Overland flow during a storm event strongly affects stream water chemistry and bacterial community structure

As flood events are expected to become more frequent due to climate change, investigating how overland flow exports terrestrial nutrients, carbon and living organisms into aquatic systems is essential for understanding both soil and stream ecosystem status. In this paper led by Huong Le, former PhD student at iEES Paris, the authors assessed how dissolved organic carbon, total suspended sediments, and stream bacterial diversity responded to stream discharge and overland flow during stormflow in the Houay Pano tropical catchment in Lao PDR, and emphasized that overland flow during a flood event strongly influences the structure of stream bacterial communities, further underlining the biological connectivity between terrestrial runoff and stream flow.

The paper has been published in the journal Aquatic Sciences.