Journal Articles

2010

Hydrologic connectivity between catchment upland and near stream areas is essential for the transmission of water, solutes, and nutrients to streams. However, our current understanding of the role of riparian zones in mediating landscape hydrologic connectivity and the catchment scale export of water and solutes is limited.

Resource Type: Journal Articles

Quantifying snowmelt-derived fluxes at the watershed scale within hillslope environments is critical for investigating local meadow scale groundwater dynamics in high elevation riparian ecosystems. In this article, we investigate the impact of snowmelt-derived groundwater flux from the surrounding hillslopes on water table dynamics in Tuolumne Meadows, which is located in the Sierra Nevada Mountains of California, USA.

Resource Type: Journal Articles

Climate change models for many ecosystems predict more extreme climatic events in the future, including exacerbated drought conditions. Here we assess the effects of drought by quantifying temporal variation in community composition of a complex montane meadow landscape characterized by a hydrological gradient. The meadows occur in two regions of the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem (Gallatin and Teton) and were classified into six categories (M1–M6, designating hydric to xeric) based upon Satellite pour l'Observation de la Terre (SPOT) satellite imagery.

Resource Type: Journal Articles

Meadow restoration efforts typically involve the modification of stream channels to re-establish hydrologic conditions necessary for the maintenance of native vegetation. To predict change in the distribution of common meadow plant species in response to meadow restoration, a hydrologic model was loosely coupled to a suite of individual plant species distribution models. The approach was tested on a well-documented meadow/stream restoration project on Bear Creek, a tributary to the Fall River in northeastern California, U.S.A.

Resource Type: Journal Articles

2009

Meadows of the Sierra Nevada and Cascade mountains of California, USA, support diverse and highly productive wet-meadow vegetation dominated by sedges, rushes, grasses, and other herbaceous species. These groundwater–dependent ecosystems rely on the persistence of a shallow water table throughout the dry summer. Case studies of Bear Creek, Last Chance, and Tuolumne meadow ecosystems are used to create a conceptual framework describing groundwater–ecosystem connections in this environment.

Resource Type: Journal Articles

This study reviews the results of several experimental and field investigations on the behavior of peat in hydraulic conductivity and compressibility.

Resource Type: Journal Articles

Hydrologic conceptual models of groundwater/surface-water interaction in a saprolite-fractured bedrock geological setting often assume that the saprolite zone is hydraulically more active than the deeper bedrock system and ignore the contribution of deeper groundwater from the fractured bedrock aquifer. A hydraulic, hydrochemical, and tracer-based study was conducted at Scott Creek, Mount Lofty Ranges, South Australia, to explore the importance of both the deeper fractured bedrock aquifer system and the shallow saprolite layer on groundwater/surface-water interaction.

Resource Type: Journal Articles

The interaction between surface-water streams and groundwater in the Maules Creek catchment of northern New South Wales, Australia has been investigated using a wide range of techniques. Zones of groundwater discharge were mapped by measuring the temperature and fluid electrical-conductivity distribution in bores and surface water. Zones where surface water appears to be recharging the aquifer were investigated by measuring the vertical head gradient between the stream and adjacent bores and by estimates of the decreasing surface flow.

Resource Type: Journal Articles

We examined the relationship between water-table elevations and plant community distributions in a hydrologically restored riparian meadow. The meadow, adjacent to Bear Creek in northeastern California, experienced hydrologic modification due to “pond and plug” stream restoration. Plant species composition and cover were sampled within 128 plots, and a hydrologic model was used to simulate a three-year time series of water-table for each plot.

Resource Type: Journal Articles

2008

Meadows of the Sierra Nevada and Cascade mountains of California, USA, support diverse and highly productive wet-meadow vegetation dominated by sedges, rushes, grasses, and other herbaceous species. These groundwater-dependent ecosystems rely on the persistence of a shallow water table throughout the dry summer. Case studies of Bear Creek, Last Chance, and Tuolumne meadow ecosystems are used to create a conceptual framework describing groundwater-ecosystem connections in this environment.

Resource Type: Journal Articles