Skip to main content
ARS Home » Pacific West Area » Tucson, Arizona » SWRC » People » Joel Biederman
Joel A Biederman

Research Hydrologist

Joel A Biederman/ARSUserFiles/49407/JoelBaggingGrass.jpg
Research Hydrologist

Southwest Watershed Research Center
USDA-Agricultural Research Service
2000 E. Allen Road
Tucson, AZ  85719
Tel: (520) 647 - 9236

https://snre.arizona.edu/people/joel-biederman
https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Joel_Biederman
http://tinyurl.com/googlescholar-jabiederman 

Research Interests

I am a Research Hydrologist with the USDA-ARS Southwest Watershed Research Center.  I work to understand the impacts of climate and land use changes on watershed services and to develop new tools for sustainable watershed management.   I specialize in 1) interactions of ecosystems and hydrology, 2) ecosystem disturbances such as drought, fire and logging, 3) snow hydrology and 4) leveraging research results from diverse sites to address questions of regional to global scale.

Current Projects

Education and Background

I grew up spending school years in rainy McMinnville, Oregon, but my family worked summers in Arizona, where I learned about the role of water in dryland ecosystems.  I received degrees in Civil and Environmental Engineering from Montana State University and conducted water and wastewater research at the NSF Center for Biofilm Engineering.  After serving as a teacher in France and then Connecticut, I returned to Arizona in 2010 to pursue a Ph.D. in Hydrology and Water Resources with advisor Paul Brooks at the University of Arizona.  After four years as a postdoc with Russ Scott at SWRC, I was hired as a Category 1 scientist in 2018. 

Recent Publications

(for a complete list & full texts, see Research Gate and Google Scholar links above)

Mahmud, K., Biederman, J.A., Scott, R.L., Litvak, M.E., Kolb, T., Meyers, T.P., Krishnan, P., Bastrikob, V., and MacBean,    N.  Reducing biases in biosphere model predictions in dryland net CO2 flux variability.  Accepted.  JGR Biogeosciences. 

Goodrich, D., Heilman, P., Nearing, M., Nichols, M., Scott, R., Williams, J., and J.A. Biederman.  The USDA-Agricultural Research Service’s Long Term Agro-ecosystems Walnut Gulch Experimental Watershed (WGEA), Arizona, USA.  2021.  Hydrological Processes.  10.1002/hyp.14349 

MacBean, N., Scott, R.L., Biederman, J.A., Peylin, P., Kolb, T., Litvak, M., Krishnan, P., Meyers, T.P., Arora, V., Bastrikov, V., Goll, D., Lombardozzi, D.L., Nabel, J., Pongratz, J., Sitch, S., Walker, A.P., Zaehle, S., and Moore, D.J.P.  Dynamic global vegetation models underestimate net CO2 flux mean and inter-annual variability in dryland ecosystems.  Accepted.  Environmental Research Letters. 

Li, L.F., Z. Z. Zheng, J.A. Biederman, C. Xu, Z.H. Xu, R.X. Che, Y.F. Wang, X.Y. Cui and Y.B. Hao.  Nonlinear carbon cycling responses to precipitation variability in a semiarid grassland. 2021. Science of the Total Environment.  10.1016/j.scitotenv.2021.147062 

Zhang, F.Y., Biederman, J.A., Dannenberg, M.P., Yan, D., Reed, S.C., and Smith, W.K.  Five decades of observed daily precipitation reveal longer and more variable drought events across much of the western United States.  2021.  Geophysical Research Letters. 

Robles, M., Hammond, J., Kampf, S., Biederman, J.A., and Demaria, E.  Winter inputs buffer streamflow sensitivity to snowpack losses in the Salt River watershed in the Lower Colorado River Basin.  2021. Water. 10.3390/w13010003 

Belmonte, A., Sankey, T., Biederman, J.A., Bradford, J., Goetz, S. and Kolb., T. UAV-derived snow cover and persistence: implications for dry forest management and forest structure.  2021.  Remote Sensing. 10.3390/rs13051036 

Scott, R.L., Knowles, J.F., Nelson, J., Gentine, P., Li, X., Bryant, R.B., Biederman, J.A. 2021. Water availability impacts on evapotranspiration partitioning. Agricultural and Forest Meteorology. 297. 10.1016/j.agrformet.2020.108251.   

Knowles, J., R.L. Scott, J.A. Biederman, P. Blanken, S.P. Burns, S. Dore, T.E. Kolb, M.Litvak and G. Barron-Gafford.  Montane forest productivity across a semi-arid climatic gradient.  2020.  Global Change Biology. https://doi.org/10.1111/gcb.15335 

MacBean, N.,  Scott, R.L., Biederman, J.A., Ottle, C., Vuichard, N., Kolb, T., Dore, S., Litvak, M., Ducharne, A., and Moore, D.J.P.  Multi-variable, multi-configuration testing of ORCHIDEE land surface model water flux and storage estimates across semi-arid sites in the southwestern US.  2020.   Hydrology and Earth System Sciences. 10.5194/hess-24-5203-2020  

Baffaut, C.,  J. Baker, J. A. Biederman, D. Bosch, A. Buda, E. Brooks, E. Demaria, E. Elias, G. Flerchinger, D. Goodrich, S. Hamilton, S. Hardegree, D. Harmel, D. Hoover, K. King, P. Kleinman, M. Liebig, G. McCarty, G. Moglen, T. Moorman, D. Moriasi, F. Pierson, E. Russell, A. Saha, D. Smith, L. Yasarer.  Comparative analysis of water budgets across the U.S. Long-Term Agroecosystem Research network.  2020.  Journal of Hydrology.  10.1016/j.jhydrol.2020.125021 

Li, Linfeng; Zheng, Zhenzhen; Biederman, J.A.; Qian, Ruyan; Zhang, Biao; Che, Rongxiao; Wang, Fang; Xu, Zhi Hong; Cui, Xiaoyong; Hao, YanBin; Wang, Yanfen.  Drought and heat wave impacts on grassland carbon cycling across hierarchical levels. 2021. Plant, Cell and Environment.  10.1111/pce.13767 

Fellows, A.W., Flerchinger, G.N., Seyfried, M.S., Biederman, J.A., and Lohse, K.A.  Winter CO2 efflux from cold sagebrush shrublands distributed across the rain-to-snow transition zone.  2020. Journal of Geophysical Research - Biogeosciences. Broxton, P. D., van Leeuwen, J.D. and Biederman, J.A.  Forest cover and topography regulate the thin, ephemeral snowpacks of the semiarid Southwest United States.  2020.  Ecohydrology. 10.1002/eco.2202 

Belmonte, A., Sankey, T., Biederman, J.A., Bradford, J., Goetz, S., Kolb., T. and Woolley, T.  UAV-derived Estimates of Forest Structure to inform Ponderosa Pine Forest Restoration.  2019.  Remote Sensing in Ecology and Conservation. 10.1002/rse2.137 

Li, L., Zheng, Z., Wang, W., Biederman, J.A., Xu, X., Ran, Q., Qian, R., Xu, C., Zhang, B., Wang, F., Zhou, S., Cui, L., Che, R., Hao, Y.B., Cui, X., Xu, Z.H., and Wang, Y.F.  Nitrous oxide emissions in terrestrial ecosystems under climate change: a global meta-analysis.  2019.  Global Change Biology. 10.1111/gcb.14847 

Smith, W.K., M.P. Dannenberg; D. Yan; S. Herrmann; M.L. Barnes; G.A. Barron-Gafford; J. A. Biederman; S. Ferrenberg; A.M. Fox; A.R. Hudson; J.F. Knowles; N. MacBean; D.J. Moore; P.L. Nagler; S.C. Reed; W.A. Rutherford; R.L. Scott; X. Wang; and J. Yang.  Remote sensing of dryland ecosystem structure and function: Progress, challenges and opportunities.  2019.  Remote Sensing of Environment. 10.1016/j.rse.2019.111401 

Li, L.F., Z. Z. Zheng, J.A. Biederman, C. Xu, Z.H. xu, R.X. Che, Y.F. Wang, X.Y. Cui and Y.B. Hao.  Ecological response to heavy rainfall depends on seasonal timing and recurrence.  2019.  New Phytologist. 10.1111/nph.15832 

Broxton, P. D., van Leeuwen, J.D. and Biederman, J.A.  Improving snow water equivalent maps with machine learning of snow survey and LiDAR measurements.  2019. Water Resources Research. 10.1029/2018WR024146 

Scott, R.L. andJ.A. Biederman.  Critical zone water balance over thirteen years in a semiarid savanna.  2019. Water Resources Research. 10.1029/2018WR023477 

Zhou, C., Biederman, J.A., Zhang, H., L. Li,  Cui, X., Wang, Y., and Hao, Y.B. Extreme-duration drought impacts on soil CO2 efflux are regulated by plant species composition.  2019.  Plant and Soil. 10.1007/s11104-019-04025-w 

Yan, D., Scott, R.L., Moore, D.J.P., Biederman, J.A. and Smith, W.K.  Understanding the relationship between vegetation greenness and productivity across dryland ecosystems through the integration of PhenoCam, satellite, and eddy covariance data.  2019.  Remote Sensing of the Environment. 10.1016/j.rse.2018.12.029 

Hinojo-Hinojo, C., Castellanos, A., Huxman, T., Rodriguez, J., Vargas, R., Romo-Leon, J., and Biederman, J.A.  Native shrubland and managed bufflegrass savanna in drylands: implications on ecosystem carbon and water fluxes.  2019.  Agricultural and Forest Meteorology. 10.1016/j.agrformet.2019.01.030 

Turpin-Jelfs, T.,  Michaelides, K., Biederman, J.A., and Anesio, A.M.  The distribution and speciation of nitrogen in a degrading semiarid grassland of the Southwestern USA.  2019. Biogeosciences 16.2: 369-381. 10.5194/bg-16-369-2019 

Hao, Y.B., Zhang, H., Biederman, J.A., Li, L., Cui, X., Xue, K., Du, J., and Wang, Y.  Seasonal timing regulates extreme drought impacts on CO2 and H2O exchanges over semiarid steppes in Inner Mongolia, China.  2018.  Agriculture, Ecosystems and Environment. 10.1016/j.agee.2018.06.010  

Biederman, J.A., R.L. Scott, M. Litvak, E. Vivoni, J. Arnone, R. Jasoni, M.T. Moreo, S.A. Papuga, G.E. Ponce-Campos, E. R. Vivoni and A. Schreiner-McGraw.  Shrubland carbon sink depends on winter water availability in the warm deserts of North America.  2018.  Agricultural and Forest Meteorology, Special Issue: 20th Anniversary of Ameriflux.

Biederman, J.A., Russell L. Scott, Tom W. Bell, David R. Bowling, Sabina Dore, Jaime Garatuza-Payan,  Thomas E. Kolb, Praveena Krishnan, Dan J. Krofcheck, Marcy E. Litvak, Gregory E. Maurer, Tilden P. Meyers, Walter C. Oechel, Shirley A. Papuga, Guillermo E. Ponce-Campos, Julio C. Rodriguez, Rodrigo Vargas, Christopher J. Watts, Enrico A. Yepez, and Michael L. Goulden.  2017.  Carbon and water exchange across dryland ecosystems of southwestern North America.  Global Change Biology. 10.1111/gcb.13686.

W.J. Liu, L.F. Li, J.A. Biederman, Y.B. Hao, H. Zhang, X.M.Kang, , X.Y. Cui, Y.F. Wang, M.W. Li, Z.H. Xu, K. L. Griffin, C.Y. Xu.  2017.  Repackaging precipitation into fewer, larger storms reduces ecosystem exchanges of CO2 and H20 in semiarid steppes.  Agricultural and Forest Meteorology.  10.1016/j.agrformet.2017.08.029

Biederman, J.A., T. Meixner, A.A. Harpold., D.E. Reed,  E. Gutmann, J.A. Gaun, P.D. Brooks. Riparian zones attenuate nitrogen loss following bark beetle-induced lodgepole pine mortality.  2016.  Journal of Geophysical Research – Biogeosciences. 10.1002/2015JG003284

Biederman, J.A., R.L. Scott, M.Goulden, R. Vargas, M. Litvak, T.E. Kolb, P.Blanken, W. Oechel., E. Yepez, J. Garatuza, G. Maurer, S. Dore, T. Bell, S.P. Burns. 2016.  Terrestrial carbon balance in a drier world:  the effects of water availability in southwestern North America.  Global Change Biology.  10.1111/gcb.13222.

Scott, R.L. and J.A. Biederman.  Partitioning evapotranspiration using long-term carbon dioxide and water vapor fluxes.  2017 Geophysical Research Lett. 44, 10.1002/2017GL074324.

Biederman, J.A., A. Somor, A.A. Harpold, E. Gutmann, A. Meddens, D.J. Gochis, P.A. Troch, R.L. Scott, D. Breshears, and P.D. Brooks.  2015.  Recent tree die-off has little effect on streamflow in contrast to expected increases from historical studies.  Water Resources Research. 10.1002/2015WR017401.  WRR Editor’s Choice Award.  EOS Research Spotlight https://eos.org/research-spotlights/bark-beetles-cause-big-tree-die-offs-but-streams-flow-steadily

Biederman, J.A., A.A. Harpold, D. J. Gochis, D. E. Reed, B. Ewers, S. Papuga and P.D. Brooks.  2014.  Increased evaporation following widespread tree mortality limits streamflow response. Water Resources Research. 10.1002/2013WR014994

Biederman, J.A., P.D. Brooks, A.A. Harpold, D.J. Gochis, E. Gutmann, E. Pendall D.E. Reed and B. Ewers.  2014.  Multiscale Observations of Snowpack Accumulation and Abalation Following Insect-induced Tree Mortality. Ecohydrology. DOI: 10.1002/eco.1342.

Scott, R.L., Biederman, J.A., G. Barron-Gafford, E. Hamerlynck.  The carbon balance pivot point of southwestern US ecosystems:  insights from the 21st century drought. 2015. Journal of Geophysical Research - Biogeosciences 10.1002/2015JG003181.

Smith, W.K., Biederman, J.A., Scott, R.L., Moore, D.J.P., He, M., Kimball, J.S., Hudson, A., Barnes, M.L., MacBean, N., Fox, A., Litvak, M.E. Chlorophyll fluorescence better captures seasonal and interannual gross primary productivity dynamics across dryland ecosystems of southwestern North America . 2018. Geophysical Research Lett. 10.1002/2017GL075922.

Novick, K., J.A. Biederman, A. Desai, D. Moore, R. Scott and M. Torn.  Ameriflux’s bottom-up approach to network-enabled ecosystem science.  2018.  Agricultural and Forest Meteorology, Special Issue: 20th Anniversary of Ameriflux.

Hao, Y.B., Zhang, H., Biederman, J.A., Li, L., Cui, X., Xue, K., Du, J., and Wang, Y.  Seasonal timing regulates extreme drought impacts on CO2 and H2O exchanges over semiarid steppes in Inner Mongolia, China.  2018.  Agriculture, Ecosystems and Environment. 10.1016/j.agee.2018.06.010