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meet a leaf: JAN FRANSSEN

11/25/2019

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Dr. Jan Franssen is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Geography at the University of Montreal.  ​@Watershed_Sci
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What does ecohydrology mean to you?
For me it provides a framework and an opportunity to study the abiotic-biotic linkages in freshwater ecosystems. I’m curious about how these systems function, but I’m also concerned about their widespread degradation and destruction. My hope is that through scientific research and stakeholder engagement we can protect, better manage, and rehabilitate our freshwater environments.

What are your undergraduate and graduate degrees in?
I have a bachelors degree in Environmental Studies with a minor in Earth Sciences from the University of Waterloo (and a shout out to my alma mater; I benefited greatly from UWaterloo’s co-op education program). I received my PhD in Physical Geography (specialization in fluvial geomorphology) from McGill University, under the supervision of Professors Michel Lapointe (McGill University) and Pierre Magnan (Universite du Quebec a Trois-Rivieres). Between my undergraduate and graduate training I worked for approximately 10 years in various industry and government positions where I specialized in the assessment and remediation of contaminated soils and groundwater, and the assessment and protection of groundwater sourced drinking water supplies.

How did you arrive at working in/thinking about ecohydrology?
I grew up playing in a small forest stream near my childhood home in Kitchener, Ontario, Canada. When I was about 6 or 7-years-old most of the forest around the stream was cut down and replaced by a subdivision.  Overnight I went from chasing small fish to chasing water spiders; the stream choked with fine sediment. I knew nothing of the ‘Urban Stream Syndrome’ but the transformation I observed was absolute and profound. My curiosity about the consequences of our interactions with nature, specifically our impacts on fluvial environments, was set then.  A reading of Aldo Leopold’s Sand County Almanac a decade or so later sealed the deal.  Leopold’s writings of the beauty and complexity of the natural world directed my interest toward ecology...“A thing is right when it tends to preserve the integrity, stability, and beauty of the biotic community. It is wrong when it tends otherwise.”; and “Some paintings become famous because, being durable, they are viewed by successive generations, in each of which are likely to be found a few appreciative eyes. I know a painting so evanescent that it is seldom viewed at all, except by some wandering deer. It is a river who wields the brush….” from a Sand County Almanac by Aldo Leopold.

What do you see as an important emerging area of ecohydrology?
I find the concept of “ecosystem control points” (Bernhardt et al. 2017), an evolution of the “Hot Spots & Hot Moments” concept (McClain et al. 2003), a particularly interesting framework for investigating and understanding the interaction between hydrological and ecological processes. As defined by Bernhardt et al. 2017, control points are specific locations that exert a strong influence on an ecosystem.  Understanding where such control points exist is likely to be critical to our understanding of the behavior of freshwater and terrestrial ecosystems. The challenge will be to identify where these control points are located and when they are active. For example, can areas of preferential groundwater discharge (PGD) act as ecosystem control points? My research group is particularly interested in locating and understanding the ecological role of PGD.  Here I’ll take the opportunity to plug our session on the topic at the upcoming AGU Fall Meeting; Session H44C - Groundwater Discharge to Surface Waters: Patterns, Processes, and Ecological Implications I.

Do you have a favorite ecohydrology paper?  Describe/explain.
If I must pick only one, I’ll choose “A hierarchical framework for stream habitat classification: viewing streams in a watershed context” by Frissell et al. 1986. To my knowledge this was the first paper to apply a hierarchical classification framework to lotic ecosystems. I was primed for this concept by the late James Kay (University of Waterloo) who introduced me to complex systems theory.  Thanks for this question – I’m going to spend the evening revisiting some of my old course notes.
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What do you do for fun (apart from ecohydrology)?
What brings me the most joy is being outdoors with my family.  This summer we spent a few days hiking in the White Mountains of New Hampshire – it was my son’s first overnight hiking experience.  We spent our days hiking through the forest and lounging by mountain streams. It was wonderful. 
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MEET A LEAF: DANI OR

11/18/2019

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Dr. Dani Or is a Professor of Soil and Environmental Physics at ETH Zurich, Switzerland.
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What does ecohydrology mean to  you?
Ecohydrology seeks to integrate biological agents into the study of the water cycle. For some time I viewed ecohydrology as extension of agronomic concepts to natural vegetated systems, but it is now abundantly clear that natural systems are far more complex than most  monocultural agroecosystems with biologically diverse agents (fauna and flora) inhabiting heterogeneous landscapes and responding to random and episodic inputs. These aspects and the wide range of biomes distinguish ecohydrology making it an exciting new scientific discipline (where agronomic resource management principles become a model system, a special case).
 
What are your undergraduate and graduate degrees in? 
BS and MSc in Soil and Water Sciences of the Hebrew University in Israel ; PhD in Soil, Plants and Biometeorology at Utah State University, Postdocs at UC Davis (LAWR) and UC Berkeley (CEE).

How did you arrive at working in/thinking about ecohydrology?
I have always been interested in plant water relations through my “agronomic” upbringing in a farming community in Northern Israel with keen interest in irrigation management. In Utah I became fascinated with the study of water-limited natural systems. In the past decade, we have been studying surface evaporation (focusing on the roles of soil properties) and evapotranspiration partitioning which naturally require better understanding of plants (from root water uptake to leaf and canopy gas exchange).

What do you see as an important emerging area of ecohydrology?
From my perspective, a key challenge is how to describe large ecosystems (catchments and continents) without losing sight of fundamental physical and physiological processes. Doing ecohydrology across scales with systematic integration of physically-sound processes informed by spatially and temporally extensive data – the future is already here…  

Do you have a favorite ecohydrology paper?  Describe/explain.
The paper by Schlesinger and Jasechko (2014) on global transpiration was very influential for several reasons: (1) it illustrated the limitations of T estimates by LSM and the need to resolve this aspect; (2) it prompted my ongoing interest in the reasons behind the remarkably constant ratio of T/ET=0.7 (why is that?) and (3) the paper also aimed to tone down inflated claims made in an earlier paper about high ratio of T/ET in natural systems (I thought this was a cool way to achieve this while expanding knowledge).

 What do you do for fun (apart from ecohydrology)?
I try to regularly run and work in my yard, and generally enjoy traveling to warm places…

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MEET A LEAF: KUDZAI FARAI KASEKE

11/11/2019

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Dr. Kudzai Farai Kaseke is an Associate Specialist in the Earth Research Institute at the University of California Santa Barbara.  
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What does ecohydrology mean to you?
Ecohydrology is the study of the interactions between organisms and their hydrological environment.

What are your undergraduate and graduate degrees in?
BSc Honors in Agriculture – Soil Science, University of Zimbabwe (Zimbabwe)
MSc in Conservation Ecology, Stellenbosch University (South Africa)
 PhD in Applied Earth Science from Indiana University (Indianapolis)


How did you arrive at working in/thinking about ecohydrology?
I volunteered for an internship in the Central Namib Desert, Gobabeb Research Centre. In this hyper-arid environment, water availability and ecosystem productivity are tightly coupled making it impossible to study one component without thinking of the other. This was my introduction to dryland ecohydrology which was then further reinforced by my graduate studies which focused also on dryland ecohydrology.

What do you see as an important emerging area of ecohydrology?
The application of stable isotopes to ecohydrological studies. Stable isotopes can be powerful tools that can reveal a lot about ecohydrological processes. They have already started changing the way we think about evapotranspiration and groundwater recharge or streamflow, ecohydrological separation. Combining stable isotopes with other traditional approaches to ecohydrology is thus quite an interesting avenue for me. At the same time, one cannot ignore the potential role for big data in not only ecohydrology but other sciences as well.

Do you have a favorite ecohydrology paper?  Describe/explain.  
Without a doubt, Noy-Meir, Imanuel. "Desert ecosystems: environment and producers." Annual review of ecology and systematics 4.1 (1973): 25-51. This paper got me interested in how ecology is connected to hydrology within drylands. It highlights ecohydrological processes that we are still trying to understand to this day and is an enjoyable read that’s still relevant to this day.
 
What do you do for fun (apart from ecohydrology)?
I enjoy hiking, going to the beach and a game of tennis once in a while. Although I no longer play rugby, I am still a huge fan and had a great time watching the just ended 2019 World Cup. Although the All Blacks didn’t win, I’m glad the my second favorite, Springboks were crowned the world champions.  
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MEET A LEAF: PAOLO D'ODORICO

11/4/2019

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Dr. Paolo D'Odorico is a Professor in the Department of Environmental Science, Policy, and Management at the University of California, Berkeley.  
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What does ecohydrology mean to you?
I consider Ecohydrology as the science that studies the role of water in the functioning of terrestrial ecosystems through the analysis of two-way interactions of hydrological processes with the biota. This includes for instance both the biotic controls on the water cycle through processes such as evapotranspiration, precipitation, or infiltration, and the hydrologic controls on the dynamics of plant and microbial communities, biogeochemical cycles, and species dispersal. 

What are your undergraduate and graduate degrees in?
I have an undergraduate degree in Civil Engineering and a Ph.D. in Hydraulic Engineering.

How did you arrive at working in/thinking about ecohydrology?
I started working in this field quite early during my postdoc with Ignacio Rodriguez-Iturbe. At that time (1998) the term ‘ecohydrology’ still had to become popular. We started with the study of water-limited ecosystems, the hydrologic controls on plant water stress, and the nitrogen and carbon cycles. In the following years I become increasingly interested in lab and field work to investigate the role of soil moisture, vegetation, and fire in the control of soil biogeochemistry, wind erosion, and land-atmosphere interactions. We explored patterns of soil water, nutrient and root distribution in southern African savannas. Field work stimulated new questions on the role of ecohydrological feedbacks in the emergence of bifurcations, alternative stable states, and critical transitions in ecosystem dynamics. In particular, we looked at the role of environmental noise, in the form of interannual rainfall variability and investigated the ability of noise to create order (i.e., spatiotemporal patterns) in ecosystem dynamics.

While I remain interested in dryland ecohydrology I have broadened my interest to subhumid environments, wetlands, and agroecosystems. In recent years I have included humans “in the picture” and investigated socio-environmental dynamics of human appropriation and use of freshwater resources, looking at the ecohydrological limits to the sustainable use of water.

What do you see as an important emerging area of ecohydrology?
Ecohydrology plays a central role in the study the biosphere’s response to climate change, the dynamics of carbon sequestration, and the associated feedbacks on climate. There is an increasing need for improved understanding of how changes in precipitation (i.e., in mean, intermittency and interannual variability) can affect plant community dynamics and species distribution. New tools help us understand the hydrologic controls on patterns of biodiversity and soil carbon sequestration. Independently of climate change, the study of ecohydrological patterns and how hydrological processes and landforms shape ecological communities and their resilience remain an important area for fundamental research in ecohydrology.

Personally, I am fascinated by how water availability is determining the distribution of economic activities (e.g., crop production, livestock grazing, mining) that shape the global patterns of land use and land use change. I am interested in the ecohydrological drivers and impacts of land use and water sustainability.

Do you have a favorite ecohydrology paper?  Describe/explain.
My absolute favorite is Rodriguez-Iturbe, et al. (1999; Probabilistic modelling of water balance at a point: The role of climate, soil and vegetation, Proc. R. Soc. London, Ser. A, 455, 3789–3805). This paper provides a process-based, comprehensive description of soil moisture dynamics accounting for the role of rainfall regime, soil properties, and vegetation, based on a stochastic representation of the soil water balance. This framework contributed to shape the field of ecohydrology. It has been used to study the role of soil moisture in biogeochemical cycles, vegetation dynamics, plant water stress, pattern formation, land-atmosphere interactions, and many other research questions in ecohydrology.

On the more ecological side, I have been inspired by the work by Walker et al. (1981; Journal of Ecology 69: 473–498) on the stability of grazing systems. This paper has been the precursor of more recent research on stability and resilience in ecohydrology, though back then, nobody was referring to this field as “ecohydrology”.
 
 
What do you do for fun (apart from ecohydrology)?
I like to travel to new places, both domestically and internationally. In my everyday life I like to repair antique frames. 
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