Publications by authors named "G Destouni"

Water on land is essential for all societal, ecosystem, and planetary health aspects and conditions, and all life as we know it. Many disciplines consider and model similar terrestrial water phenomena and processes, but comparisons and consistent validations are lacking for the datasets used by various science communities for different world parts, scales, and applications. Here, we present a new global data synthesis that includes and harmonises four comparative datasets for main terrestrial water fluxes and storage changes, and the catchment-wise water balance closure they imply for the 30-year period 1980-2010 in 1561 non-overlapping hydrological catchments around the world.

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Waterborne nutrient loads to downstream ecosystems integrate contributions from both active and legacy sources. Effective mitigation of nutrient pollution and eutrophication around the world requires distinction of these, largely unknown, relative load contributions. Here, the active and legacy contributions to nitrogen and phosphorus loads are distinguished in numerous streams and associated hydrological catchments of Australia, China, Sweden, and USA.

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Article Synopsis
  • Terrestrial ecosystem respiration is heavily influenced by temperature, creating a positive feedback loop that contributes to global warming, but this effect is moderated by water availability.
  • The study analyzes CO flux measurements from 212 sites worldwide to understand how temperature and precipitation interact to affect ecosystem respiration.
  • Findings indicate that there is a threshold of precipitation which determines whether respiration is temperature-limited or water-limited, suggesting that expanding water-limited areas due to climate change could weaken the positive feedback of respiratory processes on global warming.
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Climate sensitivity of infectious diseases is discussed in many studies. A quantitative basis for distinguishing and predicting the disease impacts of climate and other environmental and anthropogenic driver-pressure changes, however, is often lacking. To assess research effort and identify possible key gaps that can guide further research, we here apply a scoping review approach to two widespread infectious diseases: Lyme disease (LD) as a vector-borne and cryptosporidiosis as a water-borne disease.

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Legacy pollutants are increasingly proposed as possible reasons for widespread failures to improve water quality, despite the implementation of stricter regulations and mitigation measures. This study investigates this possibility, using multi-catchment data and relatively simple, yet mechanistically-based, source distinction relationships between water discharges and chemical concentrations and loads. The relationships are tested and supported by the available catchment data.

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