Tag: Hydrology

Does Carbon in Wetland Soils Go With the Flow?

by Stephanie Worley Firley, EFETAC  • 
Among the various providers of ecosystem services, forested wetlands might be the champions. With their sponge-like abilities, they supply and purify water, protect communities from flooding, offer habitat for diverse species, produce timber and other goods, and present many opportunities for recreation and general enjoyment. Hidden in wetland soils is another critically important benefit: storage…  More 

International Evapotranspiration Symposium: April 7 – 10, 2014, Raleigh, NC

by Sarah Farmer, SRS Science Delivery Group  • 
  Register now for Evapotranspiration: Challenges in Measurement and Modeling from the Leaf to the Landscape Scale and Beyond. An important part of the hydrologic water cycle is plant water use (transpiration) and evaporation from earth and ocean surfaces. Together, these two processes are called evapotranspiration. Scientists and engineers studying climate, ecosystem productivity, water use,…  More 

Finding the Nitrogen: Modeling Forest Fertilizer Runoff

by Sarah Farmer, SRS Science Delivery Group  • 
Pine forests in the southeastern United States are more productive than ever, and fertilizers can take some of the credit. But not all fertilizer goes toward plant growth. Some of it runs off into rivers and streams, where it can degrade water quality. A number of water quality models are available  to predict fertilizer runoff. A…  More 

Coweeta Receives Grant to Study Hydrology of Bioenergy Crops

by Zoe Hoyle, SRS Science Communications  • 
U.S. Forest Service Southern Research Station (SRS) Coweeta Hydrologic Laboratory (Coweeta) scientists and collaborators recently received a $972,000 grant from the USDA Agriculture and Food Research Initiative (AFRI) to study water use in loblolly pine—the most commercially important tree species in the southeastern U.S. and the primary candidate for woody bioenergy production in the region—and…  More 

Reviewing the Past to Gauge the Future

by Maureen Stuart, SRS Science Delivery Group  • 
  Effects of climate variability on forest hydrology and carbon sequestration on the Santee Experimental Forest, a new general technical report published by the U.S. Forest Service Southern Research Station (SRS), describes an assessment of long-term weather and hydrology data collected on the experimental forest over a 63-year time span. The publication is the result…  More 

Loss of Eastern Hemlock Will Affect Forest Water Use

by Sarah Farmer, SRS Science Delivery Group  • 
Eastern hemlock grows in streamside areas throughout the southern Appalachian Mountains, where it is a keystone species. Because of its dense evergreen foliage, constant year-round transpiration (loss of water from needles) rate,  and dominance in riparian and cove habitats,  eastern hemlock plays an important role in the area’s water cycle, and regulates stream flow year…  More 

Water Management : A Balancing Act

by Stephanie Worley Firley, Eastern Forest Environmental Threat Assessment Center  • 
It may come as little surprise that human activities and climate influence the volume of water in rivers, but U.S. Forest Service research is now revealing just how much. Scientists with the Eastern Forest Environmental Threat Assessment Center are examining the individual and combined effects of changing land cover, human water use, and climate through…  More 

Long-Term Data Reveals Changing Climate Trends

by Sarah Farmer, SRS Science Delivery Group  • 
Long-term data from a U.S. Forest Service experimental forest reveals that air temperatures have risen significantly since the late 1970s, while droughts are becoming more severe and frequent, and precipitation more intense and variable. The findings were recently published in the journal Hydrology Research. For almost 80 years, the main climate station at Coweeta Hydrologic Laboratory (Coweeta),…  More 

Where Does the Nitrogen from Forest Fertilizers Go?

by Claire Payne, SRS Science Delivery Group  • 
Pine plantations cover vast areas in the nearly flat, poorly drained high-water-table soils of the Atlantic Coastal Plain of the southeastern United States. Growing productive forests on these lands requires drainage and extra nitrogen from fertilizers. While most of the nitrogen from fertilizers remains in the plant-soil system, concerns exist that leached nitrogen could enter…  More 

The Water Web: More about WaSSI

by Stephanie Worley Firley, EFETAC  • 
Water quantity and quality issues affect every living thing on Earth, yet, until recently, methods for projecting possible future water supply scenarios were fairly limited. In the late 1990s, Southern Research Station (SRS) scientists participating in several national-scale assessments of climate change science and climate-related impacts discovered “a frustrating lack of landscape-scale, integrated ecosystem models from…  More