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MEET A LEAF: Aurora Kagawa-Viviani

12/31/2018

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Aurora Kagawa-Viviani is currently a PhD candidate with Thomas Giambelluca in the Department of Geography and Environment at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa. 
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What does ecohydrology mean to you?
My labmate and I joke about the term’s ambiguity since another ecohydrology lab on campus focuses on surface water flows and aquatic organisms; but our lab focuses on forests and fluxes. I fall on the ecology end of the ecohydrology spectrum and enjoy thinking about water fluxes and pools via their influence on plant community structure and succession.

What are your undergraduate and graduate degrees in?
I have an undergraduate degree in environmental engineering (MIT) and a master’s degree in botany (University of Hawaiʻi).

How did you arrive at working in/thinking about ecohydrology?
Looking back, I realize I’ve been exposed to ecohydrology since my undergrad days, but it has taken me time to understand the field through my own experiences. As an undergrad in the Parsons Lab (MIT), I had little context or appreciation for the high-level work being done in my own department. I spent my summers doing conservation biology fieldwork back home in Hawaiʻi. During my MS program, my advisor Kāʻeo Duarte had me read the mathematically oriented papers of Ignacio Rodriguez-Iturbe and colleagues, and I was co-advised by ecophysiologist Lawren Sack. I struggled with the different scales, methods, and perspectives of engineering and ecophysiology and found overlap of these realms in forestry research. I leaned heavily on this community and body of work during my master’s project using sapflow methods, which was driven by local land managers’ interest in the hydrologic value of different forest covers. While working with my energetic co-advisors was exciting, doing this within a community of classically-trained organismal, community, and evolutionary biology- focused botanists was sometimes disorienting, I appreciate the grounding I gained in plant science basics.

After my MS, I worked as a technician on a pre-contact Hawaiian dryland systems project led by Peter Vitousek. My job included running unirrigated sweet potato cropping experiments across a steep rainfall gradient to assess yield potential across the once expansive Leeward Kohala Field System (in C4 pasture grass for the last 100 years). With no available reference system to help us reconstruct field conditions, we drew inferences from patterns of current soil fertility, archaeological and ethnographic records, and insights from rural community members and project scientists. The experience was forensic and creative- gathering evidence and imagining what the system might have been like. It was also experimental- attempting to reconstruct and produce harvests to understand how farmers sustained staple crop production through seasonal and intra-annual drought and desiccating winds. Throughout my time in the field, I couldn’t stop thinking about how the heck you grow plants without much water—of course, doing this was technically my job. I was fascinated by our driest, hottest, most challenging site. I started to think about water limitation at different scales of time and space, both the sheltering of our crops from the wind, and, outside of our fenced plots, the seasonal rotation and cutting of cattle herds during the ongoing multi-year drought. Insights and theory from ecohydrology seem particularly relevant and useful to the more applied issues of maintaining and/or restoring natural and agro-ecosystems in the face of natural cycles of drought and anthropogenic (hydro)climate change.

It took me a few years to return to graduate school to pursue the PhD, but during those years, I visited and read up about dry systems. While an interest in dryland socio-ecological systems drew me back to grad school, my dissertation work now focuses on the impacts and mechanisms of plant invasion in dry to mesic Hawaiian forests. Lessons from pulsed systems provide a useful lens as I analyze my sensor data for ecological responses and hydrological processes; and my previous work experiences help me think about which processes might be the most important across Hawaiʻi’s heterogenous landscapes.

What do you see as an important emerging area of ecohydrology?
My personal bias is that emerging areas of ecohydrology (or perhaps a major gap) may be driven by geography and enabled through continued innovations that bring down research costs. After attending the Asia-Oceania Geosciences Society meeting this past summer and the Tropical Ecohydrology Chapman meeting in Cuenca, Ecuador in 2016, I now feel that ecohydrology has strong relevance for the quickly developing “Global South.” Enhancing local research capacity in these regions seems especially important given rapid land use change and the tropical and subtropical hydroclimatic settings of many of these countries.

Do you have a favorite ecohydrology paper?  Describe/explain.
Noy-Meir, I. 1973. Desert Ecosystems: Environment and Producers. Annual Review of Ecology and Systematics 4:25–51.

This classic review provided me a conceptual framework for reading the tremendous body of literature (ecology and ecohydrology) that sprung out of it. 

What do you do for fun (apart from ecohydrology)?
When I am not grad-studenting (getting a computer screen tan), I enjoy hiking and learning about different ecosystems/communities with my partner who is a microbial oceanographer and ecologist. I also spend time exploring archived information on Hawaiian sweet potato varieties, gardening, reading about social movements, visiting older relatives, and informally mentoring younger students on how to navigate the undergrad/grad labyrinth.
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MEET A LEAF: pAULO TARSO s. OLIVEIRA

12/24/2018

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​Dr. Paulo Tarso S. Oliveira is a Professor of Hydrology and Water Resources at the Federal University of Mato Grosso do Sul (UFMS), Brazil. 
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What does ecohydrology mean to you?
In my vision, ecohydrology is a way to better understand the environmental systems dynamics, where hydrological and ecological processes are investigated by an interdisciplinary and integrated approaches. Water is the link between such processes, in which hydrological processes influence and provide feedbacks on the aquatic and terrestrial ecosystem dynamics and vice versa. Furthermore, human activities have altered the ecosystems and water fluxes; therefore, a better comprehend of ecohydrology is crucial to help us to keep a balance between the water-related uses and consequently the human life.
 
What are your undergraduate and graduate degrees in?
I was born in Brazil in 1985 and received both my BSc degree in Environmental Engineering (2009) and MSc degrees in Water Resources (2011) at the Federal University of Mato Grosso do Sul (UFMS), Campo Grande - MS, Brazil.
My Ph.D. in Science - Hydraulics and Sanitary Engineering was obtained in 2014 at the University of São Paulo (USP), São Carlos - SP, Brazil. I also worked as a visiting researcher (2013-2014) at the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA-SWRC) and at the University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ, USA.

 
How did you arrive at working in/thinking about ecohydrology?
When I was a child, I usually spent all holidays on my grandfather’s farm. In the back of the farm’s house there is a stream that for several years was used to generate energy (small-scale hydropower) and where my dad and uncles learned to swim. However, the small-scale hydropower stopped working and I could not swim in this stream because the streamflow was too low, the sediment transport compromised the water channel, and the water quality was not good. Thus, like as any child I asked several questions for my dad, such as: Why can’t I swim? What is going on with the water? Why is the stream too shallow? This has never left my mind!! During my PhD I could study and respond to all of these questions, and I can say I did it studying ecohydrology. One of the main goals of my thesis was to obtain a better understanding of the mechanisms of hydrological and soil erosion processes approaching aspects of the relationship among hydrology, human activities, and the environment. To achieve that, I worked with different scales (plots, watershed and continental) and data sources (experimental field, laboratory, and remote sensing).
 
What do you see as an important emerging area of ecohydrology?
I consider an important emerging area is to better understand ecohydrological processes, and its response to changes, in different spatial-temporal scales. For instance, in a recent study we found a water provisioning improvement in a tropical watershed through payment for ecosystem services based on soil and water conservation practices and vegetation recovery. However, we need to know if the same approach can work in a similar way for different spatial scales (local-regional-continental), climate, and vegetation conditions.

In addition, more investigations are needed considering a catchment coevolution approach, where we can investigate how climate, soils, vegetation, and topography have coevolved during the past and how they might do so in the future. This approach is important to explain catchment's features and functions, and to evaluate the most vulnerable and resilient catchments considering global or regional changes.

Another emerging area that I can point out is an ecohydrological approach with solutions to guarantee the food-energy-water-ecosystem security. It is motived because global population have grown and changed the standards of living promoting an increase of the demand for clean water, food, and energy to unprecedented levels. In addition, we have grappled each year across the globe with the climate change effects, mainly longer-term droughts and more-intense floods. Therefore, new insight in ecohydrology will be needed toward a better solution for these challenges.
 
Do you have a favorite ecohydrology paper?  Describe/explain.
It’s really hard to pick just one. I can cite important ecohydrology papers for me, such as: Rodriguez‐Iturbe (2000), Rodriguez‐Iturbe et al (2009); Newman et al (2006), among others. However, I would like to highlight here the papers by Orellana et al (2012) and Troch et al. (2013). The first one, is a great review paper providing the state of knowledge on groundwater‐dependent vegetation. This paper helped me to understand how groundwater levels might determine vegetation composition/density or vice versa. The second one, shows a strong interaction between climate, vegetation and soil properties that lead to specific hydrologic partitioning at the catchment scale. I like this paper because it helps us summarize different catchment features in a simple and predictable outcome of hydrological partitioning. This paper is really useful to understand past and future catchment coevolution and it is a theme that I currently study.
 
What do you do for fun (apart from ecohydrology)?
It is a good question; I can say that it has been changed during my life. Some years ago, I could say that it is working out, running, swimming, playing soccer, or any other sport... However, currently with two little daughters (Marina: 2 years and half; Milena: 23 days) my life is much busier, but sweeter and fun.  Now , I spend my free time with my wife and daughters doing kids things, e.g. playing dolls, swimming sometimes (Brazil is really hot), and visiting parks or playgrounds!
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MEET A LEAF: PAMELA NAGLER

12/17/2018

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Dr. Pamela Nagler is a Research Physical Scientist with the USGS Southwest Biological Science Center. She resides in Tucson, AZ. 
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My ecohydrology research in quantifying evapotranspiration rates in native and non-native riparian habitat for avian habitat restoration at Cibola National Wildlife Refuge.

What does ecohydrology mean to you?

As someone striving to improve estimates of riparian plant water use, but stationed among the hydrologists at the Arizona Water Science Center, I think of ecohydrology as combining above and below ground processes of the hydrologic cycle. Like many others, I think of ecohydrology as “interdisciplinary” research – where water investigations require input from multiple fields to advance our understanding of the greater system. 

What are your undergraduate and graduate degrees in? 
Geography, geography, geography! I have a B.S. in Geography from the University of Florida, an M.A. in Geography from the University of Maryland at College Park with a minor in Remote Sensing, and a Ph.D. in Soil, Water and Environmental Sciences from the University of Arizona, with a specialty in Remote Sensing for the Study of Planet Earth (College of Optical Sciences). 

How did you arrive at working in/thinking about ecohydrology?
After my Ph.D. in Alfredo Huete’s Terrestrial Biophysical Lab, I was funded through a NASA grant awarded to Dr. Edward Glenn to find ways to scale ground-based ecophysiological measurements with remote sensing methods (empirical algorithm development) in the Colorado River delta in Mexico. With my mentor, Ed Glenn, I was engaged in additional ecohydrology research in Molokai, Hawaii and phytoremediation with the Navajo Nation near Monument Valley, in addition to the ongoing studies (estuary, wetland, riparian habitat conservation) in the delta and other dryland rivers in the Southwest. I have continued to work in the border region in collaboration with tribes, local, state, federal government, and non-profits agencies, and am on the Board for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Sonoran Joint Venture. My research includes acquiring information on evapotranspiration rates at multiple scales for cottonwood and willow trees as well as saltcedar, arrowweed and other riparian plant species in the southwestern desert.

What do you see as an important emerging area of ecohydrology?
Ensuring long-term water sustainability for increasing human populations in the arid and semi-arid regions of the world is a common goal for water resource managers. Measuring evapotranspiration (ET) at watershed or river-reach scales, upland or urban areas is required to estimate how much water can be apportioned for human needs while maintaining healthy vegetation and habitat for wildlife. ET measurements are often made on local scales, but scaling up has been problematic due to spatial and temporal variability. There are challenges associated with handling temporal variability over complex natural-agro-climatic regions. For instance, crop/plant coefficients vary seasonally, particularly for riparian, upland vegetation, and urban greenery; traditional approaches of ET estimation commonly neglect the heterogeneity of microclimate, density, species, and phenology that have often led to gross overestimates of plant water use. There are now studies that estimate ET using both prognostic and diagnostic approaches from process-based models that rely on the integration of precipitation and soil-vegetation dynamics in addition to remote sensing data inputs. However, there are challenges in drought-prone areas and dryland ecosystems which remain targets for my interests!

Do you have a favorite ecohydrology paper?  Describe/explain.
Wilcox, Bradford P. and others. 2017: Ecohydrology: Processes and Implications for Rangelands in Rangeland Systems by Springer.  So, this has it all, because it is a book, not just one paper! This book covers key topics for dryland ecohydrology.

What do you do for fun (apart from ecohydrology)?
I like trees (and water) and so I take my children to our desert sky islands as often as possible. We just enjoyed (snow) sledding on Mount Lemmon! There are wonderful riparian areas tucked away with few people around, and we love getting our peace on year-round.
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MEET A LEAF: kIMBERLY VAN METER

12/10/2018

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Dr. Kim Van Meter is transitioning from a post doc position at University of Water Loo to an Assistant Professor position at the University of Illinois at Chicago in January 2019.    Twitter: @VanmeterKVM
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What does ecohydrology mean to you?
For me, ecohydrology is about seeing the connections between systems.  The intersecting disciplines of ecology and hydrology are, of course, built into the word “ecohydrology.” As the field has grown, however, there have been further crossovers and synergies to include a range of different domains, from geochemistry to economics and sociology. To study ecohydrology is to study feedbacks between systems, the impacts of hydrology on ecosystems, of ecosystems on hydrology.  As an ecohydrologist, I ask questions about how humans interact with water and the environment, and how water systems and ecosystems coevolve with human systems.
 
What are your undergraduate and graduate degrees in?
My educational background has been a winding road!  My undergraduate degree was in Literature.  I have two master’s degrees, one in Organic Chemistry and another in Environmental Engineering.  My Ph.D. is in Earth and Environmental Sciences.
 
How did you arrive at working in/thinking about ecohydrology?
I came to my interest in water and water quality from a very practical perspective.  I was traveling in Haiti, where I adopted my son, and was devastated by the death of two young babies at my son’s orphanage due to contaminated water.  I became determined at that time to build a career that expanded beyond the lab to include larger interactions between science and the environment, between human and natural systems. From that point, my interests and my research grew to encompass a range of questions about human impacts on water quality and about feedbacks between water quality and ecosystem health. I think that these kinds of questions and concerns place me squarely in the middle of the new and growing science of ecohydrology.
 
What do you see as an important emerging area of ecohydrology?
I see urban ecohydrology as an exciting new frontier.  Cities in the 21st century are growing quickly—it has been predicted that by 2050 approximately 65% of the developing world and 85% of the developed world will be living in urban areas. As noted by Diane Pataki, urban settlements are one of the few ecosystems on earth that are actually increasing in extent. Accordingly, there are range of important research questions for the urban ecohydrologist. I am particularly interested in the ways in which cities alter both regional and global-scale nutrient cycling. As the built environment increases in extent, it will be crucial to understand how cities mediate the flow of water, nutrients, and a range of contaminants across the urban/suburban/rural continuum.
 
Do you have a favorite ecohydrology paper?  Describe/explain.
Although it’s difficult to pick a favorite paper, one that has been influential in my thinking is a 2014 paper led by Peter Groffman on the “Ecological homogenization of Urban USA.” 
In the paper, the authors explore the urban “homogenization” hypothesis. In other words, they ask the question, does urban land use exert a homogenizing effect across urban areas? Is a Phoenix lawn more similar to a Baltimore or a Minneapolis lawn than to the Sonoran Desert ecosystem surrounding the city.? The findings of their work are important, as they suggest that while decisions about things as seemingly trivial as suburban lawn management may be individual decisions, they are actually tied to broader forces, from social structures and socioeconomic status to national-scale marketing.  Because human behavior, like the biophysical behavior of natural systems, is strongly shaped by a panoply of broader forces, we are able to develop a theory and science of human habitats. From this point, we can move forward to understanding complex feedbacks between cities, water, and ecosystems.
 
What do you do for fun (apart from ecohydrology)?
My dog Darcy (named after the Darcy equation, of course) is a great source of fun and entertainment.  I’ve also recently become obsessed with escape rooms.
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MEET A LEAF: DANIELE PENNA

12/3/2018

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​Dr. Daniele Penna is an Associate Professor at the University of Florence (Italy).
www.danielepenna.co.nf
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What does ecohydrology mean to you?
As others in this blog have reported, ecohydrology is strictly associated to the broad concept of “interaction” between water-related processes and the biotic component of the ecosystems. I’m currently teaching a graduate course in “Hydrology of the Wildlife Systems”, basically a combination of stream ecology and ecohydrology: I have not done any statistics but I can easily realize that the words I tell most often to the students are “water”, “ecosystems” and “interaction”, and I’m trying to stimulate them to achieve a wide thinking and a far-reaching view on how the different components in the environment are closely linked and influencing each other. To me, ecohydrology means studying the functional interrelations between water and vegetation in the critical zone, with a particular focus on forested catchments and agricultural areas. I’m particularly interested in how plants (trees but not only) affect the hydrological cycle and the hydrological processes at the catchment scale, and vice-versa, and how human inputs in anthropic settings (e.g, irrigation) influence tree response and sources of water uptake which in turn play a role on water stored in soil and in shallow groundwater.
 
What are your undergraduate and graduate degrees in?
I have a B.S. and M.S. in Natural Sciences from the University of Milan (Italy), with a thesis based on a phytosociological (and partially geomorphological) analysis of spruce population dynamics in an Alpine valley. So, trees were my first love. I then moved to the University of Padua (Italy) where I obtained a one-year degree on Hydrological and Geological Hazard Assessment and Mitigation followed by another M.S. in Forest and Environmental Sciences.
I have a PhD in Management of Water Resources from the same university: I pushed vegetation dynamics aside for a while and started to work on spatial and temporal patterns of soil moisture in a beautiful mountain catchment in the Italian Dolomites, under the supervision of prof. Marco Borga.

 
How did you arrive at working in/thinking about ecohydrology?
During my PhD I was trained as an experimental catchment hydrologist, and I began using environmental tracers to study catchment- and hillslope-scale runoff generation processes. I did not forget my background on trees but I tended to see precipitation, meltwater, stream water and subsurface water as the only fundamental elements of any catchment, while (evapo)transpiration was somehow a “resulting” process. Then, the rapid development of laser spectroscopy for the determination of stable isotope ratios in water, easier to operate and more affordable compared to traditional mass spectrometry, combined with a growing interest of the scientific community towards isotope-based analysis of tree water uptake pushed me to start investigating the spatial and temporal variability of water sources accessed by trees in forest and agricultural settings. These efforts are leading me to learn more, expand my knowledge and obtain a broader, more comprehensive and exciting perspective on the ecohydrological relations between vegetation and the other components of the water cycle in the critical zone.
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What do you see as an important emerging area of ecohydrology?
Although it should be implicit in the concept of ecohydrology, I think that increasing the interdisciplinary approach is a critical step to further advance ecohydrological studies. I have the feeling that quite often, at least in my experience, researchers try to expand their own research lines, interests and knowledge to include multiple analysis perspectives but a real combination of people with different expertise and backgrounds is not fully achieved. I realize this, for instance, when I try to think as a plant physiologist or a geomorphologist or an ecologist to frame some questions. But I’m not, and this affects the way I analyse data and interpret results. I believe a stronger collaboration among different but related disciplines is necessary in order to address scientific aspects of ecohydrology (including the role of anthropic pressure) with a wider angle of view and thus in a less-skewed, more solid way.

I agree with Holly (see her post below) about the scaling issue. Most studies are typically carried out at the plant or stand scale but we still need to figure out how to build models to upscale the spatio-temporal variability in plant water uptake from the plant/stand scale to the catchment/landscape scale. This is an open challenge that has relevant practical implications, for instance for water resource management in forestry and agriculture.

I like the potential (but I’m also aware of the limitations) of meta-analyses (Evaristo and McDonnell, 2017). As far as I, know this approach is quite common in medical science, especially with the aim to increase data availability and reach higher statistical power. I think this tool can have fruitful applicability in ecohydrology in order to achieve a better understanding of processes in a wide variety of environments. At the same time, I advocate the more frequent use of multi-comparison investigations (in ecohydrology as well as in catchment hydrology). Although comparative studies can be time- and money-consuming, through the analysis of differences they can go beyond understanding the behavior of individuals or single study sites and allow for a better perception of the factors that control those differences. And the factors that drive changes in the ecosystems and of their services are what we should be more interested in.
 
Do you have a favorite ecohydrology paper? Describe/explain.
It’s hard to pick just one. Considering papers that focus on the intertwined processes between water and trees, I especially like the review by Susan Brantley and co-authors (Brantley et al., 2017) who tested several hypotheses to highlight how trees, seen as biotic engines, promote soil-landscape co-evolution by acting as “builders and plumbers” of the critical zone. One of the first papers I read when I dove in on the use of isotopes to investigate sources for tree water uptake and related ecohydrological dynamics is the work by Greg Goldsmith and colleagues on ecohydrological processes in a mountain cloud forest in the tropics (Goldsmith et al., 2012). This paper, along with the already-cited and inspiring one by Dawson and Ehleringer, 1991 (I agree with Holly again!) opened my eyes on the exciting opportunities isotopes offer to explore interrelations between vegetation and hydrological processes, including still unsolved (and therefore fascinating) issues. Finally, I recommend a recent paper by Barbeta and Peñuelas, 2017: their isotope-based work underlines the importance of groundwater contribution to plant transpiration across different biomes and provides new insight about the occurrence and interpretation of the highly-discussed “two water worlds hypothesis” (McDonnell, 2014).
 
What do you do for fun (apart from ecohydrology)?
Apart from ecohydrology I do catchment hydrology, of course! Joking aside, I’m a commuter and I’m away very often. So, when at home, I try to spend as much time as possible with my wife and our two children and with our friends, preferably in the outdoors. I love cycling, hiking in the mountains, skiing, playing guitar, reading, and I’m fond of nature photography.
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