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Water transit time is now a standard measure in catchment hydrological and ecohydrological research. The last comprehensive review of transit time modeling approaches was published 15+ years ago. But since then the field has largely expanded with new data, theory and applications. Here, we review these new developments with focus on water-age-balance approaches and data-based approaches. We discuss and compare methods including StorAge-Selection functions, well/partially mixed compartments, water age tracking through spatially distributed models, direct transit time estimates from controlled experiments, young water fractions, and ensemble hydrograph separation. We unify some of the heterogeneity in the literature that has crept in with these many new approaches, in an attempt to clarify the key differences and similarities among them. Finally, we point to open questions in transit time research, including what we still need from theory, models, field work, and community practice.

The time that water takes to travel through the terrestrial hydrological cycle and the critical zone is of great interest in Earth system sciences with broad implications for water quality and quantity. Most water age studies to date have focused on individual compartments (or subdisciplines) of the hydrological cycle such as the unsaturated or saturated zone, vegetation, atmosphere, or rivers. However, recent studies have shown that processes at the interfaces between the hydrological compartments (e.g., soil-atmosphere or soil-groundwater) govern the age distribution of the water fluxes between these compartments and thus can greatly affect water travel times. The broad variation from complete to nearly absent mixing of water at these interfaces affects the water ages in the compartments. This is especially the case for the highly heterogeneous critical zone between the top of the vegetation and the bottom of the groundwater storage. Here, we review a wide variety of studies about water ages in the critical zone and provide (1) an overview of new prospects and challenges in the use of hydrological tracers to study water ages, (2) a discussion of the limiting assumptions linked to our lack of process understanding and methodological transfer of water age estimations to individual disciplines or compartments, and (3) a vision for how to improve future interdisciplinary efforts to better understand the feedbacks between the atmosphere, vegetation, soil, groundwater, and surface water that control water ages in the critical zone.

Pierre Perrault’s 1674 book De l’Origine des Fontaines is widely acknowledged in hydrology as the first formal articulation of the catchment water balance based on field data. Many summaries of his work have now been written, but few of these summaries have examined Perrault’s perceptual model in detail and none that we are aware of have gone back to his study catchment to collect new data in which to frame these historic findings in a modern context. Here we report new insights (with re-calculations of some of his analyses) into Perrault’s work, his perceptual model of streamflow generation and his rather peculiar 119 km2 headwater catchment of the Seine River basin. We show the uncertainty of his flow and catchment area estimates, some errors in perception about hydrological flowpaths and new age estimates for the spring-fed site where he worked. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We evaluated the occurrence of perching and interflow over and within a sandy clay loam argillic horizon within first-order, low-relief, forested catchments at the Savannah River Site (SRS) in the Upper Coastal Plain of South Carolina. We measured soil hydraulic properties, depths to the argillic layer, soil moisture, shallow groundwater behavior, interflow interception trench flows, and streamflow over a 4-year period to explore the nature and variability of soil hydraulic characteristics, the argillic "topography", and their influence on interflow generation. Perching occurred frequently within and above the restricting argillic horizons during our monitoring period, but interflow was infrequent due to microtopographic relief and associated depression storage on the argillic layer surface. High percolation rates through the argillic horizon, particularly through soil anomalies, also reduced the importance of interflow. Interflow generation was highly variable across eleven segments of a 121 m interception trench. Hillslopes were largely disconnected from stream behavior during storms. Hillslope processes were consistent with the fill-and-spill hypothesis and featured a sequence of distinct thresholds: vertical wetting front propagation to the argillic layer; saturation of the argillic followed by local perching; filling of argillic layer depressions; and finally connectivity of depressions leading to interflow generation. Analysis of trench flow data indicated a cumulative rainfall threshold of 60 mm to generate interflow, a value at the high end of the range of thresholds reported elsewhere.

The Sleepers River Research Watershed (SRRW) in Vermont, USA, has been the site of active hydrologic research since 1959 and was the setting where Dunne and Black demonstrated the importance and controls of saturation-excess overland flow (SOF) on streamflow generation. Here, we review the early studies from the SRRW and show how they guided our conceptual approach to hydrologic research at the SRRW during the most recent 25years. In so doing, we chronicle a shift in the field from early studies that relied exclusively on hydrometric measurements to today's studies that include chemical and isotopic approaches to further elucidate streamflow generation mechanisms. Highlights of this evolution in hydrologic understanding include the following: (i) confirmation of the importance of SOF to streamflow generation, and at larger scales than first imagined; (ii) stored catchment water dominates stream response, except under unusual conditions such as deep frozen ground; (iii) hydrometric, chemical and isotopic approaches to hydrograph separation yield consistent and complementary results; (iv) nitrate and sulfate isotopic compositions specific to atmospheric inputs constrain new water contributions to streamflow; and (v) convergent areas, or 'hillslope hollows', contribute disproportionately to event hydrographs. We conclude by summarizing some remaining challenges that lead us to a vision for the future of research at the SRRW to address fundamental questions in the catchment sciences.

Hydrological processes research remains a field that is severely measurement limited. While conventional tracers (geochemicals, isotopes) have brought extremely valuable insights into water source and flowpaths, they nonetheless have limitations that clearly constrain their range of application. Integrating hydrology and ecology in catchment science has been repeatedly advocated as offering potential for interdisciplinary studies that are eventually to provide a holistic view of catchment functioning. In this context, aerial diatoms have been shown to have the potential for detecting of the onset/cessation of rapid water flowpaths within the hillslope-riparian zone-stream continuum. However, many open questions prevail as to aerial diatom reservoir size, depletion and recovery, as well as to their mobilisation and transport processes. Moreover, aerial diatoms remain poorly known compared to freshwater species and new species are still being discovered. Here, we ask whether aerial diatom flushing can be observed in three catchments with contrasting physiographic characteristics in Luxembourg, Oregon (USA) and Slovakia. This is a prerequisite for qualifying aerial diatoms as a robust indicator of the onset/cessation of rapid water flowpaths across a wider range of physiographical contexts. One species in particular, (Hantzschia amphioxys (Ehr.) Grunow), was found to be common to the three investigated catchments. Aerial diatom species were flushed, in different relative proportions, to the river network during rainfall-runoff events in all three catchments. Our take-away message from this preliminary examination is that aerial diatoms appear to have a potential for tracing episodic hydrological connectivity through a wider range of physiographic contexts and therefore serve as a complementary tool to conventional hydrological tracers.

Predicting the responses of streamflow to changes in forest management is fundamental to the sustainable regulation of water resources. However, studies of changes in forest cover have yielded unclear and largely unpredictable results. Here we compile a comprehensive and spatially distributed database of forest-management studies worldwide, to assess the factors that control streamflow response to forest planting and removal. We introduce a vegetation-to-bedrock model that includes seven key landscape factors in order to explain the impacts of forest removal and planting on water yield. We show that the amount of water stored in a landscape is the most important factor in predicting streamflow response to forest removal, whereas the loss of water through evaporation and transpiration is the most important factor in predicting streamflow response to forest planting. Our findings affect model parameterizations in climate change mitigation schemes (involving, for example, afforestation or deforestation) in different geologic and climate regions around the world, and inform practices for the sustainable management of water resources. Analysis of forest-management studies finds that forest removal is more likely to increase streamflow in areas with greater water storage between the surface and bedrock, and that forest planting is more likely to decrease streamflow in drier climates., Author(s): Jaivime Evaristo [sup.1] , Jeffrey J. McDonnell [sup.2] [sup.3] [sup.4] Author Affiliations: (1) Copernicus Institute of Sustainable Development, Utrecht University, Utrecht, The Netherlands (2) Global Institute for Water Security, [...]

Current land surface models assume that groundwater, streamflow and plant transpiration are all sourced and mediated by the same well mixed water reservoir--the soil. However, recent work in Oregon (1) and Mexico (2) has shown evidence of ecohydrological separation, whereby different subsurface compartmentalized pools of water supply either plant transpiration fluxes or the combined fluxes of groundwater and streamflow. These findings have not yet been widely tested. Here we use hydrogen and oxygen isotopic data (²H (δ²H) and [sup.18]O/[sup.16]O (δ[sup.18]O)) from 47 globally distributed sites to show that ecohydrological separation is widespread across different biomes. Precipitation, stream water and groundwater from each site plot approximately along the δ²H/δ[sup.18]O slope of local precipitation inputs. But soil and plant xylem waters extracted from the 47 sites all plot below the local stream water and groundwater on the meteoric water line, suggesting that plants use soil water that does not itself contribute to groundwater recharge or streamflow. Our results further show that, at 80% of the sites, the precipitation that supplies groundwater recharge and streamflow is different from the water that supplies parts of soil water recharge and plant transpiration. The ubiquity of subsurface water compartmentalization found here, and the segregation of storm types relative to hydrological and ecological fluxes, may be used to improve numerical simulations of runoff generation, stream water transit time and evaporation-transpiration partitioning. Future land surface model parameterizations should be closely examined for how vegetation, groundwater recharge and streamflow are assumed to be coupled., Freshwater fluxes via plant transpiration (45,000 [km.sup.3] [yr.sup.-1] ref. 3, to 62,000 [km.sup.3] [yr.sup.-1] ref. 4), streamflow (37,000 [km.sup.3] [yr.sup.-1] to 40,000 [km.sup.3] [yr.sup.-1], refs 5, 6) and groundwater recharge [...]

THE REMARKABLE RISE OF PROCESS HYDROLOGY IN CHINA Gu was at the leading edge of process hydrology in China during its remarkable ascent in the past several decades. Through the 1980s and 1990s, Gu authored a number of papers in the Chinese and English literature (Gu, [4]; Gu, [5]; Gu, [6]; Gu, [7]; Gu, [8]; Gu, [9], [10] - summarized in an important review paper in Gu et al., [11]) that showed - in many cases for the first time - the controls on the spatial and temporal evolution of soil water, groundwater and streamflow from the catchment. WEI-ZU GU AND HYDROHILL Gu was a research professor at the Nanjing Institute of Hydrology and Water Resources when he set up the Chuzhou Hydrology Laboratory and now-famous Hydrohill catchment. Following the USGS delegation to China, the USGS team reciprocated, and Gu came to the United States about a year later and toured the Mattole watershed, the Panola watershed in Georgia and other USGS research sites. [Extracted from the article]