Ephemeral Hydrology

Biogeochemical and community ecology responses to the wetting of non-perennial streams

Transitions between dry and wet hydrologic states are the defining characteristic of non-perennial rivers and streams, which constitute the majority of the global river network. Although past work has focused on stream drying characteristics, there …

Nonlinear trends in signatures characterizing non-perennial US streams

Stream drying patterns – including duration, timing, and dry-down rates – affect aquatic ecosystems and nutrient exports in non-perennial streams. Because hydrologic processes are often nonlinear, changes in drying may also be nonlinear, but analyses …

Exploring drivers of groundwater recharge at Konza Prairie (Flint Hills region, Kansas, USA) using transfer function noise models

Intermittent streams, which lack continuous surface water flow throughout the year, constitute a large proportion of global waterways and influence downstream water quality and quantity. Stream intermittency has been increasing in the Great Plains …

Changes in Water Age During Dry-Down of a Non-Perennial Stream

Non-perennial streams, which lack year-round flow, are widespread globally. Identifying the sources of water that sustain flow in non-perennial streams is necessary to understand their potential impacts on downstream water resources, and guide water …

Predicting Streamflow Duration From Crowd-Sourced Flow Observations

Streamflow duration is important for aquatic ecosystems and assigning stream protection status. This study predicts streamflow duration, represented as the fraction of time with flow each year, using a combination of sensor data and crowd-sourced …

How low can you go? Widespread challenges in measuring low stream discharge and a path forward

Low flows pose unique challenges for accurately quantifying streamflow. Current field methods are not optimized to measure these conditions, which in turn, limits research and management. In this essay, we argue that the lack of methods for measuring …

Non-perennial stream networks as directed acyclic graphs: The R-package streamDAG

Many conventional stream network metrics are poorly suited to non-perennial streams, which can vary substantially in space and time. To address this issue, we considered non-perennial stream networks as directed acyclic graphs (DAGs). DAG metrics …

Causes, Responses, and Implications of Anthropogenic versus Natural Flow Intermittence in River Networks

Rivers that do not flow year-round are the predominant type of running waters on Earth. Despite a burgeoning literature on natural flow intermittence (NFI), knowledge about the hydrological causes and ecological effects of human-induced, …

Alternative stable states and hydrological regime shifts in a large intermittent river

Non-perennial rivers and streams make up over half the global river network and are becoming more widespread. Transitions from perennial to non-perennial flow are a threshold-type change that can lead to alternative stable states in aquatic …

Assessing placement bias of the global river gauge network

Knowing where and when rivers flow is paramount to managing freshwater ecosystems. Yet stream gauging stations are distributed sparsely across rivers globally and may not capture the diversity of fluvial network properties and anthropogenic …