The discipline of ecohydrology has been defined in many ways. The common denominator in these definitions, however, is that the discipline of ecohydrology studies the interactions between biota (including humans) and the hydrological cycle. The spatial scale of study ranges from the cellular level of plant stomata to the global scale.
The ecohydrology course focuses on the processes and mechanisms that govern the interaction between biota and the hydrological cycle and that operate over this large variety of scales. The outline of the course can be divided in three parts, following the different scales at which processes are studied.
The first part, which can be considered as ecohydrology in its classical form, deals with processes that operate on the local scale. It addresses interactions of individual plants and plant communities with their abiotic environment, including ground- and surface water regimes and biogeochemistry. On a practical level, we will look at how knowledge of these interactions can be applied to conserve or restore water-dependent vegetation and habitats at the local level.
In the second part, you will learn how knowledge of local ecohydrological processes can be integrated and scaled up to study processes at the catchment scale. The focus here is on interactions between aggregated vegetation types and catchment hydrology.
The final part of the course will address soil-plant-atmosphere interactions on the global scale and will focus on the interactions between ecosystems or biomes and the global hydrological cycle and climate. Subjects that will be covered in this part include interactions across spatial and temporal scales, paleo-reconstructions and (paleo-) climatology and global change