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MEET A LEAF: Danyka Byrnes

10/25/2021

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​Danyka Byrnes is a PhD student at the University of Waterloo.
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​What does ecohydrology mean to you?
Ecohydrology is a framework that allows us to study at the intersection of hydrology and ecosystems. To me, ecohydrology incorporates humans and their past, current, and future perturbations to earth’s natural processes.

What are your undergraduate and graduate degrees in?
All of my degrees are in environmental engineering, but I tell everyone I am a water scientist.

How did you arrive at working in/thinking about ecohydrology?
I was always an environmentalist. When I learned about industrialized farming, I became intrigued by the *wicked* problem of meeting food production needs while protecting our natural resources, particularly water.

Through my undergraduate co-ops and meeting my advisor Dr. Nandita Basu, the pieces started to fall into place to begin chipping away at this *wicked problem*. I firmly believe in intentionally leaving space in my life for serendipity, and it is only with hindsight that I see my path, where all my seemingly unconnected decisions coalesced and brought me here.

What do you see as an important emerging area of ecohydrology?
I believe that there is value in taking a long look in our rear-view mirror. With the existing methods, progress in digitizing historical documents, and increasing computing power, we can look to the past to get a complete picture of the scale of the problems we are facing today.

A paper published by Haas et al. in 2019 found that Ancient Romans caused eutrophication of their lakes through land clearing for farming. The authors found that it took centuries after the collapse of the city for the lake to recover.

For my work, we use crop, livestock, and land management data to understand how the past is influencing our water quality today. I am using hindsight to understand landscape legacies and to inform our models for the future. It is also entertaining to go searching through archived papers and documents to rediscover information.

Do you have a favorite ecohydrology paper?  Describe/explain.
My favourite paper changes with the direction of the wind, but I enjoyed the work by Philip Savoy and his team with their 2019 paper Metabolic rhythms in flowing waters: An approach for classifying river productivity regimes. They used various machine learning approaches with open-source data to classify the metabolism of rivers across the contiguous U.S. They found that hydrological disturbances and shading from canopies, frequently a consequence of river width, constrained productivity in rivers. They point to the implications of different regimes in how rivers process nutrients and how a mismatch between the timing of nutrient loading and peak productivity causes different patterns of nutrient retention across systems.

I really enjoy the use of typologies, because it allows us to look at small-scale patterns and processes from a birds-eye view. Being able to synthesize and classify complex and messy environmental data into an elegant framework is brilliant!

What do you do for fun (apart from ecohydrology)?
Growing up in rural northern Ontario, I spent a lot of time in forests and freshwater lakes. So when I am not in my computer cave slugging down undignified doses of caffeine, I am likely backpacking, hiking, mountain biking, or skiing.
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MEET A LEAF: Praveen Kumar

10/18/2021

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Dr. Praveen Kumar is the Lovell Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of Illinois, Urbana, Illinois 61801, U.S.A.
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What does ecohydrology mean to you?
Ecosystems are both a response to and regulators of prevailing climate and associated precipitation patterns in a region. They are also important mediators of soil and microbial structure and composition, as they partition both incident precipitation and radiant energy, thereby creating the moisture and thermal regime above and below the ground. Ecohydrology aims to provide a comprehensive understanding of the complex dependencies between the water cycle and vegetation processes, together with the associated linkages to soil composition, geochemical environment, and supporting microbial functions.

What are your undergraduate and graduate degrees in? 
I got my B.Tech degree from the Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay, India (1987), M.S. from Iowa State University, Ames, Iowa, (1989) and Ph.D. from the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, Minnesota (1993), all in Civil Engineering.

How did you arrive at working in/thinking about ecohydrology?
Both my M.S. and Ph.D. thesis were in the exploration of the nature of spatio-temporal variability in rainfall. During my Postdoc at NASA-Goddard Space Flight Center, I had the opportunity to begin the exploration of the impact of climate change on terrestrial systems. Subsequently, after arriving at the University of Illinois in 1995, I continued this research theme. It became increasingly more evident that the linkage between vegetation and water cycle was crucial not just from the perspective of water and energy partitioning that impact climate dynamics, but also understanding the impact of climate change on terrestrial systems. Subsequent research led to important realization that while increased CO2 impacts vegetation processes through precipitation and temperature, it also directly affects the ecophysiological response of vegetation which further impacts moisture and energy dynamics. Research in critical zone science over the past decade has unraveled further dependencies with soil processes. So thinking and working in ecohydrology has been an evolution in the understanding and appreciation of complexity of dependencies. 

What do you see as an important emerging area of ecohydrology?
My group has been working on several fronts in this field. First, we have been exploring the role of hydraulic redistribution, a process by which plant roots move the water from wet to dry soil regions in both upward and downward directions, in regulating several processes such as evapotranspiration, nutrient dynamics in the soil, interaction between multiple vegetation species that co-exists in the same environment (such as overstory and understory vegetation), and influence of root access to ground water resources. Second, we have developed models to characterize the acclimation response of vegetation to increasing CO2 concentration in the atmosphere. This acclimation response, manifested as structural, biochemical, and ecophysiological changes subsequently impact the water and energy partitioning and also their productivity and resilience to climate variability and change. Third, through modeling we are learning that vegetation plays an active role in regulating their soil environment through exudation of chemicals through the roots. These chemicals bring about changes to the microbial population and associated functions, and they also impact the below-ground biogeochemistry including weathering and subsequently stream chemistry. Finally, we are exploring the role of thermodynamics in shaping ecosystem structure and function, and their related role in hydroclimatological dynamics. Through these studies it has become clear that the linkages between the water cycle and ecosystem processes are intertwined across many time scales. I believe that unravelling these dependencies across time scales and coupled spatial scales, particularly in light of climate and anthropogenic drivers, is an important challenge.

Do you have a favorite ecohydrology paper?  Describe/explain.
As I explained earlier, my interest in the field has evolved from more narrow view of coupling between water and ecosystem to subsequently include climate impacts of change in variability in precipitation and temperature, leading further to acclimation response of elevated CO2, and then to critical zone perspective leading to dependencies across multiple time scales and processes. At the early stage of the research over two-three decades ago, the pioneering works of Peter Eagleson and Ignacio Rodriguez-Iturbe provided foundational principles. However, the field has become far more intricate and I encourage students to develop their own literature-based synthesis that more closely follows the specific problems they are pursuing.

What do you do for fun (apart from ecohydrology)?
Anything science! I have a broad interest in science, and I like to read broadly. I am intrigued by concepts, ideas, and principles that pervade across multiple scientific fields. I also love photography. Much to the chagrin of my family, I am always slowing everyone down by stopping to take pictures on our trips. I also enjoy travel and the present job has offered plenty of opportunity to see places across the globe.  
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MEET A LEAF: Carolyn Voter

10/11/2021

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​Dr. Carolyn Voter is a Wisconsin Water Resources Science-Policy Fellow at University of Wisconsin-Madison and the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources. As of January 2022, she will be an Assistant Professor in the Departments of Civil and Environmental Engineering and Earth Sciences at the University of Delaware.
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What does ecohydrology mean to you?
To me, ecohydrology focuses on the movement of water across many different spheres – groundwater, the vadose zone, surface water, vegetation, and the atmosphere – with special emphasis on the bidirectional interactions between water and living components of the ecosystem, including humans.

What are your undergraduate and graduate degrees in?
B.S. in Civil Engineering from Bucknell University
Ph.D. in Civil and Environmental Engineering from the University of Wisconsin-Madison


How did you arrive at working in/thinking about ecohydrology?
I’ve known since high school that I wanted my future career to have a strong connection to the environment, but it took a bit of exploration before I arrived at ecohydrology. Through undergraduate research experiences and internships, I tested out a few different directions I could go (think: drinking water treatment, environmental remediation) but eventually became involved in planning and baseline monitoring for a stream restoration on campus. I had been taking classes in conservation biology and ecosystem ecology on top of my civil engineering coursework, and the world of stream restoration really clicked with me. I followed this new interest to graduate school at UW-Madison, where I worked with Dr. Steve Loheide – a truly fantastic mentor. Upon arriving, I quickly shifted my focus to urban ecohydrology and in my current fellowship, have expanded to explore ecohydrology as it pertains to lake-groundwater interactions in agricultural regions. I continue to be interested in how humans intentionally and unintentionally alter ecohydrologic processes and how we can adjust our behavior to better support more sustainable and resilient communities.

What do you see as an important emerging area of ecohydrology?
I’m intrigued by what could come from pairing human behavior modeling with studies of ecohydrologic processes in human-dominated landscapes (e.g., urban, agricultural). At this point, many of our studies are aimed at understanding what the “best” management solutions are from an ecohydrologic perspective, without always accounting for how humans are most likely to behave. I look forward to seeing how our understanding of the “most effective” strategies may change as we improve how well we integrate humans into our studies of ecohydrologic processes.

Do you have a favorite ecohydrology paper?  Describe/explain.
One paper I’ve been spending a lot of time with lately is “The ecological limits of hydrologic alteration (ELOHA): a new framework for developing regional environmental flow standards” by Poff et al. (2010). It’s not exactly a hidden gem – I’m sure many people are very familiar with it. But I really admire the effort made in this paper to offer clear, concrete suggestions for management while acknowledging and respecting the uncertainty in our understanding of ecohydrologic relationships. I am often struck by what a delicate tightrope walk this is and I anticipate that honing my own sense of balance in this area will be a long, ongoing process.

What do you do for fun (apart from ecohydrology)?
I enjoy reading a mix of fantasy, cozy mysteries, and non-fiction books. I’m a big fan of board games and I’m excited for a post-COVID return to evenings of dinner & games with friends. And I also enjoy getting outside by running, biking and walking or hiking with my dog.
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MEET A LEAF: Tom Glose

10/4/2021

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Tom Glose is a Postdoctoral Researcher at the Kansas Geological Survey working with Sam Zipper and Jim Butler.  Twitter: @tomglose
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What does ecohydrology mean to you?
I like to think of ecohydrology as an ever evolving interdisciplinary field that focuses on the complex interactions and feedbacks between hydrological and ecological systems across various temporal and spatial scales.

What are your undergraduate and graduate degrees in?
I have a B.A. in Geophysics and a minor in Math from SUNY Geneseo and a Ph.D. in Geological Sciences from the University at Buffalo. 

How did you arrive at working in/thinking about ecohydrology?
I owe the beginning of my working in geology (and subsequently ecohydrology) to my older sister who encouraged me to initially pursue research in geology as an undergraduate and then to pursue research in hydrogeology as a graduate student. My undergraduate research was focused on using paleomagnetism to investigate pluton emplacement in the Henry Mountains, Utah. When applying to graduate schools, I read some intriguing papers by Dr. Chris Lowry, who ended up being my Ph.D. advisor, focused on groundwater-dependent ecosystems and I decided to switch my focus to hydrogeology. My Ph.D. research was focused on using temperature as an environmental tracer to investigate groundwater-surface water interactions in rivers and streams where I started to see the interconnection between hydrogeology and the surrounding ecosystems, which is when I started to consider myself an ecohydrologist. I pivoted slightly with my postdoctoral research where I am now researching the long-term implications of groundwater management strategies on heavily stressed aquifers.    

What do you see as an important emerging area of ecohydrology?
The impact that people have on water resources and the subsequent changes to ecosystems as a result is something that I think is and will continue to be important especially as the effects of climate change intensify. Changes in the timing and volume of peak streamflow, increased groundwater depletion, and increased urbanization all have cascading effects that impact ecosystems that are sometimes overlooked or unanticipated and need to be considered moving forward.     

Do you have a favorite ecohydrology paper?  Describe/explain.
I really like the Boano et al. 2014 paper “Hyporheic flow and transport processes: Mechanisms, models, and biogeochemical implications”. This review covers the important and extensive role that the hyporheic zone plays in fluvial environments and its significance to stream and riparian ecology. Exchanges between groundwater and surface water are responsible for processes ranging from carbon and nutrient cycling to regulating stream temperature to supporting a vast array of organisms. This paper is what opened my eyes to how interconnected the fields of hydrology and ecology are.

What do you do for fun (apart from ecohydrology)?
I try to stay active by hiking, biking, and by playing soccer and kickball (its crazy intense in Lawrence, KS!). In normal times I also enjoy traveling to new places, going to see live music, and checking out local restaurants and breweries. 
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