Highlight articles

Changing suspended sediment in United States rivers and streams: linking sediment trends to changes in land use/cover, hydrology and climate

Between 1992 and 2012, concentrations of suspended sediment decreased at about 60 % of 137 US stream sites, with increases at only 17 % of sites. Sediment trends were primarily attributed to changes in land management, but streamflow changes also contributed to these trends at > 50 % of sites. At many sites, decreases in sediment occurred despite small-to-moderate increases in the amount of anthropogenic land use, suggesting sediment reduction activities across the US may be seeing some success.

Time-lapse monitoring of root water uptake using electrical resistivitytomography and mise-à-la-masse: a vineyard infiltration experiment

SOIL
DOI 10.5194/soil-6-95-2020
17 March 2020

The use of non-invasive geophysical imaging of root system processes is of increasing interest to study soil–plant interactions. The experiment focused on the behaviour of grapevine plants during a controlled infiltration experiment. The combination of the mise-à-la-masse (MALM) method, a variation of the classical electrical tomography map (ERT), for which the current is transmitted directly into the stem, holds the promise of being able to image root distribution.

Temperature controls production but hydrology regulates export of dissolved organic carbon at the catchment scale

Lateral carbon fluxes from terrestrial to aquatic systems remain central uncertainties in determining ecosystem carbon balance. This work explores how temperature and hydrology control production and export of dissolved organic carbon (DOC) at the catchment scale. Results illustrate the asynchrony of DOC production, controlled by temperature, and export, governed by flow paths; concentration–discharge relationships are determined by the relative contribution of shallow versus groundwater flow.

TRAPPIST-1 Habitable Atmosphere Intercomparison (THAI):motivations and protocol version 1.0

Atmospheric characterization of rocky exoplanets orbiting within the habitable zone of nearby M dwarf stars is around the corner with the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), expected to be launch in 2021.
Global climate models (GCMs) are powerful tools to model exoplanet atmospheres and to predict their habitability. However, intrinsic differences between the models can lead to various predictions. This paper presents an experiment protocol to evaluate these differences.

The millennium-old hydrogeology textbook The Extraction of Hidden Waters by the Persian mathematician and engineer Abubakr Mohammad Karaji (953 CE–1029 CE)

We revisit and shed light on the textbook The Extraction of Hidden Waters by the Persian mathematician and engineer Abubakr Mohammad Karaji. Ground-breaking ideas and descriptions of hydrological and hydrogeological perceptions such as components of the hydrological cycle, groundwater quality and driving factors for groundwater flow were presented in the book. We speculate that Karaji’s book is the first of its kind to provide a construction and maintenance manual for an engineering project.

Surface water as a cause of land degradation from dryland salinity

Secondary dryland salinity is a global land degradation issue. Our understanding of causal processes is adapted from wet and hydrologically connected landscapes and concludes that low end-of-catchment runoff indicates land clearing alters water balance in favour of increased infiltration and rising groundwater that bring salts to the surface causing salinity. This study shows surface flows play an important role in causing valley floor recharge and dryland salinity in low-gradient landscapes.

Variations in soil chemical and physical properties explain basin-wideAmazon forest soil carbon concentrations

SOIL
DOI 10.5194/soil-6-53-2020
20 February 2020

Amazon soils hold as much carbon © as is contained in the vegetation. In this work we sampled soils across 8 different Amazonian countries to try to understand which soil properties control current Amazonian soil C concentrations. We confirm previous knowledge that highly developed soils hold C through clay content interactions but also show a previously unreported mechanism of soil C stabilization in the younger Amazonian soil types which hold C through aluminium organic matter interactions.

Machine learning and soil sciences: a review aided by machine learning tools

SOIL
DOI 10.5194/soil-6-35-2020
13 February 2020

The application of machine learning (ML) has shown an accelerated adoption in soil sciences. It is a difficult task to manually review all papers on the application of ML. This paper aims to provide a review of the application of ML aided by topic modelling in order to find patterns in a large collection of publications. The objective is to gain insight into the applications and to discuss research gaps. We found 12 main topics and that ML methods usually perform better than traditional ones.

Global catchment modelling using World-Wide HYPE (WWH), open data, andstepwise parameter estimation

How far can we reach in predicting river flow globally, using integrated catchment modelling and open global data? For the first time, a catchment model was applied world-wide, covering the entire globe with a relatively high resolution. The results show that stepwise calibration provided better performance than traditional modelling of the globe. The study highlights that open data and models are crucial to advance hydrological sciences by sharing knowledge and enabling transparent evaluation.

An urban ecohydrological model to quantify the effect of vegetation on urban climate and hydrology (UT&C v1.0)

We developed a novel urban ecohydrological model (UT&C v1.0) that is able to account for the effects of different plant types on the urban climate and hydrology, as well as the effects of the urban environment on plant well-being and performance. UT&C performs well when compared against energy flux measurements in three cities in different climates (Singapore, Melbourne, Phoenix) and can be used to assess urban climate mitigation strategies that aim at increasing or changing urban green cover.

HS Hydrological Sciences Highlight articles

Highlight articles

Changing suspended sediment in United States rivers and streams: linking sediment trends to changes in land use/cover, hydrology and climate

Time-lapse monitoring of root water uptake using electrical resistivitytomography and mise-à-la-masse: a vineyard infiltration experiment

Temperature controls production but hydrology regulates export of dissolved organic carbon at the catchment scale

TRAPPIST-1 Habitable Atmosphere Intercomparison (THAI):motivations and protocol version 1.0

The millennium-old hydrogeology textbook The Extraction of Hidden Waters by the Persian mathematician and engineer Abubakr Mohammad Karaji (953 CE–1029 CE)

Surface water as a cause of land degradation from dryland salinity

Variations in soil chemical and physical properties explain basin-wideAmazon forest soil carbon concentrations

Machine learning and soil sciences: a review aided by machine learning tools

Global catchment modelling using World-Wide HYPE (WWH), open data, andstepwise parameter estimation

An urban ecohydrological model to quantify the effect of vegetation on urban climate and hydrology (UT&C v1.0)

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