Hydrology articles within Nature Communications

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  • Article
    | Open Access

    The speed and route by which Homo sapiens colonised Sahul is an ongoing topic of research. Here, the authors model the physical environment as it changes through time in combination with Lévy walk foraging patterns to suggest a wave of dispersal following coastlines and rivers.

    • Tristan Salles
    • , Renaud Joannes-Boyau
    •  & Manon Lorcery

  • Article
    | Open Access

    This study introduces a novel framework for generating high-resolution, in-situ estimates of agricultural evapotranspiration (ET) using satellite-based ET data combined with machine learning. This approach is leveraged to assess the water-saving potential of various management strategies and in calculating irrigation efficiency across California’s Central Valley.

    • Anna Boser
    • , Kelly Caylor
    •  & Tamma Carleton

  • Article
    | Open Access

    This study shows that urban areas in the continental US are associated with decreased snowfall likelihood and frequency, in large part due to surface albedo contrasts with neighboring areas. They also see a faster decline in snow precipitation frequency with time.

    • Kaustubh Anil Salvi
    •  & Mukesh Kumar

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Riparian vegetation densities critically mediate the morphodynamics of meandering rivers: plants slow the rate at which channels move laterally and reinforce the key, first-order control that curvature exerts on meander planform evolution.

    • Alvise Finotello
    • , Alessandro Ielpi
    •  & Andrea D’Alpaos

  • Article
    | Open Access

    In this work, authors propose a synergistic approach combining state-of-the-art deterministic forecasting model with artificial intelligence for predicting lightning occurrences. The strategy shows efficient predictive capabilities at medium-range forecast horizons.

    • Mattia Cavaiola
    • , Federico Cassola
    •  & Andrea Mazzino

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Towards optimizing the conjunctive operation of surface and groundwater resources in arid and semi-arid regions, here the authors propose a hybrid method involving moth-swarm and symbiotic organism search algorithms and artificial neural networks and demonstrate it for the HalīlRood basin.

    • Saeid Akbarifard
    • , Mohamad Reza Madadi
    •  & Mohammad Zounemat-Kermani

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Summer floods and droughts show a north-south dipole in East Asia centered near 30°N. Here, the authors show that the stratospheric Quasi-Biennial Oscillation plays an important role in this dipole and its prediction.

    • Ruhua Zhang
    • , Wen Zhou
    •  & Jiali Luo

  • Article
    | Open Access

    This paper assesses future changes in flood magnitude across the conterminous United States based on multiple climate change scenarios. The results suggest that annual maximum peak discharge is projected to become more extreme under higher emission scenarios.

    • Hanbeen Kim
    •  & Gabriele Villarini

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The Arctic is dotted with lakes, including thermokarst lakes highly threatened by climate change. Here, the authors investigate 35 years of lake drainage events and related vegetation trends across the Arctic, finding differences between thermokarst and non-thermokarst lake drainage events.

    • Yating Chen
    • , Xiao Cheng
    •  & Chengxin Wang

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Barrier islands and backbarrier saltmarshes are particularly threatened by sea level rise. Here, the authors show how reduction in intertidal areas create negative feedback, shifting transport of coarse sediment through the inlet from net export to net import.

    • Kevin C. Hanegan
    • , Duncan M. FitzGerald
    •  & Zoe J. Hughes

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Groundwater recharge feeds aquifers supplying fresh-water to a population over 80 million in Iran. The authors here show a significant decline of around −3.8 mm/yr in the nationwide groundwater recharge.

    • Roohollah Noori
    • , Mohsen Maghrebi
    •  & Amir AghaKouchak

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Wetlands can affect regional climate by altering surface-atmosphere interactions. This paper investigates drivers and patterns of evapotranspiration in South American wetlands, from the Amazon floodplains to the large Pantanal system.

    • Ayan Santos Fleischmann
    • , Leonardo Laipelt
    •  & Anderson Ruhoff

  • Article
    | Open Access

    This model study finds that by the end of the century, moisture from the North Atlantic Ocean will increase precipitation over eastern North America in winter and autumn, while precipitation moisture source from the Mediterranean Sea will decrease precipitation over eastern Europe.

    • José C. Fernández-Alvarez
    • , Albenis Pérez-Alarcón
    •  & Luis Gimeno

  • Article
    | Open Access

    A new emergent constraint on precipitation projection, based on a unified surface-energy-balance perspective that links hydrological and climate sensitivity to climatological cloud distribution, suggests a higher increase in global mean precipitation under climate change.

    • Wenyu Zhou
    • , L. Ruby Leung
    •  & Jian Lu

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Groundwater overdraft can lead to land subsidence and groundwater storage loss. Here, the authors develop a machine learning-based method to map subsidence globally, explore subsidence drivers, and identify regions under high groundwater stress.

    • Md Fahim Hasan
    • , Ryan Smith
    •  & Sayantan Majumdar

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Soil-liquefaction is a catastrophic seismic hazard, usually attributed to poor drainage. Here the authors show that liquefaction driven by fluid drainage explains puzzling triggering far from the earthquake source, where shaking is less energetic

    • Shahar Ben-Zeev
    • , Liran Goren
    •  & Einat Aharonov

  • Comment
    | Open Access

    Rapid Arctic warming may increase erosion and stream channel formation, which alters the flux of sediments, carbon, and nutrients in these sensitive ecosystems. Yet, understanding landscape change is hampered by a lack of predictive tools applicable to permafrost settings.

    • Joel C. Rowland

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Accelerating global warming is driving profound Arctic environmental change. The authors show that the structure and evolution of new stream networks are influenced by the evolving character of geometric ground patterns related to the response of permafrost to recent climate change.

    • Shawn M. Chartrand
    • , A. Mark Jellinek
    •  & Shannon Hibbard

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Dam construction reshaped the river networks of the United States. Arid basins are naturally more fragmented than humid. However, the opposite is true in the US today. Extensive dam building has created highly fragmented basins in the eastern US.

    • Rachel A. Spinti
    • , Laura E. Condon
    •  & Jun Zhang

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Despite the continually increasing global reservoir storage, the normalized storage—the ratio of the actual storage to the storage capacity—has declined over the past two decades, indicating diminishing storage returns from reservoir construction.

    • Yao Li
    • , Gang Zhao
    •  & Huilin Gao

  • Comment
    | Open Access

    While over 99% of coastal arctic rivers drain small catchments, future projections of land-ocean fluxes are based on data from large rivers. We encourage inclusion of and increased focus on smaller catchments to support representative assessments of arctic ecosystem change.

    • J. E. Vonk
    • , N. J. Speetjens
    •  & A. E. Poste

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Dunes and woody-debris preserved in the rock record have been used to quantify the magnitude and duration of flow events in ancient rivers, revealing a fluvial system dominated by flashy, storm-driven floods 300 million years ago.

    • Jonah S. McLeod
    • , James Wood
    •  & Alexander C. Whittaker

  • Article
    | Open Access

    In this study, the authors use eddy-resolving climate model simulations and project an almost linear increase of extreme atmospheric rivers with global warming and a doubling of their occurrence under a high emission scenario.

    • Shuyu Wang
    • , Xiaohui Ma
    •  & Bolan Gan

  • Article
    | Open Access

    This study investigates the seasonal catchment memory of rivers in the Tibetan Plateau, with the help of a water storage change model. Understanding catchment memory can aid in hydrological forecasts and water resource management

    • Haiting Gu
    • , Yue-Ping Xu
    •  & Yuxue Guo

  • Article
    | Open Access

    This study presents a global analysis of the sensitivity of inundated areas and population exposure to varying flood event magnitudes globally for 1.2 million river reaches. The authors show that topography and drainage areas correlate with flood sensitivities as well as with societal behavior.

    • Laura Devitt
    • , Jeffrey Neal
    •  & Thorsten Wagener

  • Article
    | Open Access

    This study shows that the total energy loss of gravity currents has a non-linear dependence on the work required to keep sediment in suspension, highlighting the importance of large-scale mixing for the particulate transport of gravity currents.

    • Sojiro Fukuda
    • , Marijke G. W. de Vet
    •  & Robert M. Dorrell

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Here the authors present a global scale classification of river channel belt extents as a resource for improved ecosystem accounting and river behavior analysis. Moreover, the methods show advances in pattern recognition to define new global landform products.

    • Björn Nyberg
    • , Gijs Henstra
    •  & Juha Ahokas

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The color of environmental noise, or degree of predictability in environmental variation, has important implications for ecosystem conservation and management. This study investigates the patterns and drivers of noise color across the US rivers.

    • Tongbi Tu
    • , Lise Comte
    •  & Albert Ruhi

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Rivers are among the most diverse, dynamic, and productive ecosystems on Earth. Here, using Landsat imagery, the authors provide a global attribution of the recent changes in river regime to morphological dynamics, dam-induced widening, and hydrological signals.

    • Qianhan Wu
    • , Linghong Ke
    •  & Chunqiao Song

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