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MEET A LEAF: Sara Sheri Karimi

11/23/2020

Sara Sheri Karimi is a PhD candidate in the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences at Macquarie University, Australia. Twitter: @SaraSh_Karimi

What does ecohydrology mean to you?
I'm a hydrologist with six years of experience working as an irrigation system designer, so to me, ecohydrology means considering ecological assets in our water resource allocations. I specifically study inundation-vegetation interaction in the hope of a better understanding of flood characteristics effects on floodplain vegetation distribution and productivity, which is foundational information for interpreting the implications of water sharing plans, dam operational rules, and environmental flow strategies on floodplain biota at the flow event or flow regime scale.

What are your undergraduate and graduate degrees in?
My undergraduate degree is in Water Engineering from Shahid Chamran University in Iran. I have a Master of Science degree in Hydraulic Structures with a specialization in Environmental Flows from Urmia University, Iran. I'm currently finishing my PhD in Environmental Sciences at Macquarie University, Australia with a focus on Inundation-Vegetation association.

How did you arrive at working in/thinking about ecohydrology?
It stemmed from my grad studies whilst I specifically started working on environmental flows in rivers for my master thesis. Although Iran has many rivers and wetlands, the concept of environmental flows was a relatively new notion at that time, as such, my master's degree was innovative in an area with little ecological data. Consequently, I focused on hydrological methods for assessing eflow requirements conscious of a huge lack of ecological knowledge for a realistic eflow estimation. This experience served as a solid foundation for my ecohydrology research leading me to pursue a PhD in a robust ecology focused team. Later on, I joined the lab of Neil Saintilan, a leading figure internationally in water and wetland management, where I am completing my PhD and learning more about the ecological assets of dryland floodplains and the effect of water development strategies on flood-dependant vegetation communities.

My research background in environmental flows enables me to comprehend the necessity of ecological aspects for effective water allocation, and my work experience has made me a conscious engineer especially concerning the lack of study of the environmental effects of water projects on our ecosystems.

What do you see as an important emerging area of ecohydrology?
Having studied and obtained work experience in the field of water engineering, I am aware that an integrated multidisciplinary approach to the sustainable rehabilitation and maintenance of aquatic ecosystems together with population dynamics, will dictate this century.

Do you have a favorite ecohydrology paper? Describe/explain.
There are lots of papers I like, but one of the first ecohydrology papers which framed my understanding of the interaction between hydrology and aquatic biodiversity is Altered Flow Regimes for Aquatic Biodiversity by Stuart Bunn and Angela Arthington (2002). They beautifully highlighted the effect of altering flow regimes on aquatic biodiversity in streams and rivers by developing useful guiding principles.

What do you do for fun (apart from ecohydrology)?
I like swimming, and I'm fortunate to be able to enjoy the beautiful transparent Caribbean sea in Barbados where I am located since the pandemic. I also enjoy globe-trotting with my husband when possible.

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MEET A LEAF: Diane Pataki

11/16/2020

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Dr. Diane E. Pataki is a Professor in the School of Biological Sciences, Adjunct Professor in the Department of City & Metropolitan Planning, and Associate Vice President for Research at the University of Utah.

What does ecohydrology mean to you?
For me ecohydrology helps us understand the two-way interactions between ecosystems and the water cycle. I’ve always been very interested in the role of vegetation in the water cycle, but over the years my focus has expanded to include other components of ecosystems and how they interact with water, such as cities, people, and the built environment. There are many definitions of ecology (some definitions include humans and some don’t) but if we define ecological processes very broadly, then the many ways in which humans and the rest of the biosphere interact with water all fall within the scope of ecohydrology.

What are your undergraduate and graduate degrees in?
I grew up in New York City and stayed there for college, majoring in environmental science at Barnard College. Throughout college I had a part-time job at the headquarters of the Environmental Defense Fund, where I worked for Fred Krupp, the Executive Director (who is still there!). I was interested in studying how global change affects ecosystem processes, and I asked Fred for advice about graduate programs in that area. He recommended the Duke School of the Environment (now the Nicholas School), which at that time was a new interdisciplinary merger of the School of Forestry, the marine lab, and the geology department. I ended up in the lab of Ram Oren, a tree ecophysiologist working on forest water relations. I got both an M.S. and a Ph.D. with Ram, though to this day, I’m not actually sure what these degrees are in! They’re basically in ecology (with a certificate in hydrology), except at that time the Ph.D. program in the Nicholas School was brand new and the details hadn’t quite been ironed out. My transcript just labels my degrees as “Environment.” Appropriate enough for an interdisciplinary field like ecohydrology!

How did you arrive at working in/thinking about ecohydrology?
I originally went to Duke to study the effects of elevated CO2 on forest ecosystems. At that time the Duke Free Air CO2 Enrichment (FACE) experiment was under construction. While I was waiting for the experiment to be completed I worked on Ram’s other projects, many of which were collaborative studies of water and energy fluxes with Gaby Katul. I got very interested in their work on the effects of water stress on local forests, and ended up focusing my dissertation on the effects of drought on canopy conductance. Unfortunately, once I decided to measure the responses of tree transpiration to drought, the weather stopped cooperating (as is usually the case with field work). Conditions in the Duke Forest were fairly wet for the next few years, and I never really got to study severe drought. So for my postdoc I decided to study an ecosystem where I was almost guaranteed to find drought stress - I took a position at the Desert Research Institute’s Nevada FACE site in the Mojave Desert. This was in 1998, and that year there was a very significant ENSO event. And wouldn’t you know it? It wouldn’t stop raining in the southwest that summer! I did eventually encounter severe droughts in my research projects (and then some – water scarcity has reached crisis levels in the western U.S.), but in my early career severe drought stress was a bit elusive!

What do you see as an important emerging area of ecohydrology?
During my postdoc my research transitioned from studying the effects of atmospheric change on ecosystems to studying urbanization. The transformations of land, water, and ecosystems by human domination of the land surface is central to global environmental change. I’m very interested in the study of the two-way interactions between people and the environment. Humans don’t just influence the environment; we’re influenced by the environment as well. This emerging field of “socio-ecohydrology” is very exciting, because it offers the possibility of developing and testing feasible and equitable solutions to socio-environmental problems. Socio-ecohydrologic studies are increasingly shedding light on the inequities in water consumption, drought impacts, and effects of climate change on vulnerable populations. This works shows the need to integrate justice and ethical concerns into studies of the water cycle. An example of what an ethical code for water might look like can be found here: https://www.thenatureofcities.com/2020/10/31/the-need-for-an-ethical-code-for-water/ If you have comments about it, please let us know!

Do you have a favorite ecohydrology paper? Describe/explain.
The paper “Water in a Changing World” by Rob Jackson et al. (2001), Ecological Applications v.11(4) 1027-1045 was eye-opening for its estimation of the human influence on the water cycle. The authors calculated that over half of the freshwater runoff available on earth is already appropriated for human use. Over half! And that was 20 years ago – the proportion is undoubtedly larger today. This paper was a wake up call for me about the urgency of ecohydrologic and socio-ecohydrogic research. There is no time to waste – we need solutions-oriented research on water equity, quality, and quantity right now.

What do you do for fun (apart from ecohydrology)?
I’m very fortunate to live in one of the most beautiful places on the planet. For fun my husband and I, along with our two dogs, hike and explore Utah and the surrounding states, especially in the area around Moab where we’ve lived part-time for a number of years. Luckily, outdoor recreation is still possible during the pandemic. I miss seeing my friends and colleagues in person, but at least we have our national parks and public lands. Utah is a long way from the city where I grew up, but it’s become home.

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MEET A LEAF: Jeff McDonnell

11/9/2020

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Dr. Jeff McDonnell is a Professor of Hydrology in the School of Environment and Sustainability and Associate Director, Global Institute of Water Security, University of Saskatchewan CANADA.

What does ecohydrology mean to you?
Ecohydrology for me is a blend of “contemporary forest hydrology” and “contemporary hillslope hydrology”. Prior to Ignacio Rodriguez-Iturbe’s field-defining commentary in Water Resources Research in January 2000, hillslope hydrology was decidedly non-ecological in its approaches. His commentary brought focus to the links in space and time between climate, soil, and crucially, vegetation. This is the essence of ecohydrology to me. While certainly broader definitions exist, this is how I have viewed it in the context of my own work on the age, origin and flowpaths of storm runoff. I am old enough to remember an AGU Hydrology Section that existed before the additional of an Ecohydrology Technical Committee. As Past-President of the section, it’s been a delight to watch this group lead the section on so many levels with such enthusiasm especially from the committee’s early career members. Go LEAFS! Coincidently, that was also my chant growing up as a fan for the Toronto Maple Leaf hockey team.

What are your undergraduate and graduate degrees in?
I came very close to doing an undergraduate degree in music. I even took a year off to contemplate the decision. Realizing that for me music should remain a hobby and not a career path, I started off my undergrad with interests in geology and geophysics at University of Toronto. Following a summer job as a geophysics technician in the Yukon, with several close encounters with grizzly bears, I came back to Toronto and changed my major to physical geography. The following two summers I worked as a SCUBA diver and eventually my interests moved from coastal geopmorphology to hydrology. I mention all this because I think that students starting out need to know that many of us have followed meandering, exploratory paths. I talk about this in a recent mentoring book (shameless self-promotion alert!). My MSc was in the Watershed Ecosystems Program at Trent University in Ontario. It was a joint Physical Geography-Biology degree. My MSc advisor, Colin Taylor, was a Kiwi. He encouraged me to do my PhD in New Zealand, following up on an ongoing controversy at the Maimai watershed. I went, and worked with Andy Pearce at the NZ Forest Service with a focus on Forest Hydrology, with my PhD from the University of Canterbury.

How did you arrive at working in/thinking about ecohydrology?
My interdisciplinary collaborations in ecohydrology started well after my PhD when I started working with collaborators coming from geochemical and biogeochemical backgrounds: Carol Kendall and Rick Hooper. Those interactions opened my eyes to new ways of looking at hillslopes and headwater catchments. Then, when I was an early career faculty member at SUNY-ESF in the 1990s, Myron Mitchell, Charlie Hall and Charlie Driscoll graciously let me in to their biological and biogeochemical worlds. I learned much from them. At Oregon State University, where I taught from 1999-2012, I found the HJ Andrews LTER site a rich environment for incubating ecohydrological thinking. There, I started working with plant physiologists. I learned much from Barbara Bond—a plant physiologist with exceptional patience for a hydrologist who, then, barely knew the difference between xylem and phloem. So too, I learned a lot from Renee Brooks with her unique blend of plant physiology and isotope geochemistry. Together, these colleagues helped show me new ways of morphing my hillslope hydrology interests into more coupled ecohydrology questions. Later collaborations on an NSF project in Mexico with Heidi Asbjornsen and Todd Dawson helped further my ecohydrolgical education. I’m still learning. But one thing I know for sure: I want to come back in my next life as a plant ecologist!

What do you see as an important emerging area of ecohydrology?
For me, the important emerging area of ecohydrology is still the one that was defined by Ignacio 20 years ago: the space-time links between climate, soil, and vegetation. And now, with the use of dual isotope tracing of these linkages over the past decade, so much new understanding has developed. But, many challenges and questions remain—and for a field-based person like me, these include: How to sample? Where to sample? When to sample? What to sample? There are extraction techniques now that affect our ability to link plant water with its source water. There are fractionation issues associated with transpiration that are throwing a monkey wrench into our mixing models. It will be interesting going forward, to explore how plant traits influence source apportionment; how plant water status drives water use decisions in the plant. All of this will be better understood with better combinations of isotope tracing matched with careful measurements of things like soil matric potential (using tensiometers) and sap flux (measured with internal heat sensors and dendrometer bands). Georg Ohm wasn’t an ecohydrologist, but his Ohm’s Law still appears to rule—and using it to guide new experiments on water source will be useful.

Do you have a favorite ecohydrology paper? Describe/explain.
There is no question that my absolute favorite ecohydrology paper is Hewlett and Hibbert (1967) “Factors affecting the response of small watersheds to precipitation in humid areas”. While perhaps not ecohydrology senso stricto, the paper laid out a manifesto for change in forest hydrology that endures to this day. It was a proceedings paper from the “First International Symposium on Forest Hydrology” at Penn State University. I love this paper so much I even wrote a tribute to it. One great quote from the Hewlett and Hibbert paper is: “usually a discussion of runoff from a watershed begins with the assumption that direct runoff is a product of overland flow and that other types of flow are mere exceptions to the general rule. Perhaps the opposite approach is more logical in the case of forest land; that is to begin with the assumption that all flow is subsurface flow unless there is evidence otherwise”. Wow. Powerful stuff. And great reading for any newcomer to the field of ecohydrology, hillslope hydrology, critical zone science or forest hydrology. I did not ever meet Hewlett. He retired a couple of years before I started my first academic positon. He is perhaps ecohydrology’s greatest unsung hero. I hope that one day we could push through a new AGU early career award in our section with his name on it.

What do you do for fun (apart from ecohydrology)?
I’ve been riding motorcycles since I was a child. When I was a PhD student, I rode a dirt bike around the Maimai watershed to my various sampling stations. I now ride to explore: new research sites, new nooks and crannies of Scotland following my annual Birmingham summer school shortcourse; scoping field sites on the Saskatchewan Prairie, and on my annual ~2,000 km ride between Saskatoon and Corvallis. Beyond motorcycles, I love to sail; beer can races on a nearby reservoir and adding bareboat charters onto conference and research trips in different sailing grounds. I love to ski in the winter and golf in the summer—with all these activities being better when done with my wife and now-adult kids. Lastly, I still bang away on the piano most days and one day imagine playing Elton John or Billy Joel songs in a piano bar; or perhaps more realistically, in an old folks home.

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MEET A LEAF: Youngryel Ryu

11/2/2020

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Dr. Youngryel Ryu is a Professor in the Department of Landscape Architecture and Rural Systems Engineering at Seoul National University, South Korea. He has been running the Environmental Ecology Lab since 2011.

Lab Group photo at the AGU 2019 Fall Meeting.

What does ecohydrology mean to you?
Apparently simple, actually complex, so fascinating. My field site during PhD course was a savanna ecosystem in California. When I first visited the site with my adviser, Dennis Baldocchi, my first impression was this: simple! There were only two species; oak trees and annual grassland on a flat terrain. Growing up in South Korea where 70% of the country is mountain forests, I never saw such simple ecosystem. Then, shortly after, I realized it is so complex. Deciduous oak trees only held leaves from Mar to Oct while grassland was active from Nov to May. Annual rainfall varied two fold (400~900 mm). It was the ideal place for ecohydrology. Indeed, my first journal paper was about evaporation in this ecosystem.

What are your undergraduate and graduate degrees in?
My undergraduate degree (BS) was Landscape Architecture, and master degree (MCP) was Environmental Management, both in Seoul National University. Then I got the PhD degree of Biometeorology from UC Berkeley.

How did you arrive at working in/thinking about ecohydrology?
In 2005, I was involved in a research project, HydroKorea before going to the US. There was a project evaluation meeting. The invited scholars included Jeff McDonnell at Oregon State University (now University of Saskatchewan) and Lu Zhang at CSIRO. At that time, I didn’t know the term, ecohydrology, and I didn’t know who they are. They recommended focusing on scale, and aligning observation and modeling in evaporation. It really helped me to shape my SOP for PhD course, which was about monitoring evaporation from plot to the global scales. Luckily, I was offered from UC Berkeley, and kept this topic for NASA Earth System Science Fellowship. That topic has been in my central research theme.

What do you see as an important emerging area of ecohydrology?
Urban. Many previous studies on ecohydrology focused on natural ecosystems. Urban is unique as a large fraction of surface is impervious and ground is filled with infrastructure such as pipes. I am very curious how trees in urban develop their roots and access to soil moisture and ground water. Although not published yet, one of my former students, Jina, did an interesting experiment on the source of tree water use grown in pervious and impervious surfaces. She used stable isotope analysis and found trees growing through impervious surfaces used shallower water sources. This gave me a new perspective on ecohydrology by including human dimension.

Do you have a favorite ecohydrology paper? Describe/explain.
One recent paper (https://doi.org/10.1111/gcb.15414) attracted my attention strongly. This paper offers compelling evidences that a savanna ecosystem in California is resilient to droughts via altering their phenology and accessing ground water. This paper is beautiful in a way that it is based on long-term flux tower observations (20 years) in tandem with many in-situ observations that include continuous ground well monitoring datasets. The authors found no trend in evaporation and water use efficiency over the two decades that experienced +40 ppm [CO2] and +1C. This is inconsistent from previous literature that reported stronger [CO2] fertilization effects in dry regions which must lead rising water use efficiency. In view of ecohydrology, this paper clearly demonstrates that one has to understand carbon-water-energy interactions from ground water to the atmosphere across diurnal to decadal scales.

What do you do for fun (apart from ecohydrology)?
My life is simple. Work and family. I love family trips. This is particularly difficult period due to COVID-19.

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MEET A LEAF: Sara Sheri Karimi

MEET A LEAF: Diane Pataki

MEET A LEAF: Jeff McDonnell

MEET A LEAF: Youngryel Ryu

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