Geology topics

Enrique R. Vivoni

Publications and source records attributed to Enrique R. Vivoni.

5 recordsLinked to original sources

USGS2026

Hydrologic dynamics of ephemerally flooded playas in a dryland environment

Ephemerally flooded playas are common in the southwestern United States and globally in drylands. Often formed in closed basins, playas are depressions which inundate infrequently from local precipitation and streamflow produced near the playa or from upland areas. Few studies have quantified the hydrologic connectivity between upland catchments and playas using observations. Here, we used rain gauge-corrected precipitation from weather radar and water level measurements in 18 playas of the Chihuahuan Desert to identify precipitation thresholds leading to playa inundation over a 6.4-year period. Geospatial data sets on topography, soil properties, and vegetation cover were employed to determine the controls on inundation. Only 9.4% of all precipitation events above 1 mm led to inundation, with 69.8% of all inundations occurring during the North American monsoon (NAM, July-September). Mean and standard deviations (Std) of runoff ratios at all playas were 2.74 ± 4.08% and 3.29 ± 5.19% for annual and NAM periods. At the annual scale, playa inundation occurred when mean precipitation thresholds of 18.3 ± 7.5 mm (event total) and 12.0 ± 4.5 mm/hr (60-min intensity) were exceeded. Across all playas, inundation occurrence and volume were related most strongly to precipitation metrics and catchment area, with secondary controls of soil and terrain properties. The explanatory power of the derived regressions describing the inundation response across the playas were significantly improved when considering their geological origin. As a result, the inundation response classification system could be applied to ephemeral playas in other arid and semiarid landscapes.

New Mexico↗

USGS2018

Shrubland carbon sink depends upon winter water availability in the warm deserts of North America

Global-scale studies suggest that dryland ecosystems dominate an increasing trend in the magnitude and interannual variability of the land CO 2 sink. However, such model-based analyses are poorly constrained by measured CO 2 exchange in open shrublands, which is the most common global land cover type, covering ∼14% of Earth’s surface. Here we evaluate how the amount and seasonal timing of water availability regulate CO 2 exchange between shrublands and the atmosphere. We use eddy covariance data from six US sites across the three warm deserts of North America with observed ranges in annual precipitation of ∼100–400mm, annual temperatures of 13–18°C, and records of 2–8 years (33 site-years in total). The Chihuahuan, Sonoran and Mojave Deserts present gradients in both mean annual precipitation and its seasonal distribution between the wet-winter Mojave Desert and the wet-summer Chihuahuan Desert. We found that due to hydrologic losses during the wettest summers in the Sonoran and Chihuahuan Deserts, evapotranspiration (ET) was a better metric than precipitation of water available to drive dryland CO 2 exchange. In contrast with recent synthesis studies across diverse dryland biomes, we found that NEP could not be directly predicted from ET due to wintertime decoupling of the relationship between ecosystem respiration (R eco ) and gross ecosystem productivity (GEP). Ecosystem water use efficiency (WUE=GEP/ET) did not differ between winter and summer. Carbon use efficiency (CUE=NEP/GEP), however, was greater in winter because R eco returned a smaller fraction of carbon to the atmosphere (23% of GEP) than in summer (77%). Combining the water-carbon relations found here with historical precipitation since 1980, we estimate that lower average winter precipitation during the 21st century reduced the net carbon sink of the three deserts by an average of 6.8TgC yr 1 . Our results highlight that winter precipitation is critical to the annual carbon balance of these warm desert shrublands.

Agricultural and Forest Meteorology↗

USGS2017

Ecohydrological role of biological soil crusts across a gradient in levels of development

Though biological soil crusts (biocrusts) form abundant covers in arid and semiarid regions, their competing effects on soil hydrologic conditions are rarely accounted for in models. This study presents the modification of a soil water balance model to account for the presence of biocrusts at different levels of development (LOD) and their impact on one-dimensional hydrologic processes during warm and cold seasons. The model is developed, tested, and applied to study the hydrologic controls of biocrusts in context of a long-term manipulative experiment equipped with meteorological and soil moisture measurements in a Colorado Plateau ecosystem near Moab, Utah. The climate manipulation treatments resulted in distinct biocrust communities, and model performance with respect to soil moisture was assessed in experimental plots with varying LOD as quantified through a field-based roughness index ( RI ). Model calibration and testing yielded excellent comparisons to observations and smooth variations of biocrust parameters with RI approximated through simple regressions. The model was then used to quantify how LOD affects soil infiltration, evapotranspiration, and runoff under calibrated conditions and in simulation experiments with gradual modifications in biocrust porosity and hydraulic conductivity. Simulation results show that highly developed biocrusts modulate soil moisture nonlinearly with LOD by altering soil infiltration and buffering against evapotranspiration losses, with small impacts on runoff. The nonlinear and threshold variations of the soil water balance in the presence of biocrusts of varying LOD helps explain conflicting outcomes of various field studies and sheds light on the ecohydrological role of biocrusts in arid and semiarid ecosystems.

Utah↗

USGS2016

An overview of current applications, challenges, and future trends in distributed process-based models in hydrology

Process-based hydrological models have a long history dating back to the 1960s. Criticized by some as over-parameterized, overly complex, and difficult to use, a more nuanced view is that these tools are necessary in many situations and, in a certain class of problems, they are the most appropriate type of hydrological model. This is especially the case in situations where knowledge of flow paths or distributed state variables and/or preservation of physical constraints is important. Examples of this include: spatiotemporal variability of soil moisture, groundwater flow and runoff generation, sediment and contaminant transport, or when feedbacks among various Earth’s system processes or understanding the impacts of climate non-stationarity are of primary concern. These are situations where process-based models excel and other models are unverifiable. This article presents this pragmatic view in the context of existing literature to justify the approach where applicable and necessary. We review how improvements in data availability, computational resources and algorithms have made detailed hydrological simulations a reality. Avenues for the future of process-based hydrological models are presented suggesting their use as virtual laboratories, for design purposes, and with a powerful treatment of uncertainty.

Journal of Hydrology↗

USGS2015

Legacy effects in linked ecological-soil-geomorphic systems of drylands

A legacy effect refers to the impacts that previous conditions have on current processes or properties. Legacies have been recognized by many disciplines, from physiology and ecology to anthropology and geology. Within the context of climatic change, ecological legacies in drylands (eg vegetative patterns) result from feedbacks between biotic, soil, and geomorphic processes that operate at multiple spatial and temporal scales. Legacy effects depend on (1) the magnitude of the original phenomenon, (2) the time since the occurrence of the phenomenon, and (3) the sensitivity of the ecological–soil–geomorphic system to change. Here we present a conceptual framework for legacy effects at short-term (days to months), medium-term (years to decades), and long-term (centuries to millennia) timescales, which reveals the ubiquity of such effects in drylands across research disciplines.

Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment↗