Moving beyond the Technology: A Socio-technical Roadmap for Low-Cost Water Sensor Network Applications.

In this paper, we critically review the current state-of-the-art for sensor network applications and approaches that have developed in response to the recent rise of low-cost technologies. We specifically focus on water-related low-cost sensor networks, and conceptualize them as socio-technical systems that can address resource management challenges and opportunities at three scales of resolution: (1) technologies, (2) users and scenarios, and (3) society and communities. Building this argument, first we identify a general structure for building low-cost sensor networks by assembling technical components across configuration levels. Second, we identify four application categories, namely operational monitoring, scientific research, system optimization, and community development, each of which has different technical and nontechnical configurations that determine how, where, by whom, and for what purpose low-cost sensor networks are used. Third, we discuss the governance factors (e.g., stakeholders and users, networks sustainability and maintenance, application scenarios, and integrated design) and emerging technical opportunities that we argue need to be considered to maximize the added value and long-term societal impact of the next generation of sensor network applications. We conclude that consideration of the full range of socio-technical issues is essential to realize the full potential of sensor network technologies for society and the environment.

Progress in understanding the hydrology of high-elevation Andean grasslands under changing land use.

High-elevation grasslands worldwide provide essential hydrological services including water provision, flow regulation, and erosion control. Despite their importance, hydrological research of grasslands in montane regions is usually scarce and disperse, limiting the capacity to improve water resource management. We present a systematic literature review of the hydrological function of high Andean grasslands under conserved, degraded, and restored conditions in ecosystems situated above the tree line in the tropical Andes (páramos, punas, and jalcas). Most hydrological research on these grasslands has been developed in páramos (92%), especially in Ecuador, while research in punas is scarce (6%) despite being the largest grassland extent in the region. For páramos, published literature highlights the importance of conserving grasslands to facilitate water infiltration to soils, which in turn reduces erosive processes. Water-vegetation relations for conserved páramos are well understood, indicating that about 50% of water inputs return to the atmosphere via evapotranspiration, but knowledge about hydrological functions of conserved punas and jalcas is virtually non-existent. Under changing land use, afforestation of grassland ecosystems with exotic tree species, especially pines, reduces soil water storage as well as water yield and flow regulation capacity. Impacts of grazing and agriculture on the hydrological function of páramo grasslands strongly depend on historical land management and current land use practices and are not generalizable. Short-term restoration studies indicate that more than two years are necessary to recover the hydrological function of degraded grasslands, therefore medium and long-term studies are required to determine efficient restoration periods. These knowledge gaps limit the ability to extrapolate and regionalize findings. Future directions aimed to fill them are proposed, and methods successfully used to investigate the hydrology of high Andean grasslands are highlighted. This research not only enlightens what is known about the hydrology of high Andean grasslands, but also seeks to guide future hydrological evaluations to fill identified geographical and topical knowledge gaps precluding improved management of water resources in the tropical Andes.

Producing valuable information from hydrologic models of nature-based solutions for water.

Nature-based solutions (NBS) are an increasingly popular approach to water resources management, with a growing number of projects designed to take advantage of landscape effects on water flow. As NBS for water are developed, producing hydrologic information to inform decisions often requires substantial investment in data acquisition and modeling; for this effort to be worthwhile, the information generated must be useful and used. We apply an evaluation framework of salience (type of information), credibility (quality of information), and legitimacy (trustworthiness of information) to assess how hydrologic modeling outputs have been used in NBS projects by three types of decision makers: advocates, implementers, and analysts. Our findings, based on documents and interviews with watershed management programs in South America currently implementing NBS, consider how hydrologic modeling supports two types of decisions for NBS projects: quantifying the hydrologic impact of potential and existing NBS and prioritizing where NBS might be sited within a watershed. To help inform future modeling studies, we identify several problematic assumptions that analysts may make about the credibility of modeled outputs for NBS when advocates and implementers are not effectively engaged. We find that salient, credible, and legitimate results in applications evaluating NBS for water are not always generated in the absence of clear communication and engagement. Integr Environ Assess Manag 2022;18:135-147. © 2021 The Authors. Integrated Environmental Assessment and Management published by Wiley Periodicals LLC on behalf of Society of Environmental Toxicology & Chemistry (SETAC).

Ecohydrology and ecosystem services of a natural and an artificial bofedal wetland in the central Andes.

High-altitude wetlands of the Central Andes, locally known as bofedales, provide important ecosystem services, particularly carbon storage, forage provisioning, and water regulation. Local communities have artificially expanded bofedales by irrigating surrounding grasslands to maximise areas for alpaca grazing. Despite their importance, biophysical processes of both natural and artificial bofedales are still poorly studied, which hinders the development of adequate management and conservation strategies. We analyse and compare the vegetation composition, hydrological variables, groundwater chemistry, and soil characteristics of a natural and an artificial bofedal of at least 10 years old in southern Peru, to understand their interrelations and the consequences for ecosystem service provisioning. We do not find statistically significant differences in the soil, water, and vegetation characteristics. Soil organic carbon (SOC) content, which we use as a proxy for carbon storage, is negatively correlated to dissolved oxygen, pH, and soil water temperature. In addition, Non-Metric Multidimensional Scaling analysis shows a positive relation between plant community composition, SOC content, and water electric conductivity. Our results suggest a three-way interaction between hydrological, soil, and vegetation characteristics in the natural bofedal, which also holds for the artificial bofedal. Vegetation cover of two of the most highly nutritious species for alpaca, Lachemilla diplophylla and Lilaeopsis macloviana with 19-22% of crude protein, are weakly or not correlated to environmental variables, suggesting grazing might be obscuring these potential relationships. Given the high economic importance of alpaca breeding for local communities, expanding bofedales artificially appears an effective strategy to enhance their ecosystem services with minimal impact on the ecohydrological properties of bofedales.

High-resolution hydrometeorological data from a network of headwater catchments in the tropical Andes.

This article presents a hydrometeorological dataset from a network of paired instrumented catchments, obtained by participatory monitoring through a partnership of academic and non-governmental institutions. The network consists of 28 headwater catchments (<20 km2) covering three major biomes in 9 locations of the tropical Andes. The data consist of precipitation event records at 0.254 mm resolution or finer, water level and streamflow time series at 5 min intervals, data aggregations at hourly and daily scale, a set of hydrological indices derived from the daily time series, and catchment physiographic descriptors. The catchment network is designed to characterise the impacts of land-use and watershed interventions on the catchment hydrological response, with each catchment representing a typical land use and land cover practice within its location. As such, it aims to support evidence-based decision making on land management, in particular evaluating the effectiveness of catchment interventions, for which hydrometeorological data scarcity is a major bottleneck. The data will also be useful for broader research on Andean ecosystems, and their hydrology and meteorology.