The mean annual transfer (loss and retention) of nitrogen in a river system was estimated using a conceptual approach based on water surface area and runoff. Two different approaches for the calculation of water surface area were applied to determine riverine nitrogen retention in four European catchments, ranging between 860-14,000 km2 in area, and differing considerably in the proportion and ...

Panoramic views of natural environments provide visually navigating animals with two kinds of information: they define locations because image differences increase smoothly with distance from a reference location and they provide compass information, because image differences increase smoothly with rotation away from a reference orientation. The range over which a given reference image can prov...

The goods and services that lakes provide result from complex interactions between meteorology, hydrology, nutrient loads and in-lake processes. Hydrology and nutrient loads are, in turn, influenced by socio-economic factors such as human habitation, water abstraction and land-management, within their catchments. Models provide a means of linking these different domains and also of forecasting ...

An evaluation of the performance of a physically-based distributed model of a small Mediterranean mountain catchment is presented. This was carried out using hydrological response data, including measurements of runoff, soil moisture, phreatic surface level and actual evapotranspiration. A-priori model parameterisation was based as far as possible on property data measured in the catchment. Lim...

We investigated the influence of hillslope scale topographic characteristics and the relative position of hillslopes along streams (i.e., internal catchment structure) on the isotopic composition of base flow in first-order, forested headwater streams at Coweeta Hydrologic Laboratory. The study focused on two adjacent forested catchments with different topographic characteristics. We used stabl...

Soil is a critical intermediary of water flux between precipitation and stream flow. Characterization of soil water content ( , m3 m 3) may be especially difficult in mountainous, snow-dominated catchments due to highly variable water inputs, topography, soils and vegetation. However, individual sites exhibit similar seasonal dynamics, suggesting that it may be possible to describe spatial vari...

[1] Estimates of mean residence time (MRT) are increasingly used as simple summary descriptors of the hydrological processes involving storage and mixing of water within catchment systems. Current understanding of the physical controls on MRT remains limited, and various hypotheses have been proposed to explain its variability between catchments. We present a series of virtual experiments to in...

Distributed/semi-distributed models are considered to be sensitive to the spatial resolution of the data input. In this paper, we take a small catchment in high urbanized Yangtze River Delta, Qinhuai catchment as study area, to analyze the impact of spatial resolution of precipitation and the potential evapotranspiration (PET) on the long-term runoff and flood runoff process. The data source in...

Understanding links between catchment management and community health demands consideration of complex bio-physical, socio-economic, and public health relationships. These relationships cut across a spectrum of health, environment and development considerations and highlight the need for appropriate and integrative modes of inquiry and decision making. What can Participatory Action Research (PA...

Migration monitoring stations (MMSs) were established to provide information on population trends of North American passerines. However, apart from inferring general origins of birds, there has been no way to delineate geographical catchment areas sampled by MMSs. The ability to resolve MMS catchment areas would greatly enhance our ability to link and constrain population declines to specific g...