Asymmetric effects of hydroclimate extremes on eastern US tree growth: Implications on current demographic shifts and climate variability.

Forests around the world are experiencing changes due to climate variability and human land use. How these changes interact and influence the vulnerability of forests are not well understood. In the eastern United States, well-documented anthropogenic disturbances and land-use decisions, such as logging and fire suppression, have influenced forest species assemblages, leading to a demographic shift from forests dominated by xeric species to those dominated by mesic species.

The forest, the cicadas and the holey fluxes: Periodical cicada impacts on soil respiration depends on tree mycorrhizal type.

The emergence of billions of periodical cicadas affects plant and animal communities profoundly, yet little is known about cicada impacts on soil carbon fluxes. We investigated the effects of Brood X cicadas (Magicicada septendecim, M. cassinii and M.

Embedding co-production and addressing uncertainty in watershed modeling decision-support tools: successes and challenges.

Decision-support tools (DSTs) are often produced from collaborations between technical experts and stakeholders to address environmental problems and inform decision making. Studies in the past two decades have provided key insights on the use of DSTs and the importance of bidirectional information flows among technical experts and stakeholders - a process that is variously referred to as co-production, participatory modeling, structured decision making, or simply stakeholder participation. Many of these studies have elicited foundational insights for the broad field of water resources management; however, questions remain on approaches for balancing co-production with uncertainty specifically for watershed modeling decision support tools.

Drought legacies are dependent on water table depth, wood anatomy and drought timing across the eastern US.

Severe droughts can impart long-lasting legacies on forest ecosystems through lagged effects that hinder tree recovery and suppress whole-forest carbon uptake. However, the local climatic and edaphic factors that interact to affect drought legacies in temperate forests remain unknown. Here, we pair a dataset of 143 tree ring chronologies across the mesic forests of the eastern US with historical climate and local soil properties.

Natural and managed watersheds show similar responses to recent climate change.

Changes in climate are driving an intensification of the hydrologic cycle and leading to alterations of natural streamflow regimes. Human disturbances such as dams, land-cover change, and water diversions are thought to obscure climate signals in hydrologic systems. As a result, most studies of changing hydroclimatic conditions are limited to areas with natural streamflow.

MOESHA: A Genetic Algorithm for Automatic Calibration and Estimation of Parameter Uncertainty and Sensitivity of Hydrologic Models.

Characterization of the uncertainty and sensitivity of model parameters is an essential facet of hydrologic modeling. This article introduces the multi-objective evolutionary sensitivity handling algorithm (MOESHA) that combines input parameter uncertainty and sensitivity analyses with a genetic algorithm calibration routine to dynamically sample the parameter space. This novel algorithm serves as an alternative to traditional static space-sampling methods, such as stratified sampling or Latin hypercube sampling.

Climate change impacts on streamflow and subbasin-scale hydrology in the Upper Colorado River Basin.

In the Upper Colorado River Basin (UCRB), the principal source of water in the southwestern U.S., demand exceeds supply in most years, and will likely continue to rise.

Assessment of climate change impacts on hydrology and water quality with a watershed modeling approach.

The assessment of hydrologic responses to climate change is required in watershed management and planning to protect water resources and environmental quality. This study is designed to evaluate and enhance watershed modeling approach in characterizing climate change impacts on water supply and ecosystem stressors. Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT) was selected as a base model, and improved for the CO2 dependence of potential evapotranspiration and stream temperature prediction.

Sensitivity of agricultural runoff loads to rising levels of CO2 and climate change in the San Joaquin Valley watershed of California.

The Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT) was used to assess the impact of climate change on sediment, nitrate, phosphorus and pesticide (diazinon and chlorpyrifos) runoff in the San Joaquin watershed in California. This study used modeling techniques that include variations of CO(2), temperature, and precipitation to quantify these responses. Precipitation had a greater impact on agricultural runoff compared to changes in either CO(2) concentration or temperature.