Source: UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA submitted to
LANDSCAPE SCALE FOREST MANAGEMENT FOR MEETING WATER QUANTITY AND QUALITY GOALS
Sponsoring Institution
National Institute of Food and Agriculture
Project Status
TERMINATED
Funding Source
MCINTIRE-STENNIS
Reporting Frequency
Annual
Accession No.
1001886
Grant No.
(N/A)
Project No.
FLA-FOR-005284
Proposal No.
(N/A)
Multistate No.
(N/A)
Program Code
(N/A)
Project Start Date
Feb 23, 2014
Project End Date
Oct 31, 2018
Grant Year
(N/A)
Project Director
Cohen, M.
Recipient Organization
UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA
G022 MCCARTY HALL
GAINESVILLE,FL 32611
Performing Department
Forest Resources and Conservation
Non Technical Summary
Despite abundant rainfall and high capacity for landscape nutrient retention, there remain significant challenges in managing water quality and quality in the southeastern USA. The recent adoption of numeric nutrient criteria for protecting Florida's water bodies highlights the need to identify land use and land management strategies compatible with water quality goals. Similarly, recent adoption of minimum flows and levels for many of the State's water bodies has created significant water quantity challenges, potentially leading to conflicts over water supply between competing users. Forests are one of the most important and extensive land uses in the southeast. Despite the regional economic significance of forestry on both private, public and industrial lands, increasing urbanization has led to reduced acreage over time. This exacerbates the water quality problems as forests are among the most protective land uses for meeting nearly all water quality goals. Moreover, because forests are not irrigated, their direct impact on water supply is limited. This broad research effort seeks to improve our understanding of the role that forested lands play in the hydrology and water quality of coastal plain watersheds, with an emphasis on how management can be modified to better meet water quality and quantity goals.
Animal Health Component
0%
Research Effort Categories
Basic
35%
Applied
65%
Developmental
(N/A)
Classification

Knowledge Area (KA)Subject of Investigation (SOI)Field of Science (FOS)Percent
1230210205060%
1020320119040%
Knowledge Area
102 - Soil, Plant, Water, Nutrient Relationships; 123 - Management and Sustainability of Forest Resources;

Subject Of Investigation
0320 - Watersheds; 0210 - Water resources;

Field Of Science
2050 - Hydrology; 1190 - Limnology;
Goals / Objectives
Despite abundant rainfall and high capacity for landscape nutrient retention, there remain significant challenges in managing water quality and quality in the southeastern USA. The recent adoption of numeric nutrient criteria for protecting Florida's water bodies highlights the need to identify land use and land management strategies compatible with water quality goals. Similarly, recent adoption of minimum flows and levels for many of the State's water bodies has created significant water quantity challenges, potentially leading to conflicts over water supply between competing users. Forests are one of the most important and extensive land uses in the southeast. Despite the regional economic significance of forestry on both private, public and industrial lands, increasing urbanization has led to reduced acreage over time. This exacerbates the water quality problems as forests are among the most protective land uses for meeting nearly all water quality goals. Moreover, because forests are not irrigated, their direct impact on water supply is limited. This broad research effort seeks to improve our understanding of the role that forested lands play in the hydrology and water quality of coastal plain watersheds, with an emphasis on how management can be modified to better meet water quality and quantity goals.
Project Methods
Forest Fertilization Study: We are monitoring water quality at very high resolution using a suite of new sensors (Heffernan and Cohen 2010, Cohen et al. 2013) which allow us to evaluate watershed nutrient fluxes in much greater detail. Two watersheds have been selected, both of which drain ca. 5,000 acres, and support perennial creeks. We are currently in Year 1 of that project, during which no fertilization will take place in either basin; in Years 2 and 3, the basins will be sequentially fertilized at higher than typical forest industry rates. During Year 4 (2016), no fertilization will occur. This before-after comparisons allows us to address site level effects stemming from different soil types in the two watersheds, and the pairwise comparisons let us control for climatic variation that can dramatically affect watershed fluxes. The suite of sensors and ancillary measurements makes these streams the most well studied in the country, with fine scale measurements of flow, chemistry (including multiple different forms of nutrients), ecosystem metabolism, organic matter export dynamics, and inferences from the community of benthic invertebrates that is the primary tool used by the Florida DEP in evaluating stream health. Moreover, additional experimental activities will allow us to understand the nutrient limitation status of the stream both under ambient and experimentally enriched conditions. This project will run through the summer of 2017, and will quantify the nature of nutrient losses from forested landscapes, and also the additional nutrient fluxes that occur in response to fertilization. This project is funded by the National Council for Air and Stream Improvement, the Florida Forest Service, Rayonier, and Plum Creek. Water Yield Study: This project will monitor water yield from forests in 6 sites around the state of Florida over 4 years, starting in Dec. 2013. At each site, six 1 acre treatment plots will be established in which varying management activities will be tested. The basic protocol is to monitor rainfall at each site, and replicate continuous high precision and resolution soil moisture and water table measurements within each treatment. We have shown previously that high resolution water table measurements provide valuable information regarding evapotranspiration and groundwater flows (the two most important elements of the water budget) (McLaughlin and Cohen 2011, 2012). The addition of high resolution and numerous replicates of soil moisture allows an integration of water mass in the unsaturated zone that can, over day-night cycles (and over longer time frames) be used to estimate water use by plants and via direct soil evaporation. The main impediment to using this technique has always been the precision of the soil moisture sensors and the high spatial variability that exists over short length scales. Both of these have been adequately resolved with new sensors from Campbell Scientific, and with data loggers that permit numerous replicates that can be averaged to yield representative site level behavior. Comparison of estimates from this method with those from eddy covariance tower estimates at Austin Cary Forest lead us to believe that these measurements are robust and more than capable of capturing the variability among stand management treatments and in response to climate variation. These methods also pertain to the wetland rehydration project outline above. Aquifer Denitrification: The only methodology not covered is how to measure aquifer denitrification. To do this, we will take advantage of existing well infrastructure around the state. Using that network of wells we will passively evaluate denitrification over large areas, and determine spatial linkages with land areas that act as sources of organic matter (e.g., forests on or near the Cody Escarpment, the principal geologic feature of North Florida that is the erosional edge of the Hawthorn Formation, which principally controls the direction of water drainage). Measurements will include dissolved gases (N2, Ar, Ne), isotopes (15N, 18O; Cohen et al. 2012), major element chemistry, and proximate drivers like dissolved oxygen and organic matter quality and quantity (from UV spectroscopy and bioavailability assays) (Heffernan et al. 2012). We will also experimentally manipulate wells, injecting solutions enriched in key solutes (i.e., nitrate, organic matter of varying quantity and quality). These push-pull experiments will enable us to measure the controls on the kinetics of the aquifer reaction, understand where and how quickly the reactions happen, and predict what will most efficiently enhance removal.

Progress 02/23/14 to 10/31/18

Outputs
Target Audience:The target audienceduring the current reporting period has been two-fold. We primarily have interacted with regulators and policy makers at local and state agencies. Our goal in this regard is to convey the state of the science on the role of forests in water supply and water quality management. We have presented the results of our work to the executive directors of the water management districts (the agencies charged with comsumptive use perimitting and water quality regulation implementation, among other things), the Office of Agricultural Water Policy at the Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services), and the Florida Department of Environmental Protection, the Florida Forest Service. Among the stakeholders that participate in these meetings are state and regional environmental groups (e.g., Audubon, 1000 Friends of Florida, Nature Conservancy), conservation trusts (e.g., the Conservation Fund, Alcahua Conservation Trust), public forest managers (e.g., National Forests, State Forests, County parks), industrial landowners (e.g., Weyerhauser and Rayonier), and municipal utilities (e.g., Gainesville Regional Utilities). During the current reporting year we also worked with the pulp and paper trade association to explain the results of our water yield experiments, and with an informal consortium of environmental professionals on the same topic.These stakeholders are committed to converting scientific output from our research into policy and regulations, and to connect willing buyers of hydrologic easements (e.g., cities, utilities) with willing sellers (e.g., public and private landowners) of the ecosystem services of water yield. We also interface directly with the public in several settings, including springs protections forums, student groups (e.g., student chapters for wetland science, water resources, and biocomplexity), and organized groups like Rotary International and the Alachua County School Board. For both sets of stakeholders, we have provided numerous presentations on the role of forests in protecting water quality, and the capacity to manage forests to increase water yield. The trade-offs between services, and the role of management for multiple objectives figures prominently in the presentations. Changes/Problems: Nothing Reported What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided?The precent reporting period has provided professional training development for 2 post-doctoral research associates (Dr. Robert Hensley and Dr. Subodh Acharya) and a graduate student (Mr. Paul Decker). These researchers regularly interact with the relevant stakeholder groups, summarize and present research findings, provide tours to interested groups (e.g., Southern Group of State Foresters), and lead a national workshop on water quality sensors (adminstered through CUAHSI). Additional training has been provided to Mr Kenyon Watkins (research technician), Mrs. Lily Kirk (PhD student), Mr Josh Epstein (PhD student) and three undergraduate students (Mr. Stephan Barron, Mr. Kenneth Duffield, and Ms. Lauren Leavitt) for field measurements, laborotory sample processing, and laboratory analysis protocols. How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest?The results of this years work have been disseminated to the various stakeholder groups. The following meetings and reports summarize those efforts: _Meetings_ 1) Forest Water Supply Partnership. Presentation on forest water yield at Florida Farm BureauMarch 2018 2) Society of American Foresters. Presentation onWater Yield at Portland OR Meeting Nov. 2018 3) Society of American Foresters. Presentation on Forest Fertilizationat Portland OR Meeting Nov. 2018 4) Manure Lunch. Presentation to regional environmental professionals at Alachua FL Oct 2018 _Reports_ 1) FinalReport to NCASI on overall project findings from forest fertilization study (Sep2018) 2) Finalreport to FDACS on overall project findings from forest water yield study (March 2018) What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals? Nothing Reported

Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals? Our accomplishments in the current reporting period were in fivecategories: 1) During this reporting period, we initiated a project, to start in 2019, that focuses on the ecological condition of riparian forests in industrial timber lands. These lands are currently left alone despite legal opportunities to harvest in them. Our project seeks to understand the long term consequences of minimal management in these settings, and to explore the potential ecological and economic benefits of strategic harvesting, particularly of pine trees. This is funded by a consortium of agencies, led by NCASI. 2) We worked extensively with forest industry to explore the impacts of forest fertilization to stream solute export, focusing particularly on nutrient loads. Two publications on this topic (Hensley et al. 2017 and Diamond and Cohen 2018) document the challenges associated with extracting a fertilizer signal from background natural variation. This work is now complete, with synthesis presentations made at the 2018 SAF meeting in Portland OR. We used a novel method to estimate concentration-discharge relationships from before and after experimental fertilization, and to estimate the travel time of waterthrough the watershed (a proxy for the response time of solute enrichment from fertilization) from the time-variation of chloride inputs and outputs. Our results show no change in the C-Q association between pre- and post-fertilization. Moreover, our analysis of watershed transit times suggeststhat the extant variation in nutrient export integrates a longer timespan than the study period. Together these suggest that fertilizer induced increases in nutrient loads are small, and spread over long periods. The final report will soonbe presented to forest industry, the Florida Forest Service, the Florida Department of Environmental Protection, and NCASI. These results further reinforce the protective value of planation forests for water quality, and offer another potential ecosystem service that forest land owners provide, currently without remuneration. 3) During the reporting reporting period completeda 4-year project funded by a consortium of agencies to explore the role of forest management in controlling water yield (i.e., stream flow or aquifer recharge). Our results are final ahd have been distributed to the funding agencies. Theysuggest considerable capacity to manage forest land to augment water yield, largely by controlling the leaf area index. Indeed, we show that each unit change in LAI alters water yield by 11 cm, irrespective of pine species or geologic setting. However, there are differences among geologic settings (specifically water table depth) with lower water yields overall under shallow water table conditions.These results are germane to emerging efforts to monetize ecosystem services from forests, and potentially remunerate landowners that adopt and maintain low stand density (lower LAI) conditions. The final results of thisproject havebeen the focal point of several high level meetings with agency, industry, and public stakeholders, and appear poised to culminate in new forest management programs funded by government agencies (e.g., water management districts), and new strategies for management of public forest lands. 4) We have been engaged in two projects focused on river metabolic and flow regimes, with study sites situated in locations draining large areas of plantation forests. Our goals with these two ongoing projects is to better understand the controls on river metabolism (including:flow, light, nutrients, antecedent biomass, stream network position and temperature). One of the projects focuses principally on time series data and the other on spatial data. Both seek to address important unknowns about how streams process organic matter, which is largely derived from flatwoods forests in these coastal plain rivers. One of the study elements is a series of headwater stream measurements that span a gradient of water chemical conditions but that uniformly drain forest landscapes. This is an effort to better understand the heterogeneity of headwater stream metabolic regimes. 5) During the reporting period we led an international workshop, sponsored by CUAHSI, on the use of optical water quality sensors for river and watershed science. The attendees (n = 22) were from around north America and Europe. The curriculum involved hands-on sensor stations for a variety of sensors, field deployments, and lectures on the principles of operation for the sensors, their limitations, and the modes of inference that are possible from their use in Lagrangian measurement frames.

Publications

  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2018 Citation: Hensley, R.T., M.J. Cohen and J.W. Jawitz (2018). ⿿Channel filtering generates multifractal solute signals⿝. Geophysical Research Letters 45 (21), 11,722-11,
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2018 Citation: Dong, X., M.J. Cohen, J.B. Martin, D.L. McLaughlin, A.B. Murray, N.D. Ward, M.K. Flint, and J.B Heffernan. (2018) ⿿Ecohydrologic processes and soil thickness feedbacks control limestone-weathering rates in a karst landscape⿝ Chemical Geology https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chemgeo.2018.05.021
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Submitted Year Published: 2018 Citation: Acharya, S, DL McLaughlin, DA Kaplan and MJ Cohen. In review. Estimating rainfall interception from near-surface soil moisture responses. Hydrological Processes
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Under Review Year Published: 2018 Citation: Acharya, S., D.L. McLaughlin, D.A. Kaplan and M.J. Cohen. In review. Stand-level water yield from Southeastern Pine Forests. Forests.
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Accepted Year Published: 2018 Citation: McBride, J.A., and M.J. Cohen. Patterns and Controls of Submerged Aquatic Vegetation Growth in Two Spring-Fed Rivers. Freshwater Science
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Accepted Year Published: 2018 Citation: Henson, W.. W.D. Graham and M.J. Cohen. Spatially Distributed Denitrification in a Karst Springshed. Hydrological Proceesses.
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Submitted Year Published: 2018 Citation: Liebowitz, D.L., J.B. Heffernan, C.L. Hartman, T.K. Frazer and M.J. Cohen. Top-Down Controls on Algal Proliferation in Floridas Spring-Fed Rivers. Freshwater Science
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2018 Citation: Thorslund, J., M.J. Cohen, J.W. Jawitz, G. Destouni, I.F., Creed, M.C. Rains, P. Badiou, and J. Jarsjo (2018). ⿿Solute evidence for hydrological connectivity of geographically isolated wetlands⿝ Land Degradation & Development 29 (11), 3954-3962
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2018 Citation: Reijo, C.J., R.T. Hensley and M.J. Cohen (2018). ⿿Isolating stream metabolism and nitrate processing at point-scales, and controls on heterogeneity⿝ Freshwater Science 37 (2): 238-250
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2018 Citation: Diamond, J.S., and M.J. Cohen (2018). ⿿Complex patterns of catchment solute⿿discharge relationships for coastal plain rivers⿝ Hydrological Processes 32 (3), 388-401
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Accepted Year Published: 2018 Citation: Hensley, R.T., M. Spangler, M. Gooseff and M.J. Cohen. Flow extremes as spatiotemporal control points on river solute fluxes and metabolism. Journal of Geophysical Research - Biogeosciences
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Under Review Year Published: 2018 Citation: Hensley, R.T., and M.J. Cohen. Riverine Nitrogen Reaction Kinetics from In Situ Benthic Chambers. Water Resources Research
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Submitted Year Published: 2018 Citation: McLaughlin, D.L., J.W. Diamond, C.J. Quintero, J.B. Heffernan and M.J. Cohen. Wetland Connectivity Thresholds and Flow Dynamics from Stage Measurements. Water Resources Research.


Progress 10/01/16 to 09/30/17

Outputs
Target Audience:The target audience for our work during the current reporting period has been two-fold. We primarily have interacted with regulators and policy makers at local and state agencies. Our goal in this regard is to convey the state of the science on the role of forests in water supply and water quality management. We have had access during the recent reporting period to the executive directors of the water management districts (the agencies charged with comsumptive use perimitting and water quality regulation implementation, among other things), the Office of Agricultural Water Policy at the Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services), and the Florida Department of Environmental Protection. Among the stakeholders that participate in these meetings are state and regional environmental groups (e.g., Audubon, 1000 Friends of Florida, Nature Conservancy), conservation trusts (e.g., the Conservation Fund, Alcahua Conservation Trust), public forest managers (e.g., National Forests, State Forests, County parks), industriallandowners (e.g., Weyerhauser and Rayonier), and municipal utilities (e.g., Gainesville Regional Utilities). These stakeholders are committed to converting scientific output from our research into policy and regulations, and to connect willing buyers of hydrologic easements (e.g., cities, utilities) with willing sellers (e.g., public and private landowners) of the ecosystem services of water yield. We also interface directly with the public in several settings, including springs protections forums, student groups (e.g., student chapters for wetland science, water resources, and biocomplexity), and organized groups like Rotary International and the Alachua County School Board. For both sets of stakeholders, we have provided numerous presentations on the role of forests in protecting water quality, and the capacity to manage forests to increase water yield. The trade-offs between services, and the role of management for multiple objectives figures prominently in the presentations. Changes/Problems: Nothing Reported What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided?The precent reporting period has provided professional training development for 2 post-doctoral research associates (Dr. Robert Hensley and Dr. Subodh Acharya) and a graduate student (Mr. Paul Decker). These researchers regularly interact with the relevant stakeholder groups, summarize and present research findings, provide tours to interested groups (e.g., Southern Group of State Foresters), and lead a national workshop on water quality sensors (adminstered through CUAHSI). Additional training has been provided to Mr Kenyon Watkins (research technician), Mrs. Lily Kirk (PhD student), Mr Josh Epstein (PhD student) and three undergraduate students (Mr. Stephan Barron, Mr. Kenneth Duffield, and Ms. Lauren Leavitt) for field measurements, laborotory sample processing, and laboratory analysis protocols. How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest?The results of this years work have been disseminated to the various stakeholder groups. The following meetings and reports summarize those efforts: _Meetings_ 1) Forest Water Supply Partnership. Presentation onforest water yield at Wakulla Springs Lodge November 2017 2) Southern Group of State Foresters. Led field tours to discuss water quality projects. 3) Public Land Management. Presentation on forest water yield at Wakulla Environmental Institute June 2017 _Reports_ 1) Annual Report to NCASI on Year 4 findings from forest fertilization study (April 2017) 2) Annual report to FDACS on Year 3 findings from forest water yield study (March 2017) 3) Final report to St Johns River Water Management District on results from studies of nutrient impacts to Silver River (September 2017) 4) Final report the Southwest Florida Water Management District on results from studies of ecological change in Rainbow River (August 2017) What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals?The next reporting period has three primary objectives: 1) Produce a final report on the 4-year water yield study. Attendant manscripts include one in review on measuring infiltration, a second in preparation on measuring and predicting cross-site variation in water yield, and a third in planning on the economics of water yield decision making across north Florida's forest lands 2) Produce a final report on the 5-year forest fertilization study. Attendant manuscripts include on in review on the time variation of solute export from catchments, a manuscript in prepartion on the travel time of water through coastal plain watersheds using chloride as a tracer, and two papers in prepartion on the overarching results of the pre- vs. post-fertilization water quality trends, and the dynamics of hillslope solute application experiments. 3) Produce manuscripts from the completed work on Florida's springs. The goal is 4 papers, focusing on 1) growth of submerged aquatic vegetation, 2) dynamics of nutrient retention in benthic chambers, 3) nutrient enrichment assays, and 4) heuristics for the detection of nutrient limitation in flowing waters.

Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals? Our accomplishments in the current reporting period were in four categories: 1) I served as a technical advisor on the adoption of a minimum flow and level for Rainbow Springs, Fl. In this capacity, I was charged with reviewing methods, critically evaluating findings, and aiding in the interpretation of novel data about the current state of hydrologic flows on the Rainbow River, as well as the extent to which contemporary pumping has resulted (or will result) in significant ecological harm. This continuing service requires expert testimony if the legal standard for minimum flows is challenged in court. 2) We worked extensively with forest industry to explore the impacts of forest fertilization to stream solute export. Two publications on this topic (Hensley et al. 2017 and Diamond and Cohen 2018) document the challenges associated with extracting a fertilizer signal from background natural variation. Ongoing work has been to develop a novel method to estimate concentration-discharge relationships from before and after experimental fertilization, and to estimate the travel time of water through the watershed (a proxy for the response time of solute enrichment from fertilization) from the time-variation of chloride inputs and outputs. We are currently compiling the results from this 5 year experiment into the final report to be presented to forest industry, the Florida Forest Service, the Florida Department of Environmental Protection, and NCASI. 3) We are currently completing a 4-year project funded by a consortium of agencies to explore the role of forest management in controlling water yield (i.e., stream flow or aquifer recharge). Our results are compelling, and suggest considerable capacity to manage forest land to augment water yield, largely by controlling the leaf area index. These results are germane to emerging efforts to monetize ecosystem services from forests, and potentially remunerate landowners that adopt and maintainlow stand density (lower LAI) conditions. This project has been the focal point of several high level meetings with agency, industry, and public stakeholders, and is likely to culminate in new forest management programs funded by government agencies (e.g., water management districts), and new strategies for management of public forest lands. 4) We have recently completed two large projects focused on Florida's springs, with an emphasis on the role of changing water quality in ecological responses. This is critically important because despite Federal regulations mandating aggressive water quality goals, the links between water quality changes and ecological transitions is somewhat poor. Our work has focused on the primacy of dissolved oxygen and flow as drivers of ecological change, and the negligible effects of nitrogen enrichment on those changes; as such our findings have considerable importance for regional landscape and water management. We are currently preparing manuscripts that summarize these findings.

Publications

  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2017 Citation: Creed, IF, CR Lane, JN Serran,LC Alexander, NB Basu, AJK Calhoun, JR Christensen, MJ Cohen, C Craft, E D'Amico, E DeKeyser, L Fowler, HE Golden, JW Jawitz, P Kalla, LK Kirkman, M Lang, SG leibowitz, DB Lewis, J Marton, DL McLaughlin, H Raanan-Kiperwas, MC Rains, KC Rains and L Smith. 2017. Enhancing Protection for Vulnerable Waters. Nature Geoscience 10:809-815
  • Type: Book Chapters Status: Published Year Published: 2017 Citation: Martin, TA, DC Adams, MJ Cohen, RM Crandall, CA Gonzalez-Benecke, JA Smith and JG Vogel. 2017. Managing Florida's Plantation Forests in a Changing Climate. in Florida's Climate: Changes, Variations, and Impacts, JW Jones (Ed) Retrieved http://purl.flvc.org/fsu/fd/FSU_libsubv1_scholarship_submission_1515509935_6ecffd1c
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2017 Citation: Acharya, S, DA Kaplan, JW Jawitz and MJ COhen. 2017. Doing Ecohydrology Backward: Inferring wetland flow and hydroperiod from landscape pattern. Water Resources Research 53:5742-5755 doi:10.1002/2017WR020516
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2017 Citation: Hensley, RT, DL McLaughlin, MJ Cohen, and PH Decker. 2017. Stream Phosphorus dynamics of minimally impacted coastal plain watersheds. Hydrological Processes 31:1636-1649
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Under Review Year Published: 2017 Citation: Acharya, S, DL McLaughlin, DA Kaplan and MJ Cohen. In review. Estimating rainfall interception from near-surface soil moisture responses. Water Resources Research.
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2018 Citation: Diamond J and MJ Cohen. 2018. Complex patters of catchment solute-discharge relationships for coastal plain rivers. Hydrological Processes 32:388-401
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2018 Citation: Bernhardt, ES, JB Heffernan, NB Grimm, EH Stanley, JW Harvey, M Arriota, AP Appling, MJ Cohen, WH McDowell, RO Hall Jr., JS Read, BJ Roberts, EG Stets and CB Yakulic. 2018. The metabolic regimes of flowing waters. Limnology and Oceanography. DOI: 10.1002/lno.10726
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2017 Citation: Thorslund, J, J Jarsjo, F Jaramillo, JW Jawitz, S Manzoni, NB Basu, SR Chavlov, MJ Cohen, IF Creed, R Goldberg, A Hylin, Z Kalantari, AD Koussis, SW Lyon, K Mazi, J Mard, K Persson, J Pietro, C Prieto, A Quin, K van Meter, and G Destouni. 2017. Wetlands as large-scale nature-based solutions: Status and challenges for research, engineering and management. Ecological Engineering 108:489-497


Progress 10/01/15 to 09/30/16

Outputs
Target Audience:During the reporting period, we have worked to communicate with two target audiences. The first is land management agencies responsible for decision making about public lands. We have sought to describe project results related to water quality (principally nutrient leakage following forest fertilization) and water quantity (impacts of forest management on water yield), and entrain these findings into policy-relevant dialog. The second group are private and industrial landowners, and including trade groups representing forest industry. Our efforts to validate forestry best management practices, and link reduced forest density management options to public payments for water yield require information in the hands of for-profit landowners. These two audiences are in addition to students and the general public that are parts of this projects overarching communication goals, but were not specifically targeted during the reporting period. Changes/Problems: Nothing Reported What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided?Training opportunities fall into three categories. First, we are training undergraduate assistants on laboratory and field methods and data quality assurance protocols. This is occuring in concert with our technical field staff that have extensive experience. Second, we have created opportunities for graduate students to mentor undergraduate and high school students through research projects. Graduate students have also been affored the opportunity to participate in stakeholder activities, and national and international scientific meetings. Finally, both students and post-doctoral researchers have been encouraged to interact with regulatory and industry stakeholders via regular meetings, workshops, field tours, and social gatherings as a means to increase their exposure the array of issues that require scientific attention, and to better understand stakeholder expectations for research and extension outputs. How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest?The results have been disseminated to these communities of interest via: - Presentations at national and international conferences - Working group meetings (e.g., Florida BMP technical advisory committee, Working Forests partnership meetings, Florida Forestry Association annual meeting) - Seminars to students and the general public Further, we have been invited to communicate regularly with industry and environmental groups, both to describe the novelty of our approach and the relevance of our preliminary findings. What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals?In addition to maintaining the existing project infrastructure allocated to long term monitoring, we have three main goals for the 2016-17 reporting period: 1) Synthesize the results of 5 years of solute export monitoring to investigate the timescales and magnitude of forest fertilization impacts on stream water quality. This includes two papers, one on archival agency data, and another on field measurements. 2) Publish findings on the methods to investigateforest evapotranspiration using integrated soil moisture measurements. This method has shown to be effective, but also has numerous pitfalls and methodological decisions that are critical to collecting valid data. We further expect to release our first summative findings on the impacts of forest management on water yield. 3) Provide new insights into stream solute processing, and the tools necessary to disentangle catchment behaviors from in-stream processing. To that end, we expect to publish a national synthesis on spectral analysis of DO time series, and emerging techniques in longitudinal water quality sampling.

Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals? Most of our progress in the reporting period fell into two categories. First, we were active participants in a synthesis effort to understand the role of small forested wetlands on landscape functions, which culminated in 4 refereed journal articles and a funded synthesis effort through the USGS Powell Center. This has also led to three major proposals being submitted to expand on what we know, and fill key knowledge gaps about the role of distributed water storage on water quality and quantity in forested and developing catchments. Second, we have emphasized tools to understand the solute signals emerging from catchments, and the role of stream biota in modulating that signal. This has resulted in 2 papers, and 2 more recently accepted. The focus here is on connecting high resolution water quality time series in streams and wetlands to the processes on the landscape that generate those signals, and thereby better understand the timing and dynamics of solute release. This has direct implications for ongoing experimental work on forest fertilization because our assessment of fertilization impacts takes the form of these high resolution time series. Disentangling fertilization effects from background natural variability is an age-old challenge in hydrology, and one that we have made important headway on with the use of in situ sensors. We are also continuing to study forest water yield using a statewide array of sensors; while no formal products have ensued from this effort, three papers are in preparation that describe the methods, the cross-site comparisons, and a model that synthesizes species, fire and management effects. We have also completed data collection on an EPA-funded forest fertilization project, the outputs of which are in preparation. Our results suggest susbtantial solute retention in the forest stand, even at 4x typical fertilization rates. This project affords the opportunity to complete an entire hillslope mass balance of applied nutrients along with transit times of any released solutes. This is integral for answering questions about the mangitude and time scales of forest fertilization effects on downstream water quality. Finally, we have initiated two new data collection efforts. The first is related to spatial sampling of stream water chemistry to explore the impacts of varying landuse on watershed and stream solute production and retention rates. This focuses on the Suwannee River system, with funding from the National Science Foundation. The other is a dense well network to explore water movement through a minimally impacted forested landscape with varying forest management histories. The goal of this work, funded from within UF, is to establish long-term monitoring at the Ordway Swisher Biological Station, and to contribute to the ongoing dialog about landscape hydrologic connectivity.

Publications

  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2015 Citation: Hensley, R.T., M.J. Cohen, and L.V. Korhnak. 2015. Hydraulic effect on nitrogen removal in a tidal spring-fed river. Water Resources Research 51:1443-1456.
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2015 Citation: Kurz, M.J., V. de Montety, J.B. Martin, M.J. Cohen and R.T. Hensley. 2015. Solute fluxes from the sediments of a spring-fed river: Implications for element budgets and river ecosystems. Freshwater Science 34:206-221.
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2015 Citation: Marton, J.M., I.F. Creed, D.B. Lewis, C.R. Lane, N.B. Basu, M.J. Cohen and C.B. Craft. 2015. Geographically isolated wetlands are important biogeochemical reactors in the landscape. BioScience 65:408-418.
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2015 Citation: Mushet, D.M., A.J.K. Calhoun, L.C. Alexander, M.J. Cohen, E.S. DeKeyser, L. Fowler, C.R. Lane, M.W. Lang, M.C. Rains, and S.C. Walls. 2015. Geographically Isolated Wetlands: Rethinking a Misnomer. Wetlands 35:423-431.
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2015 Citation: Rains, M.C., S.G. Leibowitz, M.J. Cohen, I.F. Creed, H.E. Golden, J.W. Jawitz, P. Kalla, C.R. Lane, M.W. Lang and D.L. McLaughlin. 2015. Geographically isolated wetlands are part of the hydrological landscape. Hydrological Processes 30:153-160
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2016 Citation: Cohen, M.J., I.F. Creed, L.A. Alexander, N.B. Basu, A.K. Calhoun, C.B. Craft, E. DAmico, E. DeKeyser, L. Fowler, H.E. Golden, J.W. Jawitz, P. Kalla, L.K. Kirkman, C.R. Lane, M. Lang, S.G. Leibowitz, D.B. Lewis, J.M. Marton, D.L. McLaughlin, D.M. Mushet, H. Raanan-Kiperwas, M.C. Rains, L. Smith and S. Walls. 2016. Conserving the landscape continuum: Do geographically isolated wetlands impact landscape functions? Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 113:1978-1986
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2016 Citation: Hensley, R.T., and M.J. Cohen. 2016. On the emergence of diel signals in flowing waters. Water Resources Research 52: 10.1002/2015WR017895


Progress 10/01/14 to 09/30/15

Outputs
Target Audience:The target audiece for this work is regulators interested in the impacts of forest management on water quality and quantity, polict makers interested in efficient means to meet water resource goals,land owners and managers focused on their regulatory requirements and unconventional economic opportunities fro forest land management, and the environmental community interested in the direct impacts of specific land uses (in this case forests) on water quality and quantity at the landscape scale. Much of this work is also of interest to the scientific and policy research communities that emphasize trade-offs in environmental services, and seek to perpetuate healthy and productive forests as part of the landscape of the southeastern coastal plain. Changes/Problems:Our work on aquifer denitrification has been delayed due to changes in funding. We had anticipated a three-year project with a local utility, but after our initial results were relatively conclusive, they elected to wait to fund the entirety of our work plan as they await feedback from regulators on their current deep aquifer wastewater disposal permit renewal. Our work on forest fertilization was enhanced by the award of a 1-year $229,000 contract through FDEP using EPA 319 funds to explore hillslope fate and transport. This will greatly enhance our ability to measure fertilization effects, and provide a valuable data set to share with various stakeholders about the validity of the specified BMP. What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided?By securing additional extramural funding to study forest fertilzation (the hillslope project describe above, and funded by US EPA via a 319 grant to the state of Florida), we have created a new opportunity for professional development for students, post-docs and technicians. This includes interactions with forest industry of fertilization practices and methods, and interactions with the regulatory community on the role of forests in maintaining regional water quality. How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest?The results have been disseminated to these communities of interest via: - Presentations at national and international conferences - Working group meetings (e.g., Florida BMP technical advisory committee, Florida Forestry Association annual meeting) - Seminars to students and the general public Further, we have been invited to communicate regularly with industry and environmental groups, both to describe the novelty of our approach and the relevance of our preliminary findings. What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals?Continue monitoring the various study sites, and publish three papers: - Phosphorus dynamics in coastal plain watersheds - Stream metabolism in two coastal plain watersheds - Modeling the dynamics of soil water use with different measurement schemes

Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals? We have installed and been monitoring a huga array of sites across Florida. These include: - 36 plots in which soil moisture sensors (n= 18) are used to track time dynamics of soil moisture from which we extract estimates of evapotranspiration. The plots vary in forest management (stand density and basal area, species, prescribed fire) and natural heterogeneity (relief, soils). Our goal is to use the breadth of conditions to parameterize simple models of forest water yield that can guide regulatoryprograms tomanage forest lands for revenue from additional water yield. Installing and monitoring these sites was a major accomplishment, as was designing the data handling and analysis protocols for a massive data stream (18 sensors @ 15 minute resolution plus an additional 5 micrometeorological and water level sensors at 5 minute resolution). - Monitoring the flow and chemistry of two large forested watersheds for fertilizer release following widepsread forest fertilization. The particular experiment is a paired watershed before-after control impact study wherein we sought to understand the nutrient loss rate from fertilization by comparing two watersheds (one fertilized in 2014, the other fertilized in 2015). With 18 months of pre-fertilization data, and 2 years of post-fertilization data, with sensors and discrete samples to precisely characterize the nutrient fluxes and controls, this study will offer new and important insights on how nutrients flow through low-relief coastal plain forested watersheds, and what the short and medium term impacts are of BMP-level fertilization. In addition, the high resolution sensor-based measurements of pH, DO, nitrate, phosphate, color, turbidity and flow will allow us unparalled insights into the operation of a coastal plain watershed. - Installation of a new fertilization study focused on the transport of solutes down forested hillslopes. We secured funding from the EPA to investigate forest fertilization at the hillslope scale, and we designed a study that selected two hillslopes (within the catchments of the fertilization study mentioned above) in which we demarcated 6 flowpaths in each. Each flowpath (ca. 100 m) moves from a fertilized zone (1 acre) through the hillslope, through the special management zone at the riparian wetland edge, and towards the stream. At each site, 2 flowpaths were set for typical forest fertilzation rates (below BMP allowable rates), 2 were set for BMP maximum rates, 1 was set for double the BMP application rate, and 1 was set as a control (no fertilizer). 48 wells with pressure transducers to map the flow field will be sampled to track the fate and transport of the plume of nutrients from fertilizer application. To aid in the mass balance and to estimate nutrient retention, we also applied a conservative tracer (bromide) with the fertilizer that will track the movement of the water.

Publications


    Progress 02/23/14 to 09/30/14

    Outputs
    Target Audience: This project focuses on three audiences. 1) The scientific community, where discourse aboutforest management for water quality and quantity is an area of mechanistic interest. The main focus of the research in Year 1 has been on the scientific community in an effort to vet the methods and approaches adopted. 2) An array of public stakeholders, including water management agencies, municipal utilities, public land owners, the forest service (in Florida and for the US), and the policy offices of public agencies (e.g., the Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services) 3) Private land owners, including locally owned private individuals, timber companies, and real estate investment trusts for whom ownership and management of the land in a way that facilitates water quality and quantity goals may be financially supported. As the project proceeds, we forsee increasing the participation of the last two groups, but we note that they are actively engaged in funded research on the topic, and thus are already closely involved in the research outcomes, and implications for new regulations and policies. Changes/Problems: Nothing Reported What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided? The project has resulted in training for 3 undergraduate field technicians on field sensor installation, experimental design, forest sampling, and hydrologic measurements. It has also supported one post-doctoral researcher who has learned project management skills and new analyses, and one graduate student, who will be using some of the new measurements as the basis for his dissertation. We have also trained agency field staff on our methods (for installation, data assimilation, analysis) so that intellectual ownership of the project is broad-based; their participation in experimental design has been integral to the project. How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest? We have disseminated results in the form of published papers, quarterly project status reports, powerpoint presentations (to various levels of stakeholders), students, scientific conferences, local BMP stakeholder groups, and UF students. We have engaged in regular outreach with agency scientists, private land owners, utility managers, and have also begun converstaions with a national natural capital hedge-fund interested in the potential value to be accrued from forest management on water quantity and quality. On the aquifer denitrification work, we have completed a final report to the funding agency, and have met with their project managers to highlight the findings and discuss the implications. In short, the finding of massive aquifer denitrification lends strong support to the ongoing initiative to consider deep well injection as a viable wastewater disposal option for inland utilities. Notably, we found no evidence to support the concern that water quality impairment would result, as within 2 miles (and several months) of the injection site, the pollutant loads in the groundwater were negligibly elevated above background levels. What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals? For the next reporting period, we have 4 primary goals: 1) Complete ongoing research about aquifer denitification, and submit a manuscript for peer review at an international journal. 2) Complete two research projects on the water yield methods (one technical note on how to integrate soil moisture, and another comparing our new method with existing methods based on eddy correlation) 3) Deliver the first year of findings on comparative water yield and water quality among forests with different structure and management.

    Impacts
    What was accomplished under these goals? The main progress has been on a funded statewide project investigating water yield across forest types and management. Installation of that project has occupied nearly the entire year, starting the first site in May of 2014, and culminating in December of 2014 with the last installation (6 plots, 36 sites). The methodological requirements to make the integrated soil moisture measurements that are the cornerstone of the work has been successfully navigated. With over $200,000 worth of soil moisture sensors now installed across the stateand automatically logging soil moisture over 6 depths every 15 minutes, we have turned to the data management protocols and quality control. The first results are extremely promising, and we have begun work on the first research output, which is a methodological refinement that challenges the existing literature on the method. We have also made headway on an important paper that compares the output of this approach with the gold-standard method for forest water use (eddy correlation) over a year of data at 3 sites. Provided the results continue to be promising, this method, which is at least one order of magnitude cheaper than eddy correlation, offers a new and robust tool for forest hydrology measurements, and will enable a rapid increase in the resolution of our hydrologic investigations at scales from the stand to the watershed.

    Publications

    • Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2014 Citation: McLaughlin, D.L., D.A. Kaplan and M.J. Cohen. 2014. A Significant Nexus: Geographically isolated wetlands influence landscape hydrology. Water Resources Research 50:7153-7166
    • Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2014 Citation: Nifong, R.L., M.J. Cohen, and W.P. Cropper. 2014. Homeostasis and nutrient limitation of benthic autotrophs in natural chemostats. Limnology and Oceanography 59:2101-2111
    • Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2014 Citation: McLaughlin, D.L. and M.J. Cohen. 2014. Ecosystem specific yield for estimating evapotranspiration and groundwater exchange from diel surface water variation. Hydrological Processes 28:1495-1506
    • Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2014 Citation: King, S.A., J.B. Heffernan and M.J. Cohen. 2014. Nutrient flux, uptake and autotrophic limitation in streams and rivers. Freshwater Science 33:85-98