Water Resources Research Act Program

Details for Project ID MD2024_Prestegaard

Characterization of climate change and its impacts on streamflow and evapotranspiration in Maryland forested, agricultural, and urban catchments

Institute: Maryland
Year Established: 2024 Start Date: 2024-09-01 End Date: 2025-08-31
Total Federal Funds: $50,000 Total Non-Federal Funds: $50,000

Principal Investigators: Karen Prestegaard

Project Summary: Climate change is altering precipitation and temperature regimes. These changes impact the timing and amount of precipitation affecting rates of river stormflow and baseflow runoff and evapotranspiration, including the water transpired by vegetation. In this study, we use our recently created approaches to characterize temporal clumping of precipitation and examine the results of precipitation clustering on stream baseflow, stormflow, and evapotranspiration. To determine whether different tree species or sites in different locations are differentially impacted by changes in precipitation, we will examine wood cores from trees to evaluate both sources of water used by the trees and their water use efficiency. These parameters will be evaluated using carbon and oxygen isotopes recorded in the wood of the sampled trees.