Examination of aerial diatom flushing across watersheds in Luxembourg, Oregon and Slovakia for tracing episodic hydrological connectivity

Pfister, Laurent; Wetzel, Carlos E.; Martínez‐Carreras, Núria; Iffly, Jean François; Klaus, Julian; Holko, Ladislav; McDonnell, Jeffrey J.

doi:10.1515/johh-2015-0031

Cited by 8 publications

(10 citation statements)

References 42 publications

(43 reference statements)

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“…This exploratory work confirmed that terrestrial diatoms could be flushed from their terrestrial habitats to the stream—showing that diatoms can be used as tracers of the onset/cessation of surface hydrological connectivity. That initial work was followed up and confirmed by further research and sampling campaigns in experimental catchments located in Oregon and Slovakia—with contrasted physiographic and climatic conditions …”

Section: A Vision For Terrestrial Diatoms In Catchment Hydrology Researchmentioning

confidence: 78%

Terrestrial diatoms as tracers in catchment hydrology: a review

et al. 2017

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Diatoms are remarkable organisms. They are present in almost all habitats containing water (e.g., lakes, streams, soils, bark) and rank among the most common algal groups in both freshwaters and marine ecosystems. The ubiquitous character of aquatic diatoms has triggered countless applications as environmental tracers for studies in water quality, paleoclimate reconstruction and sediment tracing. However, diatoms also occur in the terrestrial environment. It is this plethora of diatom life-forms that has recently triggered interest in their use as tracers of hydrological processes. The use of diatoms in catchment hydrology has been very limited. Part of the reason is that until recently, the taxonomy and ecology of terrestrial diatom assemblages were largely unknown. However, in the past decade, much work has been done to quantify terrestrial diatom reservoir size, dynamics, and potential depletion following precipitation events. Therefore, such terrestrial diatoms now hold promise for use in catchment hydrology-for tracing runoff flow sources and pathways across a wide range of spatial scales. Here we review the literature on terrestrial diatoms and describe the various sampling protocols that have been designed and tested for specific applications in hydrological processes research. We review and summarize the work on terrestrial diatom reservoir characterization, transport mechanisms and pathways to show how such diatom-based tracer work might be possible at the catchment scale for rainfall-runoff studies. Finally, we present a vision for future work that might take advantage of terrestrial diatoms in catchment hydrology and discuss the main challenges going forward. © 2017 The Authors. WIREs Water published by Wiley Periodicals, Inc. How to cite this article:WIREs Water 2017Water , 4:e1241. doi: 10.1002Water /wat2.1241 INTRODUCTION D iatoms (Bacillariophyta) are present in almost all habitats containing water (e.g., lakes, streams, soils, litter, bark). They count among the most common algal groups in both freshwaters and marine ecosystems. 1 Despite their microscopic size (10-200 microns), 2 diatoms generate an impressive amount of carbon through photosynthesis: almost as much as all rainforests combined. 3 Identification of diatoms date back to the early 1700s as noted by Round et al. 1 Decades later, Otto Friedrich Müller published the first description of a diatom in 1783 (Vibrio paxillifer ≡ Bacillaria paradoxa). Since then, This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited and is not used for commercial purposes. more than 64,000 diatom species have been described-and new species are added to that list almost daily with the number of extant species extrapolated to ca 100,000. 4,5 The identification of diatoms (from the Greek 'diatomos' or 'cut in half') commonly relies on the highly differentiated cell wall (or frustule) that is mostly co...

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Section: A Vision For Terrestrial Diatoms In Catchment Hydrology Researchmentioning

confidence: 78%

Terrestrial diatoms as tracers in catchment hydrology: a review

et al. 2017

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“…While, in the past, the emphasis of upscaling has usually been on understanding random spatial variability, the spatial connectivity of flow processes is now increasingly recognized as a key determinant of land use change effects [Bl€ oschl et al, 1995;Western et al, 1998;Van Dijk et al, 2005;Fraser et al, 2013;Band et al, 2014;Pfister et al, 2015]. Forest roads, for example, may increase floods by creating preferential paths of overland flow [Gucinski et al, 2001;Guzman et al, 2017].…”

Section: Upscaling Spatial Connectivity and Scale Dependencymentioning

confidence: 99%

Land use change impacts on floods at the catchment scale: Challenges and opportunities for future research

Rogger

Agnoletti

Alaoui

et al. 2017

Water Resources Research

321

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Research gaps in understanding flood changes at the catchment scale caused by changes in forest management, agricultural practices, artificial drainage, and terracing are identified. Potential strategies in addressing these gaps are proposed, such as complex systems approaches to link processes across time scales, long‐term experiments on physical‐chemical‐biological process interactions, and a focus on connectivity and patterns across spatial scales. It is suggested that these strategies will stimulate new research that coherently addresses the issues across hydrology, soil and agricultural sciences, forest engineering, forest ecology, and geomorphology.

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“…Here we build on recent work by Pfister et al (2009Pfister et al ( , 2015 and Wetzel et al (2013) to examine the use of aerial diatoms (i.e. diatoms nearly exclusively occurring outside water bodies, and in wet, moist or temporarily dry places; Van Dam et al, 1994), as natural tracers to infer connectivity in the HRS system.…”

Section: N Martínez-carreras Et Al: Hydrological Connectivity Infermentioning

confidence: 99%

Hydrological connectivity inferred from diatom transport through the riparian-stream system

Martínez‐Carreras

Wetzel

Frentress

et al. 2015

Hydrol. Earth Syst. Sci.

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Abstract. Diatoms (Bacillariophyta) are one of the most common and diverse algal groups (ca. 200 000 species, ≈ 10-200 µm, unicellular, eukaryotic). Here we investigate the potential of aerial diatoms (i.e. diatoms nearly exclusively occurring outside water bodies, in wet, moist or temporarily dry places) to infer surface hydrological connectivity between hillslope-riparian-stream (HRS) landscape units during storm runoff events. We present data from the Weierbach catchment (0.45 km 2 , northwestern Luxembourg) that quantify the relative abundance of aerial diatom species on hillslopes and in riparian zones (i.e. surface soils, litter, bryophytes and vegetation) and within streams (i.e. stream water, epilithon and epipelon). We tested the hypothesis that different diatom species assemblages inhabit specific moisture domains of the catchment (i.e. HRS units) and, consequently, the presence of certain species assemblages in the stream during runoff events offers the potential for recording whether there was hydrological connectivity between these domains or not. We found that a higher percentage of aerial diatom species was present in samples collected from the riparian and hillslope zones than inside the stream. However, diatoms were absent on hillslopes covered by dry litter and the quantities of diatoms (in absolute numbers) were small in the rest of hillslope samples. This limits their use for inferring hillslope-riparian zone connectivity. Our results also showed that aerial diatom abundance in the stream increased systematically during all sampled events (n = 11, 2011-2012) in response to incident precipitation and increasing discharge. This transport of aerial diatoms during events suggested a rapid connectivity between the soil surface and the stream. Diatom transport data were compared to twocomponent hydrograph separation, and end-member mixing analysis (EMMA) using stream water chemistry and stable isotope data. Hillslope overland flow was insignificant during most sampled events. This research suggests that diatoms were likely sourced exclusively from the riparian zone, since it was not only the largest aerial diatom reservoir, but also since soil water from the riparian zone was a major streamflow source during rainfall events under both wet and dry antecedent conditions. In comparison to other tracer methods, diatoms require taxonomy knowledge and a rather large processing time. However, they can provide unequivocal evidence of hydrological connectivity and potentially be used at larger catchment scales.

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Examination of aerial diatom flushing across watersheds in Luxembourg, Oregon and Slovakia for tracing episodic hydrological connectivity

Cited by 8 publications

References 42 publications

Terrestrial diatoms as tracers in catchment hydrology: a review

Terrestrial diatoms as tracers in catchment hydrology: a review

Land use change impacts on floods at the catchment scale: Challenges and opportunities for future research

Hydrological connectivity inferred from diatom transport through the riparian-stream system

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