The McDonnell lab has recently had two PhD candidates successfully defend!
Jaivime Evaristo - Measuring, Understanding and Modeling Ecohydrological Separation
Jaivime's dissertation sought to answer some of the fundamental questions on how subsurface water may be partitioned between root water uptake and streamflow. He explored a phenomenon calledecohydrological separation – plants using water of a character different from the mobile water found in soils, groundwater and streams. The generality of ecohydrological separation, however, remained wanting; and, possible controls in both space and time was elusive. The mechanisms underlying the phenomenological manifestations of ecohydrological separation, as explored and uncovered in Jaivime’s dissertation, have direct implications for how we measure and model the transport of water, nutrients, and pollutants at various scales in space and time.
Anna Coles - Runoff Generation Over Seasonally-Frozen Ground: Trends, Patterns, and Processes
Anna's thesis looked at runoff generation over seasonally-frozen ground. Her research delved into long-term runoff responses to climate change on the prairies, teased apart the hierarchy of controls on snowmelt-runoff, and used high-resolution spatial mapping and isotope techniques to show the importance of micro- and meso-topography in driving runoff connectivity over frozen hillslopes.