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Ecohydrology of water-limited environments: A scientific vision
Earth and Environmental Sciences Division, Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos, New Mexico, USA
Rangeland Ecology and Management Department, Texas A&M University, College Station, Texas, USA
School of Natural Resources, University of Arizona, Tucson, Arizona, USA
School of Natural Resources, Institute for the Study of Planet Earth, and Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of Arizona, Tucson, Arizona, USA
Department of Biology, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, New Mexico, USA
Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Pennsylvania State University, University Park, Pennsylvania, USA
Earth and Environmental Sciences Division, Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos, New Mexico, USA
Department of Earth and Environmental Science, New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology, Socorro, New Mexico, USA
Bureau of Economic Geology, University of Texas at Austin, Austin, Texas, USA
Department of Earth and Environmental Science, New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology, Socorro, New Mexico, USA
Water-limited environments occupy about half of the Earth's land surface and contain some of the fastest growing population centers in the world. Scarcity or variable distributions of water and nutrients make these environments highly sensitive to change. Given the importance of water-limited environments and the impacts of increasing demands on water supplies and other natural resources, this paper highlights important societal problems and scientific challenges germane to these environments and presents a vision on how to accelerate progress. We argue that improvements in our fundamental understanding of the links between hydrological, biogeochemical, and ecological processes are needed, and the way to accomplish this is by fostering integrated, interdisciplinary approaches to problem solving and hypothesis testing through place-based science. Such an ecohydrological approach will create opportunities to develop new methodologies and ways of thinking about these complex environmental systems and help us improve forecasts of environmental change.
Received 25 March 2005; accepted 13 April 2006; published 20 June 2006.
Citation: (2006), Ecohydrology of water-limited environments: A scientific vision, Water Resour. Res., 42, W06302, doi:10.1029/2005WR004141.
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