With the recent declaration of the Hydrology Renaissance era, the perspectives on watersheds and river networks in hydrological sciences have remarkably broadened, moving from channels merely draining water fluxes to complex ecological corridors transporting energy and materials and connecting terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems. This new viewpoint requires a comprehensive understanding of the coupled hydrological, biogeochemical and ecological processes occurring in river basins and within their freshwater bodies. Hydrological drivers dictate the spatial structure and connectivity of riverine ecosystems (e.g., transport of nutrient and organic resources, organism dispersal). On the other hand, ecological communities affect the regional hydrology (e.g., through transpiration, ecosystem engineering) while regulating the biological and chemical cycles of nutrients in water (e.g., organic and inorganic matter, metals, pollutants).
This session aims at fostering the exchange of novel findings from interdisciplinary research on the interplay of hydrological, biogeochemical and ecological processes in watersheds and riverine systems. We welcome studies on ecohydrological dynamics, riverine metacommunities and food webs, stream metabolism, eutrophication, carbon and/or nutrient cycling and exchange, as well as works assessing how anthropogenic interventions may affect the interactions between these processes. We are particularly interested in contributions where tools and methods from one discipline are used to generate insights in another. We seek for contributions that employ a range of theoretical methods, monitoring techniques (e.g., in-situ, remote sensing) and/or modelling approaches (e.g., statistical, process-based, machine/deep-learning-based) at diverse spatial scales ranging from single watersheds and streams to entire river networks.