Forest-Water Interactions

The United Nations has declared 2018-2028 as the International Decade for Action on Water for Sustainable Development. This is a timely designation. In an increasingly thirsty world, the subject of forest-water interactions is of critical importance to the achievement of sustainability goals. The central underlying tenet of this book is that the hydrologic community can conduct better science and make a more meaningful impact to the world’s water crisis if scientists are: (1) better equipped to utilize new methods and harness big data from either or both high-frequency sensors and long-term research watersheds; and (2) aware of new developments in our process-based understanding of the hydrological cycle in both natural and urban settings. Accordingly, this forward-looking book delves into forest-water interactions from multiple methodological, statistical, and process-based perspectives (with some chapters featuring data sets and open-source R code), concluding with a chapter on future forest hydrology under global change. Thus, this book describes the opportunities of convergence in high-frequency sensing, big data, and open source software to catalyze more comprehensive understanding of forest-water interactions. The book will be of interest to researchers, graduate students, and advanced undergraduates in an array of disciplines, including hydrology, forestry, ecology, botany, and environmental engineering.

Delphis Levia

Prof. Dr. Levia is Chair and Professor of Ecohydrology in the Department of Geography at the University of Delaware in the United States. He holds a joint appointment in the Department of Plant & Soil Sciences. Prof. Dr. Levia received his Ph.D. in 2000 from Clark University. His research emphasizes precipitation partitioning and seeks to better understand the effects of forest canopies on hydrological and biogeochemical cycling. He employs a variety of methods ranging from microscopy to disdrometers and laser scanning methods to high-end analytical chemistry instrumentation. Prof. Levia has conducted research in a number of different countries, including the USA, Japan, Germany, Spain, and Panama. Prof. Dr. Levia has served as a Guest Professor in the Hydrospheric Atmospheric Research Center at Nagoya University (Japan), a Humboldt Fellow at Friedrich Schiller University of Jena (Germany), and a Japan Society for Promotion of Science Invitation Fellow at the Forest and Forest Products Research Institute. In addition to his international research program, Prof. Dr. Levia serves as one of the Series Editors for Springer's prestigious Ecological Studies Series and as an Associate Editor for two journals: Journal of Plant Nutrition and Soil Science (Wiley) and Hydrological Processes (Wiley). He also serves as a consultant on water resource issues, most recently for New York City. Prof. Dr. Levia is a member of many professional societies and organizations, including the International Association of Hydrological Sciences, the American Geophysical Union, and the European Geosciences Union.

Darryl-Carlyle-Moses

Darryl E. Carlyle-Moses is an Associate Professor, Program Advisor, and former Chair,Department of Geography and Environmental Studies, Thompson Rivers University, Kamloops, British Columbia, Canada. He received his Honours Bachelor of Science Degree from the University of Toronto at Mississauga in 1994 and his M.Sc. and Ph.D. from the University of Toronto in 1996 and 2002, respectively. His research interests lie within the realm of ecohydrology and micrometeorology with a focus on vegetation-atmosphere-water interactions. More specifically, Dr. Carlyle-Moses’ research aims to better understand the biotic and abiotic mechanisms that govern precipitation partitioning by vegetation canopies, to evaluate and improve upon models used to simulate these water stores and fluxes, and to determine the linkages between plant-water interactions and terrestrial hydrological processes. Increasingly, his research is geared towards the application of trees as urban green infrastructure and the potential stormwater mitigation services trees may provide. Dr. Carlyle-Moses is a member of several professional organizations including the International Association of Hydrological Sciences, the American Geophysical Union, and the European Geosciences Union.

Shin’ichi Iida

Shin'ichi Iida is a Senior Researcher, Department of Disaster Prevention, Meteorology and Hydrology, at Forestry and Forest Products Research Institute, Tsukuba, Japan. He received his Bachelor of Science Degree from the University of Tsukuba in 1998 and his M.Sc. and Ph.D. from the University of Tsukuba in 2000 and 2003, respectively. His research interests involve hydrologic processes in forest ecosystems. Dr. Iida focuses on precise measurements of the components of evapotranspiration in temperate and tropical forests, and their changes due to the succession and various forest management strategies, including thinning. Three particular foci are the evaluation of the intrastorm scale dynamics of interception process, quantification of transpiration, and calibration of both interception and transpiration measurements. Dr. Iida's research evaluates the effects of climate change on the hydrologic cycle in forested watersheds by analyzing long-term measurements of all components of evapotranspiration. He is a member of the American Geophysical Union, the Japan Geoscience Union, Japanese Association of Hydrological Sciences, Japan Society of Hydrology and Water Resources and the Japanese Forestry Society.

Beate Michalzik

Beate Michalzik is a Professor of Soil Science in the Institute of Geography at Friedrich-Schiller University Jena, Germany. She received both her Diploma in Geoecology in 1994 and her PhD in Soil ecology in 1999 from the University of Bayreuth. Her research focuses on long-term ecological monitoring, effects of ecosystem disturbance on biogeochemical cycling, mass balances of organic matter, and the role of ecosystem engineer species on ecosystem processes. Her pioneering work on organic particulate matter has led to improved understanding on the effects of stressors (especially insects and fire) on forest ecosystems. She is a member of the German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research (iDiv) Halle-Jena-Leipzig, the German Soil Science Society, the European Geosciences Union, and the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation.

Kazuki Nanko

Kazuki Nanko is a Senior Researcher, Department of Disaster Prevention, Meteorology and Hydrology, at Forestry and Forest Products Research Institute, Tsukuba, Japan. He received his Bachelor of Agriculture Degree from the University of Tokyo in 2002 and his PhD from the Graduate School of Agricultural and Life Sciences, the University of Tokyo in 2007. He concentrates on the intersection of meteorology, forestry, tree biomechanics, and soil science. Specifically, his research target is raindrop measurement by self-build disdrometers, precipitation partitioning by forest canopies, tree sway and breakage mechanisms, and soil erosion process. He has conducted research in Japan, the United States, Thailand, and Spain. He is a member of the International Association of Hydrological Sciences, the American Geophysical Union, the European Geosceinces Union, the Japanese Forestry Society, and Japan Society of Hydrology and Water Resources.

Alexander Tischer

Alexander Tischer is a research associate at the Chair of Soil Science in the Institute of Geography at Friedrich-Schiller University Jena, Germany. He studied forest sciences in Tharandt (TU Dresden, Germany) and received his Bachelor degree in 2008 and his Master degree in 2009. Since his early studies, he maintains a strong interest in plant-soil interactions in water and nutrient cycles at scales from µm to the landscape. In his PhD thesis (TU Dresden), Dr. Tischer investigated land-use change and land management effects on soil ecology with a strong focus on ecological stoichiometry and nutrient turnover processes in a tropical mountain rainforest region in Southern Ecuador. His current work aims to understand the effects of ecosystem disturbance such as fire and of forest management on ecosystem structure and functioning. Among other memberships, Dr. Tischer is a member of the German Soil Science Society and of the Association of Forest Site Ecology and Geobotany.