Biological invasions provide a unique opportunity to study the mechanisms that regulate community composition and ecosystem function. Invasive species that are also ecosystem engineers can substantially alter physical features in an environment, and this can lead to cascading effects on the biological community. Aquatic-terrestrial interface ecosystems are excellent systems to...
The feedbacks between hydrology and biogeochemical cycling of nitrogen (N) are of critical importance to global bioavailable N budgets. Human activities are dramatically increasing the amount of bioavailable N in the biosphere, which is causing increasingly frequent and severe impacts on ecosystems and human welfare. Streams are important features in...
Vegetation at the aquatic–terrestrial interface can alter landscape features through its growth and interactions with sediment and fluids. Even similar species may impart different effects due to variation in their interactions and feedbacks with the environment. Consequently, replacement of one engineering species by another can cause significant change in the...
Invasive species can alter the succession of ecological communities because they are
often adapted to the disturbed conditions that initiate succession. The extent to which this
occurs may depend on how widely they are distributed across environmental gradients and
how long they persist over the course of succession. We focus...
This chapter is part of Barrier Dynamics and Response to Changing Climate.
Coastal foredunes are often the “first line of defense” for backshore infrastructure from the hazards of erosion and flooding, and they are key components of coastal ecosystems. The shape and growth characteristics of coastal foredunes, typically characterized by...
Biogeochemical reactions associated with stream nitrogen cycling, such as
nitrification and denitrification, can be strongly controlled by water and solute residence
times in the hyporheic zone (HZ). We used a whole‐stream steady state ¹⁵N‐labeled
nitrate (¹⁵NO₃⁻) and conservative tracer (Cl⁻) addition to investigate the spatial and
temporal physiochemical conditions controlling...
We used an in situ steady state ¹⁵N-labeled nitrate (¹⁵NO₃⁻) and acetate (AcO⁻) well-to-wells injection experiment to determine how the availability of labile dissolved organic carbon (DOC) as AcO⁻ influences microbial denitrification in the hyporheic zone of an upland (third-order) agricultural stream. The experimental wells receiving conservative (Cl⁻ and Br)...
Excess NO₃⁻ in streams is a growing and persistent problem for both inland and coastal ecosystems, and denitrification is the primary removal process for NO₃⁻. Hyporheic zones can have high denitrification potentials, but their role in reach- and network-scale NO₃⁻ removal is unknown because it is difficult to estimate. We...
Water transient storage zones are hotspots for metabolic activity in streams although the contribution of different types of transient storage zones to the whole-reach metabolic activity is difficult to quantify. In this study we present a method to measure the fraction of the transient storage that is metabolically active (MATS)...
The fate of biologically available nitrogen (N) and carbon (C) in stream ecosystems is controlled by the coupling of physical transport and biogeochemical reaction kinetics. However, determining the relative role of physical and biogeochemical controls at different temporal and spatial scales is difficult. The hyporheic zone (HZ), where groundwater–stream water...