on Earth and to date they remain very much understudied.

Bruijnzeel LA, Veneklaas EJ (1998) Climatic conditions and tropical, montane forest productivity: the fog has not lifted yet. Ecology 79:3–9.

What do you do for fun (apart from ecohydrology)?
I have a five-year-old and a one-year-old that keep me pretty busy, so any time outside work revolves around my wife and daughters. We spend a lot of time outside, hiking in the woods, riding bicycles, or doing family stuff. Our weekends are usually booked with activities from birthday parties to soccer practice to trips to the museum. I enjoy distance running, traveling, and cooking. I also try to combine exercise with family time. I once ran a half marathon pushing my then 30-lb daughter in her stroller – it was hard and fun!  
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MEET A LEAF: ELIZABETH (LIZ) AGEE

5/21/2018

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Elizabeth (Liz) Agee is currently a PhD candidate with Dr. Valeriy Ivanov in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of Michigan - Ann Arbor.   Twitter:  @thisisnotliz 
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What does ecohydrology mean to you?
To me, ecohydrology is largely the synthesis of hydrology, ecology, and the computational sciences, all viewed through the lens of water storage and transport. Where is water going to be (or not be!)? How does it get there? How does it impact ecosystems?

What are your undergraduate and graduate degrees in?
I have a bachelor’s degree in Physics from Indiana University – Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) and am currently a Ph.D. candidate in environmental engineering at the University of Michigan.

How did you arrive at working in/thinking about ecohydrology?
I came to ecohydrology in a roundabout way. While doing my physics undergrad, I had an empty class slot I needed to fill. I searched around the catalog until I found a class called “hydrogeology.” I had no idea what this really was, but the course description said they were applying Newtonian physics to groundwater systems, and that was enough for me. I loved the class so much that I stayed on and did undergraduate research in watershed hydrology and water quality. Over time, I became more and more fascinated with the interactions between vegetation and water and how they are impacted by natural and anthropogenic changes. I decided to dive in head first for grad school and now I’m using my physics background to explore how forests respond to water limitation.

What do you see as an important emerging area of ecohydrology?
 I think there is a great opportunity for ecohydrology to be used for urban environments. Whether it is the design of green infrastructure to control runoff and treat water or the management of urban forests, ecohydrologists can provide valuable insights and computational expertise.

Do you have a favorite ecohydrology paper?  Describe/explain.
One of the first papers I was given to read as a graduate student was Modeling the Exchanges of Energy, Water, and Carbon between Continents and the Atmosphere by (Sellers et al. 1997, DOI: 10.1126/science.275.5299.502). There I was first introduced to the rock star that was Piers Sellers.  In looking at interactions between the biosphere and climate, he took a very multi-faceted approach: remote sensing, computational models, ground validation, FLYING IN SPACE!! As if this wasn’t enough, he took time to communicate science to the general public, even while battling cancer.

What do you do for fun (apart from ecohydrology)?
I love to explore parks and woods with my two children. Last summer we spent three weeks camping and hiking in national parks throughout the central US. If the weather isn’t cooperating, I like to cozy up with a good movie or book.
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MEET A LEAF: BHAVNA ARORA

5/14/2018

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​Bhavna Arora is a Research Scientist in the Earth and Environmental Sciences Area at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. She currently serves as the lead for the Biogeochemical Cycling Group within the Energy Geosciences Division.
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What does ecohydrology mean to you?
Ecohydrology to me is a synonym for interdisciplinary science of the critical zone.

What are your undergraduate and graduate degrees in?
My undergraduate degree is in Agricultural & Food Engineering with a specialization in Water Resources Development & Management from the Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur. I received my Ph.D. from the interdisciplinary Water Management and Hydrological Science program at Texas A&M University, where I studied the effect of subsurface heterogeneity on preferential transport and biogeochemical processes in porous media.

How did you arrive at working in/thinking about ecohydrology?
As part of my dissertation and postdoctoral work, I have worked extensively on identifying biogeochemical hot moments and their linkages to hydrologic processes such as water table variations and snowmelt events in different terrestrial environments (e.g., municipal landfill, riverine floodplain, arctic tundra). A natural extension of this work seemed to be including ecological dynamics and understanding its linkages to hydrological processes and biogeochemical fluxes both above and below ground.

I got an opportunity to work on these linkages and through an ecohydrology lens as part of the Department of Energy’s Biological and Environmental Research (BER) funded work on a mountainous headwater catchment in Colorado. Here, as part of this BER-funded Watershed Function Scientific Focus Area at the Berkeley Lab, we are focused on determining how perturbations to mountainous watersheds (e.g., floods, drought, early snowmelt) impact the downstream delivery of water, nutrients, carbon, and metals. My role in this project is to simulate how changes in the hydrologic cycle, particularly early snowmelt or reduced snowpack, impact vegetation phenology and elemental fluxes to the river using a mechanistic representation of the key processes in an ecosystem model.

What do you see as an important emerging area of ecohydrology?
The integration of natural observatories and controlled testbeds that can collect, interpret, and assimilate ecohydrological, climate and biogeochemical data at multiple scales to build a systems level understanding of the watershed we rely upon. I also see the community growing and combining methods from diverse disciplines, including atmospheric science, micrometeorology, biogeochemisty, molecular biology, mathematics, statistics and advanced computing, and through collaborations across fields. Really, it's the convergence of these disciplines that’s so exciting.

Do you have a favorite ecohydrology paper?  Describe/explain.
My favorite is “Shifting Dominance Within a Montane Vegetation Community: Results of a Climate-Warming Experiment” by John Harte and Rebecca Shaw. This science article opened up the idea that there is a critical need to change and work together as a community so that we can leverage knowledge from diverse disciplines to understand and predict the implications of shrubification and other plant community shifts that are beyond the range of previously observed variability.

What do you do for fun (apart from ecohydrology)?
I love to travel and explore new corners of the world. Cooking is also a passion and major stress reliever for me.
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MEET A LEAF: STEFAN KRAUSE

5/7/2018

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Prof. Stefan Krause is Chair of Ecohydrology and Biogeochemistry at the School of Geography, Earth and Environmental Sciences at the University of Birmingham, UK. He leads the interdisciplinary Birmingham Water Council and is a fellow and theme leader (Water Challenges in a Changing World) of the Institute of Global Innovation.
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What does ecohydrology mean to you?
Ecohydrology investigates how hydrological processes control ecological dynamics that effect hydrological processes that control ecological dynamics that effect …..

Ecohydrology to me represents a melting pot where interdisciplinary expertise in hydrology, ecology, biogeochemistry and system dynamics is integrated and applied to contextualize and study how physical and biological processes interact in nature. Over the last couple of decades ecohydrologists have emerged as a special breed of translators between disciplinary experts, advancing the understanding of biotic and abiotic process interactions by new interdisciplinary analysis approaches.
 
What are your undergraduate and graduate degrees in?
I have a Diploma in Geoecology from the University of Potsdam, Germany with a dissertation at the Leibniz Institute of Freshwater Ecology and Inland Fisheries (IGB) Berlin on modelling the development of preferential flow in the vadose zone. I also hold a PhD in Hydrology from the University of Potsdam, where I investigated the impacts of landuse changes on water resources and quality in intensively used lowland catchments.
 
How did you arrive at working in/thinking about ecohydrology?
In a very naïve way, I always wanted to understand how nature works and I loved spending a lot of time outdoors and traveling. I wanted to know why that hold in the rockface broke loose and if maybe the lichen growing along the cracks in the rock could have given me a clue, why there were biofilms growing on some of the rocks in the river but not others, making them incredibly slippery, why certain trees are much better suited to start a fire and why that stupid fish didn’t go for my bait. Studying Geoecology gave me the chance to explore a broad portfolio of subjects and I am still trying to find my way.
 
What do you see as an important emerging area of ecohydrology?
Ecohydrology (like most of the hydrological sciences) has to a large degree focused on exploring process dynamics in rather rural, only moderately altered ecosystems. I am fascinated by the development of ecohydrology research in heavily urbanized and modified spaces. I also enjoy following the fast growing body of research on multi-stressor interactions, causing non-linear system responses, in particular, if this includes the study of ecological impacts on physical and biogeochemical process dynamics.
 
Do you have a favorite ecohydrology paper?  Describe/explain.
There are too many papers that have fascinated me and shaped my understanding of Ecohydrology to mention just one; but there is one book that I always give PhD students to read who start working on groundwater – surface water interfaces in my group: “Streams and Groundwater” by Jones and Mulholland.
 
What do you do for fun (apart from ecohydrology)?
I still enjoy spending as much time as I can outdoors, on water, rocks, snow & ice and in the woods, preferably exploring nature together with our 4-year old daughter – who puts everything into a very different perspective and currently snores in our tiny old camper after an exhausting day on the North Devon coast.
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