A Low-Cost, Multi-Sensor System to Monitor Temporary Stream Dynamics in Mountainous Headwater Catchments.

While temporary streams account for more than half of the global discharge, high spatiotemporal resolution data on the three main hydrological states (dry streambed, standing water, and flowing water) of temporary stream remains sparse. This study presents a low-cost, multi-sensor system to monitor the hydrological state of temporary streams in mountainous headwaters. The monitoring system consists of an Arduino microcontroller board combined with an SD-card data logger shield, and four sensors: an electrical resistance (ER) sensor, temperature sensor, float switch sensor, and flow sensor. The monitoring system was tested in a small mountainous headwater catchment, where it was installed on multiple locations in the stream network, during two field seasons (2016 and 2017). Time-lapse cameras were installed at all monitoring system locations to evaluate the sensor performance. The field tests showed that the monitoring system was power efficient (running for nine months on four AA batteries at a five-minute logging interval) and able to reliably log data (<1% failed data logs). Of the sensors, the ER sensor (99.9% correct state data and 90.9% correctly timed state changes) and flow sensor (99.9% correct state data and 90.5% correctly timed state changes) performed best (2017 performance results). A setup of the monitoring system with these sensors can provide long-term, high spatiotemporal resolution data on the hydrological state of temporary streams, which will help to improve our understanding of the hydrological functioning of these important systems.

Quantification of subsurface hydrologic connectivity in four headwater catchments using graph theory.

Hillslope-stream connectivity significantly affects streamflow and water quality responses during rainfall and snowmelt events, but is difficult to quantify. One approach to quantify subsurface hillslope-stream connectivity is graph theory, which considers linear connections between groundwater measurement sites. We quantified subsurface connectivity based on surface topography and shallow groundwater data from four small (<14 ha) headwater catchments in the Italian Dolomites and the Swiss pre-Alps, determined the relation between rainfall, antecedent wetness conditions and subsurface connectivity and assessed the sensitivity of the results to changes in the measurement network. Event total stormflow was correlated to maximum subsurface connectivity. Subsurface connectivity increased during rainfall events but maximum connectivity occurred later than peak streamflow, resulting in anti-clockwise hysteretic relations between the two. Subsurface connectivity was positively correlated to rainfall amount. Maximum subsurface connectivity was related to the sum of total rainfall plus antecedent rainfall for the Dolomitic catchments, but these relations were less clear for the pre-alpine catchments. For the pre-alpine catchments, the fractions of time that the groundwater monitoring sites were connected to the stream were significantly correlated to the upslope site characteristics, such as the Topographic Wetness Index. For the Dolomitic catchments, the fractions of time that the monitoring sites were connected to the stream were correlated to the topographic characteristics of the upslope contributing area for the catchment with the small riparian zone, and with the distance to the nearest stream for the catchment with the large riparian zone. The leave-one-out sensitivity analysis showed that small changes in the structure of the groundwater monitoring networks had a limited influence on the results, suggesting that graph-theory approaches can be used to describe subsurface hydrologic connectivity. However, the proposed graph-theory approach should be verified in other catchments with different groundwater monitoring networks.

Transpiration and stomatal conductance in a young secondary tropical montane forest: contrasts between native trees and invasive understorey shrubs.

It has been suggested that vigorous secondary tropical forests can have very high transpiration rates, but sap flow and stomatal conductance dynamics of trees and shrubs in these forests are understudied. In an effort to address this knowledge gap, sap flow (thermal dissipation method, 12 trees) and stomatal conductance (porometry, six trees) were measured for young (5-7 years) Psiadia altissima (DC.) Drake trees, a widely occurring species dominating young regrowth following abandonment of swidden agriculture in upland eastern Madagascar. In addition, stomatal conductance (gs) was determined for three individuals of two locally common invasive shrubs (Lantana camara L. and Rubus moluccanus L.) during three periods with contrasting soil moisture conditions. Values of gs for the three investigated species were significantly higher and more sensitive to climatic conditions during the wet period compared with the dry period. Further, gs of the understorey shrubs was much more sensitive to soil moisture content than that of the trees. Tree transpiration rates (Ec) were relatively stable during the dry season and were only affected somewhat by soil water content at the end of the dry season, suggesting the trees had continued access to soil water despite drying out of the topsoil. The Ec exhibited a plateau-shaped relation with vapour pressure deficit (VPD), which was attributed to stomatal closure at high VPD. Vapour pressure deficit was the major driver of variation in Ec, during both the wet and the dry season. Overall water use of the trees was modest, possibly reflecting low site fertility after three swidden cultivation cycles. The observed contrast in gs response to soil water and climatic conditions for the trees and shrubs underscores the need to take root distributions into account when modelling transpiration from regenerating tropical forests.