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MEET A LEAF: NANCY GRIMM

7/29/2019

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Dr. Nancy Grimm is the Virginia M Ullman Professor of Ecology at Arizona State University.  Twitter: @DrNitrogen
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What does ecohydrology mean to you?

I once taught a graduate seminar in ecohydrology, and we explored two lines of ecohydrology; one that dealt mostly with the influence of ecological entities (largely plants) on water budgets and flows in catchments, and the other that dealt with the influence of hydraulics on ecological entities (largely stream macroinvertebrates). Yet stream biogeochemists had been aware of the need to understand hydrology for explaining biogeochemical patterns and processes, and that was my take on ecohydrology. To generalize, I would say ecohydrology is the recognition of the key role of water in ecosystem patterns and processes, and the reciprocal importance of ecology in driving or modifying hydrological patterns and processes. 

What are your undergraduate and graduate degrees in?
My undergraduate degree in ecology (self-designed major) is from Hampshire College in Amherst, MA.  My M.S. and Ph.D. degrees are both in Zoology from Arizona State University.

How did you arrive at working in/thinking about ecohydrology?
I was trained as a stream ecologist, and to understand virtually anything about nutrient dynamics in streams you need to understand hydrologic processes. But in particular, I would point to two areas of research that were key: discovery of the role of the hyporheic zone in stream metabolism and nutrient dynamics and scaling up to consider aquatic-terrestrial interactions and whole stream drainage networks. In the latter vein, I’ve become interested in how water movement shapes ecological patterns in space and time in arid lands and in cities. 

What do you see as an important emerging area of ecohydrology?
There is so little understanding of urban ecohydrology, and it turns out to be more than just transferring our understanding from non-urban catchments, more than just understanding how the intentional manipulation of hydrological systems is supposed to work in cities. It’s a really challenging problem, because what we (as humans) intend isn’t always what we get and isn’t always appropriate to the place or situation. We are seeing a greater appreciation for the utility of preserving or incorporating natural elements in urban infrastructure, such as stormwater systems, but much more work needs to be done on the hydrological, ecological, and biogeochemical properties of such systems in cities in different settings. 

Do you have a favorite ecohydrology paper?  Describe/explain.
I may be biased because this paper resulted from a NCEAS working group I organized in the 1990s, but I think that McClain et al. (2003, Ecosystems) was a timely paper outlining the spatial and temporal heterogeneity of ecohydrological dynamics in landscapes and introducing the concept of biogeochemical hot spots and hot moments.

What do you do for fun (apart from ecohydrology)?
I pretty much work all the time, because for me that’s fun, but I also enjoy hiking, cooking, and a good long walk with my dogs. I love being around water: swimming, kayaking, sailing, waterskiing (though not so much anymore), and walking on the beach or along a stream.
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MEET A LEAF: MONICA PALTA

7/22/2019

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Dr. Monica Palta is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Environmental Studies and Science at Pace University.
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What does ecohydrology mean to you?
To me, ecohydrology is field that allows us to examine how water presence and movement shapes ecosystem processes.

What are your undergraduate and graduate degrees in?
I have a B.S. in Biology from Grinnell College, an M.S. in Ecology from the University of Georgia, and a Ph.D. in Ecology and Evolution from Rutgers University.

How did you arrive at working in/thinking about ecohydrology?
I developed a fascination with dynamic aquatic systems during a year I spent abroad in India as an undergraduate.  During this time I conducted research in the Ganges River ecosystem, which is constantly in a different state of flooding, depending on season.  The city in which I lived (Varanasi) had been constructed to be two different types of human habitat, depending on whether the river was running high (monsoon season) or low (dry season).  Both the river and the city became completely different environments during these different seasons, which was so exciting and interesting!  The people living in Varanasi also have a very complex relationship with the river, both relying on and revering it, while also releasing raw sewage and trash into it (not too different from our waterways in NYC, where I currently work!).  Living in and studying this system, I developed an interest in how the movement and presence of water shapes ecosystems, especially urban ecosystems, and the behavior of organisms (including humans) within those ecosystems.  I went on to study the impact of hydroelectric dams on floodplain hydrology and ecosystem productivity for my Master’s degree, and then moved into urban stormwater research, where I continue to examine how urban runoff shapes and regulates ecological processes (especially nutrient cycling) and ecosystem services (especially nutrient removal) in wetlands and streams.

What do you see as an important emerging area of ecohydrology?
A field in my mind that is gaining increasing importance is that of urban ecohydrology, specifically the types of hydrologic characteristics and novel aquatic or wetland ecosystems that develop from human activities and infrastructure in cities.  We still know very little about the net human benefits (i.e., ecosystem services) and harms (i.e., ecosystem disservices) conveyed by water movement and presence in cities, and the environmental outcomes and tradeoffs that emerge from urban runoff management and infrastructure.  With increased movement of global human populations into cities and concurrent land use and global climate change, we need to understand more about how rising sea levels, urban runoff, and human infrastructure influence ecosystem processes (carbon storage, community dynamics, nutrient cycling, energy cycling) that are important to human and environmental wellbeing.  In this vein, I have been examining the characteristics of, and ecosystem services and disservices provided by, many different types of wetlands receiving urban runoff and wastewater, including an interesting type of novel ecosystem that I have dubbed “accidental urban wetlands”.  These wetland ecosystems were not constructed or designed by humans, but emerged on their own from urban runoff pooling in low-lying parts of the urban landscape.

Do you have a favorite ecohydrology paper?  Describe/explain.
One of the most formative papers in my career is Junk et al. (1989): “The Flood Pulse Concept in River-Floodplain Systems,” which introduced the concept that floodplain ecosystems are aquatic/terrestrial transition zones that must have dynamic hydrology in order to persist.  This paper was one of the first to postulate the exciting idea that there are ecosystems that were neither purely aquatic, nor purely terrestrial, but both at the same time.  It was also groundbreaking in that it presented floods as the most important variable shaping river ecosystems, rather than as catastrophic events that destroy ecosystems.  This paper was responsible for shaping my entire career trajectory – when I read it, I was captivated by the idea that there were ecosystems that were shaped by hydrologic processes that were ever-changing, and defied traditional binary (aquatic/terrestrial) definitions of ecological system types.

What do you do for fun (apart from ecohydrology)?
I enjoy reading all kinds of fiction and nonfiction books, watching really bad reality television, traveling to new places, and spending a lot of time outdoors (hiking, camping, beach time, surfing).  I have also recently been devoting time to improving my foreign language skills.
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MEET A LEAF: GEORGIANNE MOORE

7/15/2019

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Dr. Georgianne Moore is a Professor of Ecosystem Science and Management at Texas A&M University.
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What does ecohydrology mean to you?
Ecohydrology is at the center of a Venn diagram that includes plants, water, climate,  and soil. Plants are the most important component for my work. But the most exciting thing about working in Ecohydrology is that the centroid of that diagram is constantly shifting for each project. Having so many unique questions, all very multidisciplinary, is what makes a career in Ecohydrology so rewarding.

What are your undergraduate and graduate degrees in? 
I have a BS in Applied Ecology from Georgia Tech and a PhD in Environmental Sciences from Oregon State (emphasis in Forest Science).

How did you arrive at working in/thinking about ecohydrology?
I had an early interest in forests, limnology, salt marsh ecology, and plant eco-physiology before beginning my PhD in Ecohydrology of Pacific Northwest forests. 

What do you see as an important emerging area of ecohydrology?
Ecohydrology of energy-limited systems (i.e. tropical).

Do you have a favorite ecohydrology paper?  Describe/explain.
Yes I do! It’s Jeff McDonnell’s 2003 “Where does water go when it rains? Moving beyond the variable source area concept of rainfall‐runoff response”

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/hyp.5132

I remember when Jeff spoke about his ideas ahead of the paper coming out in HP. He was so excited to push the discipline of hydrology forward with an improved process-based understanding, and I felt as though my work on plant transpiration was a vital link to getting inside the black box of watershed hydrology. ET was no longer the residual of rainfall and runoff, but at the forefront of understanding streamflow, soil water balance, and hydroclimatic feedbacks.


What do you do for fun (apart from ecohydrology)?
Traveling, cooking, and gardening. I go to a lot of soccer games with my 12-year-old, too.
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MEET A LEAF: CARLY ZITER

7/8/2019

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Dr. Carly Ziter is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Biology at Concordia University (Montreal, QC).
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What does ecohydrology mean to you?
To me, ecohydrology encompasses all of the many ways that water interacts with our ecosystems. Because I tend to work in urban areas these days, I often think about ecohydrology in an urban context. How is water moving through and interacting with these very modified and built-up ecosystems, and what does that mean for the people who live there? How can we design cities to make room for water?
 
What are your undergraduate and graduate degrees in?
I have a BSc in Environmental Biology (Statistics minor) from the University of Guelph, an MSc in Biology and Natural Resource Sciences from McGill University, and a PhD in Integrative Biology from the University of Wisconsin Madison.
 
How did you arrive at working in/thinking about ecohydrology?
I actually have limited formal training in hydrology, so it's something I arrived at through years of working in related disciplines of ecosystem and urban ecology (and if I'm honest, being referred to as an "ecohydrologist" can still bring on a little bit of imposter syndrome!).  A large component of my work focuses on understanding multiple ecosystem services (benefits we receive from nature) in urban landscapes. So for me, ecohydrology provides a toolkit that can help me to measure or quantify the water-related benefits provided by urban green space (runoff regulation, flood protection, or water quality regulation, for example). My research requires a lot of breadth, which often means borrowing methods or approaches from other fields. I really love working at this intersection of many fields, but being interdisciplinary also means that I can lack the depth of knowledge that a more disciplinary scientist might have. Fortunately, I’ve had the opportunity to work with great colleagues (including excellent ecohydrologists!) to help refine my methods and ideas throughout the research process.
 
What do you see as an important emerging area of ecohydrology?
As an urban ecologist, I’m particularly interested in work tackling how climate change will alter the hydrology of our cities – and what we may be able to do to buffer these changes. In many cities we are going to experience significant changes in precipitation, from increased drought to more extreme rainfall events. Can we adapt to water-related challenges by changing the composition, configuration, or management of our urban green spaces? How can we integrate nature-based solutions, or “safe to fail” green infrastructure into our cities to accommodate changing precipitation regimes?
 
Do you have a favorite ecohydrology paper?  Describe/explain.
A paper I return to often is Kate Brauman et al.’s 2007 paper “The Nature and Value of Ecosystem Services: An Overview Highlighting Hydrologic Services”. It’s a wonderful overview of the many ways ecohydrological processes influence ecosystem services.

A more recent paper I enjoyed is “Working towards a more holistic set of hydrologic principles to teach nonhydrologists: Five simple concepts within catchment hydrology” (Shaw et al, Hydrological Processes). As someone who isn’t trained in hydrology but often uses it in my work, I really appreciate papers like this that might clue me in to something fundamental I’ve missed, or correct a misunderstanding I have about the field.

 
What do you do for fun (apart from ecohydrology)?
I enjoy spending time with friends and family, and like many ecologists I love spending time outdoors in nature when I can. I also really enjoy pursuing more artistic hobbies in my free time. I’ve recently taken up ceramics, so I spend a lot of time at the pottery studio, and I also knit. There’s something about creating tangible objects that I find incredibly refreshing after days spent teaching/coding/writing!
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MEET A LEAF: BILL SHUSTER

7/1/2019

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Dr. Bill Shuster is a Hydrologist at the US EPA.  Starting August 1, 2019 he will be Chair of the Civil and Environmental Engineering Department at Wayne State University in Detroit, MI.
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What does ecohydrology mean to you?
I like the interdisciplinary realm because it forces two seemingly unlike disciplines into one with a neat name.

What are your undergraduate and graduate degrees in?
Physics, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor; Environmental Science, The Ohio State University, Columbus​.

How did you arrive at working in/thinking about ecohydrology?
When I was making field measurements and realized that the abiotic and biotic components of an ecosystem really do interact. In my dissertation research, I employed earthworms with different feeding and burrowing habits as ecosystem engineers to perturb biogeochemical and hydrologic processes in agroecosystems. It was all very exciting, seeing patterns in how biota modulated resources and their availability.​

What do you see as an important emerging area of ecohydrology?
Urbanization and its phases of development and senescence have always been fascinating to me, and drives a lot of my research in wastewater and stormwater management. I saw that there was a yawning gap in our understanding of hydraulics in urban landscapes and their soils. From this curiosity and my impatience with existing, incomplete data (as age-old tables of suggested parameters...), I undertook assessments of urban soils, with a focus on their taxonomy and hydraulic characteristics. I have applied this data to understand the role of these unique landscapes in their regulation of urban hydrologic cycles, and capacity for rendering ecosystem services to citizens.​

Do you have a favorite ecohydrology paper? Describe/explain.
Climate, not conflict, explains extreme Middle East dust storm. Anthony J Parolari et al 2016 Environ. Res. Lett. 11 114013 shows us how an ecohydrological perspective can help to unpack the environmental impacts of the largest-scale controls (climate) on the human experience.​

What do you do for fun (apart from ecohydrology)?
I love to spend time with my teenage children and come to understand their new worldview, take pictures, play electric bass, and create sounds on old, wheezing analog music synthesizers.​
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