Dr. Russell Scott is a Research Hydrologist at the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) Agricultural Research Service (ARS) Southwest Watershed Research Center in  Tucson, Arizona.

Dr. Rachel Gabor is an Assistant Professor in the School of Environment and Natural Resources at The Ohio State University.   @RiverChem

Dr. ​Kim Quesnel is a Postdoctoral Research Scholar at Stanford University with the Woods Institute for the Environment and the Bill Lane Center for the American West.  @kimquesnel

 Dr. ​Ryan Emanuel is an Associate Professor and University Faculty Scholar at North Carolina State University.  ​@WaterPotential

Dr. ​Edoardo Daly is an Associate Professor in the Department of Civil Engineering at Monash University, Melbourne, Australia.  

Dr. Rafael Rosolem is a Senior Lecturer in Water and Environmental Engineering at the University of Bristol.  @rosolemh2o

What does ecohydrology mean to you?
I see ecohydrology as the observationally-driven discipline (but not exclusively as there are very interesting and key modeling studies in the area) that help us understand how water interacts with natural ecosystems. I particularly like the strong emphases on the hypothesis-based approach in ecohydrology always focusing on understanding processes and controls.
 
What are your undergraduate and graduate degrees in?
I received my BSc degree in Meteorology (2002) while carrying out field research in a sugarcane plantation and woodland savannah in Sao Paulo state. My MSc degree is in Agricultural Systems Ecology (2005) also at the University of Sao Paulo and my project was about the impact of regional Amazon deforestation due to planned road paving on the hydrological cycle using an atmospheric model. I have a PhD degree in Hydrology at the University of Arizona (2010) and I studied how to improve land models using in situ observations from flux towers in the Amazon basin.
 
How did you arrive at working in/thinking about ecohydrology?
During my first undergraduate year, I was very fortunate to get involved with fieldwork. The research in my department tended to focus more on modeling studies (numerical weather prediction and regional atmospheric modeling) but I found my way to go out and start taking measurements of soil moisture and soil respiration in sugarcane and woodland sites maintained by my undergraduate advisor. This was also my first interaction with literature focusing on ecology and biosphere-atmosphere interactions and I absolutely loved it! Knowing that the land could essentially influence the meteorology of a region blew my mind, and after that I decided that was going to be my research area of interest. The hydrology side came a few years later when working on my MSc research which looked at all components of the regional hydrological cycle affected by the Amazon deforestation. Now, given the background I acquired over the years I consider myself as an ecohydrometeorologist (it is even funnier when saying that to a family member).
 
What do you see as an important emerging area of ecohydrology?
I can highlight two areas: Big data analysis and clever ways to design and maintain experimental facilities in the long-term! We are now collecting an unimaginable volume of environmental data with new technologies from drones to remote sensing satellites. In addition, traditional catchment hydrology and meteorological modeling applications have been converging in the recent past allowing for high- (or even used hyper-) resolution simulations covering countries, continents, and even the whole Earth, requiring more and more datasets. Making sense of all these data will be challenging: looking for patterns or controlling factors in order to better understand key processes related to how water is stored or leaves each component of the hydrological cycle. On the other hand, the complexity of such hydrometeorological models sometimes undermines the detection of clear environmental controls (too many processes happening simultaneously) and I still believe that simplified models (simple hypothesis-based and specific) are useful tools, especially when reaching audiences outside academia. We, ecohydrologists, will also need to come up with clever ideas for regional- and even continental-scale long-term monitoring especially these days when available funding is limited for experimental research. Maybe thinking of network of networks, citizen’s network, mobile observational platforms that have autonomy to decide where and when to go and collected data depending on the event happening.
 
Do you have a favorite ecohydrology paper?  Describe/explain.
I have two papers that really showed me the importance of ecology in hydrology and meteorology. I am not sure whether they would be classified as ecohydrology papers but they certainly showed the links between the hydrological components and the biosphere. I was still an undergraduate student when I first read these papers. The first one is the paper by Nobre et al. (1991) showing what happens to the hydroclimate over the entire Amazon basin if the rainforest is completely replaced by pasturelands.  I like to see how the land cover maps were coarsely prescribed at that time and reading it always reminds me how much progress we have made to be able to monitor and predict the dynamics of the basin at a much higher spatial resolution now. The other one is a two-part paper by Sellers et al. (1996a,1996b) and describes the Simple Biosphere Model version 2 (SiB2). I spent so much time reading these papers the first time, to really understand how biosphere and atmosphere interact at the land surface; the description of the stomatal conductance parameterization is my favorite section of the paper, where I could really see the contribution from biology and ecology to hydrology and meteorology.
 
What do you do for fun (apart from ecohydrology)?
I absolutely love spending time with my 9 year old daughter on weekends. We go for bike rides or parks, and sometimes play board games at home (it can get a bit rainy in the UK). I also go for nature or coastal walks with my family on weekends (the UK countryside and coast is really beautiful). I have recently start enjoying more and more reading manga and watching Japanese anime, and occasionally I play my drums (big Ramones and Dave Matthews Band fan). I also enjoy meditating and playing old video games (I’ve got a classic NES at home which is fun and always brings good memories).

Dr. Mallory Barnes in an Assistant Professor at Indiana University Bloomington in the O’Neill School of Public and Environmental Affairs.

hat does ecohydrology mean to you?
Ecohydrology explores interactions between the biosphere and the hydrosphere and associated feedbacks and fluxes, To me, ecohydrology is an exciting and highly interdisciplinary field, where scientists with diverse backgrounds, skills, and research interests can collaborate, interact, and leverage each other’s strengths to move science forward. The variety of thoughtful and multifaceted definitions of ecohydrology provided by others in this series exemplifies the reason I feel at home in this field. Ecohydrology provides both a theoretical framework to integrate my diverse research interests and connections with scientists with different and complementary perspectives.

What are your undergraduate and graduate degrees in?
My undergraduate degree was in Zoology from UW-Madison, where I studied evolution of stickleback fish. My Master’s was in Natural Resource and Environmental Management at the University of Hawaii at Manoa, where I focused on satellite remote sensing of cloud cover and evapotranspiration modeling. My PhD was in Watershed Management and Ecohydrology from the University of Arizona, where I explored dryland carbon uptake across spatial and temporal scales using remote sensing and fluxes.

How did you arrive at working in/thinking about ecohydrology?
My path toward ecohydrology reminds me of the quote from the Dalai Lama:  “Remember that sometimes not getting what you want is a wonderful stroke of luck.” I arrived at the University of Hawaii at Manoa with plans to refocus my interest in animals towards applied wildlife research. I even had a project planned to study an elusive and mysterious colony of feral wallabies (yes, wallabies!) on Oʻahu. Alas, the days of funding for descriptive studies of naturalist oddities are over, and I was back at square one.  Dr. Tomoaki Miura generously took me under his wing and invited me to be part of a project lead by Dr. Tom Giambelluca to model evapotranspiration over the Hawaiian Islands. Dr. Miura taught me the remote sensing and coding skills that became the foundation for my future research career. I then took a position under Dr. Susan Moran at the USDA Agricultural Research Service, who gave me a giant stack of scientific manuscripts to read on hydrology, dryland ecohydrology, and vegetation ecology when I first arrived to Tucson that provided the background and motivation for much of my dissertation research. My PhD co-advisor Dr. Dave Breshears’ Dryland Ecohydrology class was my first formal study of ecohydrology. At first, I felt overwhelmed by the both the breadth of topics and techniques relevant to this community, and the “messiness”, inherent in such interdisciplinary and complex problems. As I continued through the course however, I realized that such complexities are opportunities to advance our understanding of important questions, and I don’t have to personally know everything, that’s what collaborators are for!

What do you see as an important emerging area of ecohydrology?
Developing new quantitative approaches to extract insights from the deluge of environmental data available from satellites and coordinated sensor networks is what excites me most about ecohydrology now. Due to advances in sensors, networks, and other infrastructure, vast quantities of data on biological, physical, and environmental properties are now accessible on the Internet. Combined with an ethos of open science and data sharing, such advances in data availability have the capacity to transform ecohydrology. In particular, I am interested in assessing the impacts of climate change on ecosystems across spatial and temporal scales by integrating data from heterogenous sources in the context of interdisciplinary research.

Do you have a favorite ecohydrology paper?  Describe/explain.
In ecohydrology, soil is the interface between the hydrosphere and the biosphere, and  soil moisture is a critical variable that drives key ecological and hydrological processes. Despite thinking a lot about soil and soil moisture, I was unaware of the ubiquitous and diverse communities of living organisms in arid and semi-arid soils until I read Jayne Belnap’s 2003 Paper in Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment. Biological soil crusts are incredibly fragile, invisible to the untrained eye, and are crucial to the health and productivity of desert ecosystems. At the beginning of this paper, I didn’t know what biological soil crusts were, and by the end, I was both fascinated by their multifaced role in ecosystems and wholly convinced they should be of top conservation priority. This paper exemplifies excellent scientific writing – it is clear, concise, holds the reader’s interest throughout, and a delight to read. Also, it turned me into a militant trail stayer-onner - don’t bust the crust!
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What do you do for fun (apart from ecohydrology)?
I love to hike, especially with my partner and dog. I am rediscovering my love of water activities after leaving the desert including swimming, canoeing, stand-up paddling, and waterskiing. I love games (board, card, and video) and trivia.  I also have been enjoying going to opera, ballet and other musical performances put on by IU’s renowned Jacobs School of Music. 

Dr. Simon Zwieback was a post doctoral scholar in the Department of Geography, Environment and Geomatics at the University of Guelph, Ontario, Canada.  He is now with the Geophysical Institute & Alaska Satellite Facility at the University of Fairbanks, Alaska.

Dr. Gabriel (Gaby) Katul is a Professor in the Nicholas School of the Environment at Duke University.

What does ecohydrology mean to you?
Ecohydrology is one branch of hydrology, which is the science that deals with the occurrence, distribution, movement, and properties of water on earth. The ‘eco’ in ecohydrology aims to delineate the stores and movement of water most pertinent to ecological processes.

What are your undergraduate and graduate degrees in?
My undergraduate degree (BE) was in civil engineering from the American University of Beirut (in 1988) with emphasis on structural engineering.  My Masters of Science (MS) degree was in agricultural engineering from Oregon State University (in 1990), whereas my PhD degree was in Hydrological Sciences from University of California in Davis (in 1993).

How did you arrive at working in/thinking about ecohydrology?
Mainly during my MS thesis work, which focused on crop water requirements, evapotranspiration, irrigation systems design, soil water movement, and root-water uptake.  This work brought into focus connections between physical and biological processes distributed among several established disciplines such as agronomy, micrometeorology, soil physics, and engineering.         

What do you see as an important emerging area of ecohydrology?
This is a tough question because the ‘interface’ between what is known and what is unknown remains diffuse as expected in scientific disciplines that are still in their embryonic state.  Over the past 25 years, it has become apparent that ‘ecological sciences’ are perhaps driving the ‘big science questions’ whereas hydrology is providing the mathematical machinery and theoretical/numerical tactics to tackle them.  My own biases are water movement in the soil-plant-atmosphere system.  As a civil engineer, I remain fascinated by the fact that much of the plant biomass is supporting a number of hydraulic networks that move water and nutrients around without pumping.  This recognition opens up the possibility of using ‘nature’ to learn and perhaps inspire the engineering of new ways to move fluids with minimal energy expenditures.  For this reason, I continue to be interested in how xylem hydraulics, sugar transport in the phloem, optimality theories, water delivery to the rhizosphere, water vapor movement by a turbulent atmosphere, etc… can all be combined together to understand whole plant responses to water stress on short-time scales, and emerging plant water usage strategies on the long time scales.  This is a problem that requires understanding network theory (especially networks on networks), fluid mechanics at low and high Reynolds number, micro-fluidics, osmoregulation and front propagation, cavitation, long-range mass transport, statistical mechanics, ecophysiology – and an engineering intuition about connections between structure and function.  Hence, it remains a problem that stimulates the study of new topics spanning mathematics, physics, biology, and optimal designs in engineering.   It is also a great gym to train graduate students because, like biology where ‘lab rotations’ are integral to a curriculum – ecohydrology offers numerous ‘problem rotations’ that expose students to diverse experimental, theoretical and data analytic methods.     

Do you have a favorite ecohydrology paper?  Describe/explain.
Again, this is a tough one.  From the plant perspective and my learning how to combine optimality theories with physical and physiological laws to describe stomatal kinetics – I would rank the 1978 paper by Ian Cowan high on the list:
Cowan, I. R. "Stomatal behaviour and environment." In Advances in botanical research, vol. 4, pp. 117-228. Academic Press, 1978.
From the plant-atmosphere interaction perspective, the work by Monin and Obukhov (1954) shaped micrometeorology and its implications to ecohydrology (especially for measuring and modeling water fluxes using micrometeorological methods.
Monin, A. S. and Obukhov, A. M.: 1954, ‘Osnovnye zakonomernosti turbulentnogo pere-meshivanija v prizemnom sloe atmosfery (Basic Laws of Turbulent Mixing in the Atmosphere Near the Ground)’, Trudy geofiz. inst. AN SSSR24(151), 163–187.

What do you do for fun (apart from ecohydrology)?
Reading and hiking though not always in ​this order.