During the autumn of 2000, England and Wales experienced the wettest conditions for over 270 years, causing significant flooding. The exceptional combination of a wet spring and autumn provided the potential for soil structural degradation. Soils prone to structural degradation under five common lowland cropping systems (autumn-sown crops, late-harvested crops, field vegetables, orchards and sh...

OBJECTIVE To investigate the association, if any, between child mortality and distance to the nearest hospital. METHODS The study was based on data from a 1-year study of the cause of illness in febrile paediatric admissions to a district hospital in north-east Tanzania. All villages in the catchment population were geolocated, and travel times were estimated from availability of local transp...

The effects of land use and land use change on stream nitrate are poorly understood. While case studies have been presented, most process work has been done in areas with one land use (minimally disturbed or agricultural) and areas with substantial atmospheric deposition. In this paper we present results from three neighboring headwater catchments in western Oregon with similar (low) atmospheri...

The fluxes and transformations of nitrogen (N) were investigated from 1985 through 1987 at the Emerald Lake watershed (ELW), a 120 ha high-elevation catchment located in the southern Sierra Nevada, California, USA. Up to 90% of annual wet deposition of N was stored in the seasonal snowpack; NO3 and NH+ were released from storage in the form of an ionic pulse, where the first fraction of meltwat...

In urban catchments of arid central Arizona, we investigate how the export of mineral and organic nitrogen (N) in storm runoff is regulated by interactions between local landscape characteristics and broader scale storm features. First, we test whether N export is more a function of (1) processes that affect N concentration in runoff or (2) the propensity of the catchment to convey rainfall as ...

A multi-year, multi-technique study was conducted to measure evapotranspiration and its components within an uneven-aged mixed deciduous forest in the Southeastern United States. Four different measurement techniques were used, including soil water budget (1 year), sap flow (2 years), eddy covariance (5 years), and catchment water budget (31 years). Annual estimates of evapotranspiration were s...

1. We investigated the diversity and distribution of freshwater mussels at 40 sites in an agricultural catchment, the River Raisin in south-eastern Michigan, to relate mussel assemblages and individual taxa to reach and catchment-scale variables. Unionids were surveyed by timed searches in 100-m reaches, and in-stream and riparian habitat were quantified as well as flow, water chemistry and cha...

[1] The difficulties in predicting whole catchment water balance from observations at patch scales motivate a search for theories that can account for the complexity of interactions in catchments. In this paper we suggest that the spatial patterns of vegetation may offer a lens through which to investigate scale dependence of hydrology within catchments. Vegetation patterns are attractive becau...

The eco-hydrological model SWAT (Soil and Water Assessment Tool) is a useful tool to simulate the effects of catchment processes and water management practices on the water cycle. For each catchment some model parameters (e.g. ground water delay time, ground water level) remain constant and therefore are used as constant values; other parameters such as soil types or land use are spatially vari...

The nitrogen and carbon stable isotope ratios (dN and dC) of the pygmy mussel, Xenostrobus securis, were determined for three estuaries with varying levels of catchment disturbance in northern New South Wales, Australia. The lower Manning River catchment supported the highest human population densities and 3% residential development with some livestock agriculture (41%); the Wallamba River catc...