Journal Articles

The Research Product Clearinghouse portion of the EPSCoR website provides access to a diverse body of resources from the OK NSF EPSCoR Research Infrastructure Improvement Award No. OIA-1301789 (2013-2018), “Adapting Socio-Ecological Systems to Increased Climate Variability.” Resources include peer-reviewed publications that will prove beneficial for researchers, decision-makers, and individuals. Journal articles developed by the OK NSF EPSCoR team provide important foundational research that will support future research efforts. A selection of those articles is below; publications may be accessed via the citation links.

Ecology & Hydrology

• Acharya, B.S., Stebler, E., & Zou, C.B. (2016). Monitoring Litter Interception of Rainfall Using Leaf Wetness Sensor Under Controlled and Field Conditions. Hydrological Processes 31:240-249.  
  Summary:  Leaf litter interception of water is an integral component of the water budget for some vegetated ecosystems. However, loss of rainfall to litter receives considerably less attention than canopy interception due to lack of suitable sensors to measure changes in litter water content. In this study, a commercially available leaf wetness sensor was calibrated to the gravimetric water content of eastern redcedar (Juniperus virginiana) litter and used to estimate litter interception in a subhumid eastern redcedar woodland in north-central Oklahoma.

• Acharya, B. S., Halihan, T., Zou, C.B., & Will, R.E. (2017). Vegetation Controls on the Spatio-Temporal Heterogeneity of Deep Moisture in the Unsaturated Zone: A Hydrogeophysical Evaluation. Scientific Reports, 7(1), 1499.
  Summary:  Information on the spatio-temporal variability of soil moisture in the vadose zone is important to assess groundwater recharge and solute transport in unconsolidated substrate as influenced by biological processes. Time-lapse electrical resistivity imaging (ERI) was used to monitor soil moisture dynamics to a depth of 9 m in a grassland, a grassland encroached by a juniper species (eastern redcedar, Juniperus virginiana), a juniper woodland and an oak forest in the south-central Great Plains, Oklahoma, USA. 

• Acharya, B. S.,  Hao, Y., Ochsner. T.E., & Zou, C.B. (2016). Woody Plant Encroachment Alters Soil Hydrological Properties and Impedes Downward Flux of Water in Tallgrass Prairie. Plant and Soil 2016:1-13.  
  Summary:  Plant and soil interact to shape ecosystem properties, processes, and services provided. Changes in ecosystem productivity, biogeochemical cycling, and plant herbivore interactions have been widely reported when herbaceous plants are replaced by woody plants, but limited information is available on how woody plant encroachment alters temporal dynamics of deep soil moisture and long-term drainage rates in the tallgrass prairie. 

• Dale, J., Zou, C. B., Andrews, W. J., Long, J. M., Liang, Y., & Qiao, L. (2015). Climate, Water Use, and Land Surface Transformation in an Irrigation Intensive Watershed €Streamflow Responses from 1950 through 2010. Agricultural Water Management, 160, 144-152. 
  Summary:  Researchers analyzed long-term records of climate, land-use and land-cover, and reconstructed the water budget based on precipitation, groundwater levels, and water use from 1950 through 2010 in the Cimarron–Skeleton watershed and a portion of the Cimarron–Eagle Chief watershed in Oklahoma, an irrigation-intensive agricultural watershed in the Southern Great Plains. 

• Miller, R. B., & Fox, G.A. (2017). A Tool for Drought Planning in Oklahoma: Estimating and Using Drought-Influenced Flow Exceedance Curves. Journal of Hydrology: Regional Studies, 10:35-46.
  Summary:  Researchers have published a method for estimating and using drought-induced flow duration curves (FDCs). The tool is freely available for initial assessment of drought streamflows in Oklahoma. Publicly available long-term precipitation records for climate divisions in Oklahoma were used to create FDCs from the drought-influenced subsets of streamflow records.

• Ochsner, T.E., Linde, E., Haffner, M., & Dong, J. (2019). Mesoscale Soil Moisture Patterns Revealed Using a Sparse In Situ Network and Regression Kriging. Water Resources Research, 10.1029/2018wr024535.
  Summary:  The objective of this study was to determine how effectively dynamic, mesoscale soil moisture patterns can be mapped by applying regression kriging to the data from a sparse, large‐scale in situ network. The fully automated system utilizes the following data sets: daily soil moisture measurements from the Oklahoma Mesonet, sand content estimates from the Natural Resource Conservation Service Soil Survey Geographic Database, and an antecedent precipitation index computed from National Weather Service multisensor precipitation estimates.  

• Scholtz, R., Polo, J.A., Fuhlendorf, S.D., & Duckworth, G.D. (2017). Land Cover Dynamics Influence Distribution of Breeding Birds in the Great Plains, USA. Biological Conservation 209:323-331.
  Summary:  This project used bird survey data to identify the effect of land cover change on breeding bird ranges within the Great Plains over a 10-year period. Within an occupancy-modeling framework, colonization and extinction rates for each species were estimated. The changes in land cover from grassland to other cover types was also quantified.

• Tanner, E.P. & Fuhlendorf, S.D. (2018). Impact of an Agri-Environmental Scheme on Landscape Patterns. Ecological Indicators 85:956-965.
  Summary:  This paper assesses how patch- and class- scale landscape patterns change in relation to grasslands across the state of Oklahoma with the presence and theoretical absence of the Conservation Reserve Program. Researchers also determined how these patterns vary across three spatial extents: the statewide, Environmental Protection Agency defined ecoregions, and county extents within Oklahoma.  

• Qiao, L., Zou, C.B., Gaitán, C.F., Hong, Y, & McPherson, R.A. (2017). Analysis of Precipitation Projections Over the Climate Gradient of the Arkansas-Red River Basin. Journal of Applied Meteorology and Climatology.
  Summary:  Increases in the frequency and intensity of extreme precipitation are projected for most U.S. regions under climate change. There is a high degree of uncertainty, however, in precipitation regime changes across the large precipitation gradient of the Arkansas Red River basin (ARRB). The authors analyzed future precipitation regimes using two statistical downscaling datasets based on the scenarios from phase 5 of the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP5). 

• Qiao, L., Zou, C.B., Stebler, E., & Will, R. (2017). Woody Plant Encroachment Reduces Annual Runoff and Shifts Runoff Mechanisms in the Mesic Grassland, USA. Water Resources Research. 
  Summary:  Woody plant encroachment into semiarid and subhumid rangelands is a global phenomenon with important hydrological implications. To systematically study the effect of woody plant encroachment on runoff generation processes, seven experimental watersheds were instrumented in 2010, three on grassland sites and four on adjacent sites that were heavily encroached by eastern redcedar (Juniperus virginiana) in the southern Great Plains, USA.

• Qiao, L., Zou, C. B., Will, R. E., & Stebler, E. (2015). Calibration of SWAT Model for Woody Plant Encroachment Using Paired Experimental Watershed Data. Journal of Hydrology, 523, 231-239.
  Summary:  This research provides detailed biophysical and hydrological parameters for tallgrass prairie under moderate grazing and eastern redcedar, which can be used to calibrate any model for further validation and application by the hydrologic modeling community.

• Qin, Y., Xiao, X., Wang, J., Dong, J., Ewing, K., Hoagland, B., Hough, D. J., Fagin, T. D., Zou, Z., Geissler, G. L., Xian, G. Z., & Loveland, T. R. (2016). Mapping Annual Forest Cover in Sub-Humid and Semi-Arid Regions through Analysis of Landsat and PALSAR Imagery. Remote Sensing, 8(11), 933.
  Summary:  To overcome the uncertainty of current forest maps in Oklahoma, researchers produced this Oklahoma forest cover map at the spatial resolution of 30 meters using the integration of microwave and optical remote sensing images.

• Wang, J., Xiao, X., Qin, Y., Dong, J., Geissler, G., Zhang, G., Cejda, N., Alikhani, B., & Doughty, R. (2017). Mapping the Dynamics of Eastern Redcedar Encroachment into Grasslands During 1984–2010 Through PALSAR and Time Series Landsat Images. Remote Sensing of Environment, 190:233-246.
  Summary:  Researchers developed a novel and robust algorithm that combined Landsat Images from 1984-2010 and PALSAR data from 2010 with the Google Earth Engine (GEE) cloud computing platform to generate time series maps for monitoring and tracking eastern redcedar encroachment in Oklahoma grasslands. The research team is the first group to develop a pixel-phenology based approach that combines different types of remotely sensed imagery to generate annual maps of eastern red cedar encroachment in Oklahoma during the time period.
  

• Wang, J., Xiao, X., Qin, Y., Doughty, R.B., Dong, J., & Zou, Z. (2018). Characterizing the Encroachment of Juniper Forests into Sub-Humid and Semi-Arid Prairies from 1984 to 2010 Using PALSAR and Landsat Data. Remote Sensing of Environment, 205:166-179.
  Summary:  This study investigates the spatio-temporal dynamics of juniper forest (Juniperus virginiana and Juniperus ashei) encroachment into tallgrass prairies by generating juniper forest encroachment maps from 1984 to 2010 at 30 m spatial resolution.

• Zou, C. B., Qiao, L., & Wilcox, B. P. (2015). Woodland Expansion in Central Oklahoma will Significantly Reduce Streamflows - A Modelling Analysis. Ecohydrology, 9(5), 807-816.
  Summary:  Researchers used the Soil and Water Assessment Tool to simulate changes to the water budget resulting from woody plant encroachment for the lower Cimarron River basin in central Oklahoma. Under the climate conditions of the period 1988–2009, researchers estimate that complete conversion of the rangelands to eastern redcedar woodlands would result in reductions of up to 40% in annual streamflow for the drier, upper portion of the basin, and approximately 20% for the entire basin.

• Zou, C. B., Caterina, G. L., Will, R. E., Stebler, E., & Turton, D. (2015). Canopy Interception for a Tallgrass Prairie Under Juniper Encroachment. Plos One, 10(11).
  Summary:  Researchers quantified and contrasted spatial and temporal variations of rainfall redistribution for a juniper (Juniperus virginiana, redcedar) woodland and a tallgrass prairie in the south-central Great Plains. 

• Zou, Z., Dong, J., Menarguez, M.A., Xiao, X., Qin, Y., Doughty, R.B., Hooker, K.V., & David, H.K. (2017). Continued Decrease of Open Surface Water Body Area in Oklahoma During 1984–2015. Science of The Total Environment, 595:451–460.
  Summary:  Researchers investigated the spatial-temporal dynamics of open surface water bodies and analyzed their relationship with climate variability and anthropogenic water exploitation in Oklahoma using all available Landsat 5 and 7 images from 1984-2015. 

• Zou, Z., Xiao, X., Dong, J., Qin, Y., Doughty, R.B., Menarguez, M.A., Zhang, G., & Wang, J (2018). Divergent Trends of Open-Surface Water Body Area in the Contiguous United States from 1984 to 2016. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, March 2018, 1719275115.
  Summary: The historical information of surface water body distribution, variation, and multi-decade trends documented in remote-sensing images can aid in water-resource planning and management, yet it is not well explored. Here, we detected open-surface water bodies in all Landsat 5, 7, and 8 images (∼370,000 images, >200 TB) of the CONUS and generated 30-meter annual water body frequency maps for 1984–2016. We analyzed the inter-annual variations and trends of yearlong water body area, examined the impacts of climatic and anthropogenic drivers on water body area dynamics, and explored the relationships between water body area and landwater storage. 

Economics & Visualization Models

• Boyer, T. A., Jayasekera, D. H. W., & Moss, J. Q. (2016). An Assessment of Oklahoma City Commercial Businesses’ Willingness to Adopt Irrigation Water Conservation Methods. HortTechnology, 26(6), 793-802. 
  Summary:  Periodic drought stress in Oklahoma has forced utilities' departments to seek ways of conserving water in both the residential and nonresidential sectors. Most of these efforts largely targeted the residential sector. In this study, we determined the willingness of commercial businesses in the Oklahoma City metro area to participate in water conservation methods, such as installing soil moisture sensors (SMCs), installing smart irrigation controllers (SICs) for their businesses, and participating in voluntary landscape irrigation assessments (LIA). 

• Boyer, T. A., Melstrom, R. T., & Sanders, L. D. (2017, March 1). Effects of Climate Variation and Water Levels on Reservoir Recreation. Lake and Reservoir Management, 00:1-11.
  Summary:  Researchers combined information on valuation, visitation, and time-varying site quality to measure the effects of climate variation and reservoir water levels on recreational demand at Fort Cobb Reservoir, Oklahoma. A time series model of monthly visitation was estimated to measure the effect of water levels, rainfall, wind speed, and air temperature fluctuations on visitation to the reservoir. 

• Ziolkowska, J. R., & Peterson, J. M. (2017). Competition for Water Resources: Experiences and Management Approaches in the U.S. and Europe (1st ed.). Amsterdam, Netherlands: Elsevier.
  Summary:  This book addresses the escalation of global issues regarding water scarcity and the necessary, cost-effective strategies that must be put in place in order to deal with escalating water crisis. It evaluates use and competition for water resources in the U.S. and Europe, emphasizing the problems and challenges of dealing with tradeoffs in water. Water management strategies that can be used to optimize water use and allocation, mitigate water scarcity, and adapt to water scarcity are also addressed. 

• Ziolkowska, J. R., & Peterson, J. M. (2017). Groundwater Level Changes Due to Extreme Weather - An Evaluation Tool for Sustainable Water Management. Water 9 (2), 117. 
  Summary:  Researchers developed a visualization model to provide a holistic geospatial and temporal evaluation of groundwater level variations; 390 Oklahoma wells were used in the study. The model assesses availability of groundwater resources for agricultural, industrial, and municipal uses in the time frame of 2003–2014. 

• Ziolkowska, J. R., & Reyes, R. (2016). Geospatial Analysis of Desalination in the U.S. - An Interactive Tool for Socio-Economic Evaluations and Decision Support. Applied Geography, 71, 115-122.
  Summary:  This paper presents 5D and 6D geospatial models and a multi-dimensional analysis of desalination trends in the U.S. in the time span 1950-2013. The models can be used both for educational and interdisciplinary research purposes and help with determining socio-economic viability of establishing prospective desalination plants in different regions in the future. They can also help support decision makers in solving emergency questions related to water shortages and preparing for long-term water scarcity in different US regions.

• Ziolkowska, J. R., & Reyes, R. (2016). Geological and Hydrological Visualization Models for Digital Earth Representation. Computers & Geosciences, 94, 31-39.
  Summary:  This paper presents techniques and interactive models for multi-dimensional analyses and geospatial visualization in virtual globes based on three application examples for earthquake events, groundwater well levels and geothermal energy in Texas. The models can be applied to a variety of problems in different disciplines, especially to support decision-making processes.

• Ziolkowska, J. R., & Reyes, R. (2016). Impact of Socio-Economic Growth on Desalination in the U.S. Journal of Environmental Management, 167, 15-22.
  Summary:  This paper evaluates the impact of selected socio-economic variables on desalination development in the US in the time span 1970-2013. The results show that the GDP and population growth have significantly impacted the desalination sector over the analyzed time period. The insights into the economics of desalination provided with this paper can be used to further evaluate the cost-effectiveness of desalination both in the U.S. and other countries around the world.

• Ziolkowska, J. R. (2014). Is Desalination Affordable? A €Regional Cost and Price Analysis. Water Resources Management, 29(5), 1385-1397.
  Summary:  This paper provides an in-depth analysis on the economics of desalination with country-specific examples. It depicts a comprehensive picture of cost variability of desalinated water and points out challenges for cost-effective desalination in the future.

• Ziolkowska, J. R. (2015). Shadow Price of Water for Irrigation -€ A Case of the High Plains. Agricultural Water Management, 153, 20-31.
  Summary:  This paper estimates the economic value of water for agricultural production in the U.S. High Plains. The study can be helpful to stakeholders and policy makers to evaluate scenarios and tradeoffs between profitable crop production and conservation of water resources.

Social Impacts & Assessment

• Caniglia, B., Frank, B., Kerner, B., & Mix, T. L. (2016). Water Policy and Governance Networks: A Pathway to Enhance Resilience Toward Climate Change. Sociological Forum, 31, 828-845.
  Summary:  Natural resources governance is key to enhancing resilience and strengthening socioecological systems. Overlapping jurisdictions and lack of clarity in the lines of authority reduce the efficiency of environmental policies and governance, jeopardizing the conservation and sustainable use of resources. Analysis of state-level water policies and governance reveals that Oklahoma water governance experiences multiple forms of fragmentation, while also showing features of an adaptive network. 

• Jenkins-Smith, H., Ripberger, J., Silva, C., Carlson, N., Gupta, K., Henderson, M., & Goodin, A. (2017). The Oklahoma Meso-Scale Integrated Socio-Geographic Network: A Technical Overview. Journal of Atmospheric and Oceanic Technology, 34(11), 2431-2441.
  Summary:  Established as a social companion to the Oklahoma Mesonet, the Oklahoma Meso-Scale Integrated Socio-Geographic Network (M-SISNet) is a network of approximately 1,500 “social monitoring stations” (geolocated households) across the state of Oklahoma that provide data on household perceptions and responses to signals that are sent from agricultural, hydrological, and meteorological systems. This article describes the process for the M-SISNet sampling frame, protocols for recruitment, retention, and survey implementation.

• Ripberger, J. T., Jenkins-Smith, H. C., Silva, C. L., Carlson, D. E., Gupta, K., Carlson, N., & Dunlap, R. E. (2017). Bayesian Versus Politically Motivated Reasoning in Human Perception of Climate Anomalies. Environmental Research Letters, 12(11), 114004.
  Summary:  This study explores human perception of feedback from natural systems by testing alternate conceptions about how individuals perceive climate anomalies, a form of feedback from the climate system.

Statistical Theory 

• Liang, Y., Habiger, J.D., & Min, X. (2017). The Influence of Misspecified Covariance on False Discovery Control When Using Posterior Probabilities. Statistical Theory and Related Fields 1(2):205-215.
  Summary:  This paper focuses on the influence of a misspecified covariance structure on false discovery rate for the large-scale multiple testing problem. Specifically, the paper evaluates the influence on the marginal distribution of local false discovery rate statistics, which are used in many multiple testing procedures and related to Bayesian posterior probabilities. This theoretical work shows how a popular testing procedure based on Bayesian posterior probabilities can be influenced by a change in the dependence structure.