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MEET A LEAF: Aaron Potkay

7/26/2021

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Dr. Aaron Potkay is a post-doctoral associate (effective 8/2/2021) in Dr. Xue Feng’s Ecohydrology and Global Environmental Change lab at the University of Minnesota.
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What does ecohydrology mean to you?
Ecohydrology is an interdisciplinary field that aims to better understand (1) the hydrological factors determining the natural development of ecosystems, often vascular vegetation, especially in regard of their functional value (e.g. diversity, structure, carbon storage, energy and gas fluxes), (2) the biological and ecological factors determining the movement, distribution, and management of water, and (3) their feedbacks. My personal focus in ecohydrology looks to how plants regulate and couple the water and carbon cycles through mechanistic modeling of plants’ water-uptake, transpiration, carbon assimilation, and growth. For plants, water- and carbon-use are intrinsically linked.
 
What are your undergraduate and graduate degrees in?
BS, Civil and Environmental Engineering, Virginia Tech
MS, Geotechnical Engineering, University of Texas at Austin
PhD, Earth and Planetary Sciences, Rutgers University

 
How did you arrive at working in/thinking about ecohydrology?
Prior to my doctoral experience, my Masters studies focused on soil physics, vadose zone hydrology, and unsaturated soil mechanics. These scientific disciplines would eventually ease my transition into ecohydrology and plant hydraulics (the study of water transport through plants). Of course, soil water is the lower boundary condition for plant water-use, and less obviously, the mathematics of water transport through soils is virtually identical to that through plants’ vasculature. I began formally thinking about ecohydrology during my second year as a PhD student working with my advisor, Dr. Ying Fan. I decided to build upon her research of hydrologically-mediated rooting depth by studying the biological constraints on root growth. After reviewing the literature, however, I realized that root growth could not be considered separately from the whole plant. Water-and carbon-transport between all organs determine the multiple limiting factors on growth. Meanwhile, plants develop growth strategies unique to their hydrological environment that can compensate for these limitations. Hence, plant water-use, carbon-use, and growth became a unifying paradigm for me to understand and predict ecosystem response to environmental change.
 
What do you see as an important emerging area of ecohydrology?
I see plant water storage (hydraulic capacitance) as a relatively unexplored factor for hydrological fluxes, plant functioning, ecosystem resilience to drought, and forest mortality that has begun its advent. Transpiration can be sourced from water storage when evaporative demand exceeds supply, and thus storage impacts hydrological fluxes. Similarly, recent studies have explored the loss of water storage as a predictor of plant mortality and have hypothesized water storage to be involved in the mixing of stable isotope tracers. Presumably, plants with larger water storage may initially transpire more aggressively than their counterparts with less storage under water-stress. I interpret the emergence of plant water storage as a shift to a whole-plant perspective on water-use, particularly because it emphasizes the role of the phloem or inner bark, where most plant water is stored, and which have typically not been considered in the past when formulating hypotheses.
 
Do you have a favorite ecohydrology paper? Describe/explain.
I greatly admire Buckley & Roberts’ (2006) “DESPOT, a process-based tree growth model that allocates carbon to maximize carbon gain” (https://doi.org/10.1093/treephys/26.2.129). Since reading it first several years ago, I continue to revisit it regularly, including its appendix. It revealed to me how the complex web of plant mechanisms (e.g. xylem sap-flow, transpiration, light interception, photosynthesis, stomatal behavior, plant size-mediated hydraulic conductance, nutrient partitioning) can be neatly expressed in a relatively simple, consistent framework.
 
What do you do for fun (apart from ecohydrology)?
I read indie comics and pulp science fiction, watch poorly-budgeted horror films, play Dungeons and Dragons, enthusiastically collect music (favorites including Krautrock, emo, post-punk, and power-pop), see live music (at least pre-COVID), and shred on lead guitar (and occasionally scream) in bands. In the past year, my partner has introduced me to outdoor activities, particularly kayaking. 
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MEET A LEAF: Nate Jones

7/19/2021

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Dr. Nate Jones is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Biological Sciences at the University of Alabama.  Twitter: @FloodHydrology
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What does ecohydrology mean to you?
This is a GREAT question, and I really appreciate all of the answers folks have provided on this blog.  Below are a few additional thoughts:
(i) Its worth defining the terms community, discipline, and field. (I’ve seen all three of these terms used in response to this question!) I would argue that we are a community composed of folks working across different disciplines.
(ii) In my Ecohydrology class at UA, we define Ecohydrology as the interdisciplinary study of how water flows through and interacts with ecosystems
It’s also worth noting, I really don’t like being put into a disciplinary box! However, I love the inclusive community that the AGU Ecohydrology Committee is working to build. This community supports (and even celebrates!) work that spans traditional disciplinary boundaries.


What are your undergraduate and graduate degrees in?
BS, Biological Engineering, University of Arkansas (Woo Pig!)
PhD, Biological Systems Engineering, Virginia Tech (Go Hokies!)

How did you arrive at working in/thinking about ecohydrology?
A few years ago, a colleague asked me, “if engineering caused our wicked societal-scale problems, can engineering really contribute to the solutions?” While the question was asked [at least partially!] in jest, I’ve spent a lot of time pondering that point. Many of our societal scale problems can be linked to advancement in both science and engineering. Just as an example, the invention of the Haber-Bosch process and subsequent ‘green revolution’ gave us the ability to feed the world; but in doing so, we’ve severely impacted downstream ecosystems. While many of us are working to address these unintended consequences, its obvious traditional approaches will not solve the problem (i.e., If traditional engineering approaches were effective, we wouldn’t regularly see red tides along the Gulf Coast).

My research aims to help improve downstream water quality, and I hope to help develop unique/innovative solutions that incorporate ideas and collaborators from across engineering, the natural sciences, and the social sciences. In particular, many of my research questions occur at the intersection of hydrology, biogeochemistry, and aquatic ecology. Since grad school, I’ve struggled to find an adequate label for this work. (Note my comment about disciplinary boxes above!) During introductions, I tend to cycle between ‘water scientist’ when working in large interdisciplinary groups, ‘hydrologists’ when working with ecologists, and ‘ecosystem ecologist’ when working with hydrologists/engineers. (My students caught onto this recently, and they made a meme that was way too accurate – click here!)

Thanks to the efforts of the AGU Ecohydrology Committee and this blog, the ecohydrology community is growing in both numbers and disciplinary breadth! I’m excited to contribute to that growth, and I hope we can help develop effective solutions to the wicked problems the world is beginning to face!

What do you see as an important emerging area of ecohydrology?
I see two threads of research that are on an exciting collision course – transit time theory (see Hrachowitz et al., 2016; https://doi.org/10.1002/wat2.1155) and watershed biogeochemistry (see Abbott et al., 2016; https://doi.org/10.1016/j.earscirev.2016.06.014). On one hand, techniques used to characterize water transit and residence time distributions are becoming more accurate and accessible. On the other hand, conceptual frameworks are being developed to characterize spatial and temporal variation in solute fate and transport. (My personal favorite is the HotDAM framework, both because it is quantitatively-based and it is fun to say!) As these two bodies of literature begin to integrate more and more, the results should both improve our fundamental understanding of how materials move through watersheds and provide tools to enhance water resource management.

Do you have a favorite ecohydrology paper?  Describe/explain.
The Stream and Its Valley by Hynes (https://doi.org/10.1080/03680770.1974.11896033). This essay succinctly (and almost poetically!) describes conceptual linkages between valley shape, water movement, and stream ecosystems.

What do you do for fun (apart from ecohydrology)?
I really enjoy anything that gets me outside with friends and family. Recent shenanigans include mountain biking, SEC football games (ROLL TIDE!!!), and exploring new-to-us streams and rivers here in Alabama.
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MEET A LEAF: Wenzhe Jiao

7/12/2021

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​Wenzhe Jiao is currently a PhD student in Dr. Lixin Wang’s Ecohydrology & Biogeochemistry lab at Indiana University – Purdue University Indianapolis. Twitter: @jiaowz 
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What does ecohydrology mean to you?
I think ecohydrology is an interdisciplinary science to understand water and ecosystem interactions, and how those interactions will affect human society under climate change.

What are your undergraduate and graduate degrees in? 
My undergraduate degree is in Geodesy and Cartography (North China Institute of Science and Technology) and my graduate degrees are in Geodesy and Cartography (China University of Mining and Technology) and Geographic Information System (University of Chinese Academy of Sciences). 

How did you arrive at working in/thinking about ecohydrology?
I have the opportunity and passion to pursue a career in ecohydrology in large part thanks to my advisor Dr. Lixin Wang. Before joining his group, I did not know much about ecohydrology. When working with Dr. Wang, I was not only introduced to this field but the importance of ecohydrology and how I can use advanced techniques to explore important ecohydrological research questions. 

What do you see as an important emerging area of ecohydrology?
I think the impacts of extreme drought events (compound with heatwave) and wildfire on ecosystem and their predictions are urgent area of ecohydrology. 

Do you have a favorite ecohydrology paper?  Describe/explain.
I really admire the publication “Palmer, W. C. (1965). Meteorological drought (Vol. 30). US Department of Commerce, Weather Bureau.”. It was written more than half century ago, but the ideas and conceptions still keep inspire many people including me. The Palmer Drought Severity Index (PDSI) is still one of the most widely used drought indicators today.

What do you do for fun (apart from ecohydrology)?
I enjoy outdoor sports, such as running, tennis, and fishing. Traveling to all the small and big towns is always fun too. 
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MEET A LEAF: Yao Zhang

7/5/2021

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Dr. Yao Zhang is an Assistant Professor in Sino-French Institute for Earth System Sciences at Peking University. ​@zhangyaonju
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What does ecohydrology mean to you?
Ecohydrology is an interdisciplinary science that aims to understand the Earth system processes related to ecology and hydrology. It not only studies the movement of water in the ecosystems, but more broadly, any processes that may affect the water movement in the terrestrial ecosystems can be considered part of ecohydrology.

What are your undergraduate and graduate degrees in?
I got my bachelor degree in geographical information sciences at Nanjing University in China, a MS in forest management at Northwest A&F University and a Ph.D. degree in ecology and evolutionary biology at University of Oklahoma.

How did you arrive at working in/thinking about ecohydrology?
I have background in remote sensing of vegetation. When I studied how drought affects vegetation dynamics during my master, I started to gain interest in understanding the interactions between water and plants. During my Ph.D., I collaborated with Sha Zhou and investigated how eddy covariance technology can be used for ET partitioning. I then worked with Dr. Pierre Gentine at Columbia University trying to use advanced remote sensing dataset (solar-induced chlorophyll fluorescence, SIF; vegetation optical depth, VOD) to detect early warning signals of drought and how plant water use strategy can affect their responses to drought.

What do you see as an important emerging area of ecohydrology?
Global climate change together with human activities (irrigation, afforestation/deforestation, agroecosystem) has largely changed the ecohydrological processes over the past decades. The real world is a complex fully coupled system, changes in one component (for example, vegetation) will provide feedbacks to other related components through direct and indirect effects or legacy effects. Therefore, the study of ecohydrology, which used to be a combination of ecology and hydrology, now becomes an integrated multi-disciplinary science that involves plant physiology, meteorology, atmospheric sciences, biogeochemistry and soil sciences. During this big data era, using data not only from field measurements, but also from remote sensing, model simulations will provide new possibilities to understand the interaction and feedbacks between these components. Machine learning, model data fusion and other methods can help us better use these datasets and understand the Earth system as a whole.

Do you have a favorite ecohydrology paper?  Describe/explain.
There are many papers I really like. If I can only pick one, it would be Stephen Good et al.’s 2017 Nature Ecology & Evolution paper: “A mesic maximum in biological water use demarcates biome sensitivity to aridity shifts”. This paper shows how fraction of transpiration over precipitation changes over the aridity gradient. It is a great example that demonstrate how a combination of mathematical derivation and new observations from field, satellite and models can help explain complex ecohydrological questions.

What do you do for fun (apart from ecohydrology)?
I enjoy outdoor activities. I just went back to China and started my new career but I still miss the life in California bay area where various landscapes are within driving distance. 
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