ecohydrology – Geobites

August 11, 2021August 11, 2021

Landscapes get depressed too: limestone depressions pattern a wetland landscape

Aerial view of the Big Cypress National Preserve

Feature Image: Limestone depressions cover the landscape in the Big Cypress National Preserve in Florida, USA. (C) Google.

Article: Competition Among Limestone Depressions Leads to Self‐Organized Regular Patterning on a Flat Landscape
Authors: Dong, X., Murray, A. B., & Heffernan, J. B.

Patterns are abundant in nature, from evenly spaced termite mounds and vegetation patches to repeating series of ridges and valleys to sand dunes. The questions of why these patterns are so uniform and why they are found in disparate settings has been the subject of intense scientific interest over the last decades. Mathematical tools have given scientists the ability to study these “complex systems,” where behavior of the whole system emerges from interactions between smaller parts. While many different systems have been studied, recently researchers from the Duke University and the University of California at Davis investigated a patterned landscape with mysterious origins: the large, evenly spaced depressions in limestone bedrock that cover nearly 3000 square kilometers of the Big Cypress National Preserve in the Florida Everglades.

June 3, 2021May 27, 2021

Wet Feet? No problem: sandy humid forests grow best with access to groundwater

Feature Image: Pine forest in Governor Thompson State Park, WI, USA. Yinan Chen, Public Domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Article: Groundwater subsidizes tree growth and transpiration in sandy humid forests
Authors: D. M. Ciruzzi and S. P. Loheide

Drought is often in the news these days, especially in places with arid and semi-arid climates where water is already scarce. While ecosystems have adapted over millennia to cope with dry climates and seasonal droughts, the increasing intensity and frequency of drought due to climate change and human demand for water can pose significant threats to ecosystem health and survival.

December 22, 2020December 31, 2020

Looking below ground for secrets to drought resilience

Featured image: Oak savanna near the Santa Ynez mountains in California. Clyde Frogg, public domain.

Paper: Low Subsurface Water Storage Capacity Relative to Annual Rainfall Decouples Mediterranean Plant Productivity and Water Use From Rainfall Variability

Authors: Hahm, W. J., Dralle, D. N., Rempe, D. M., Bryk, A. B., Thompson, S. E., Dawson, T. E., & Dietrich, W. E.

Between 2011 and 2016, a severe drought killed over 100 million trees in California. However, not all places responded to this drought in the same way. In some locations, trees and other plants seemed hardly affected, while in other places mortality was widespread. What caused this difference? In a 2019 study, Hahm and colleagues explored the role that water storage in ecosystems has on their resilience to drought. With extreme droughts becoming more common due to climate change, understanding why certain areas are more vulnerable is important for making predictions and improving forest management.