Sheila Murphy
Biography
Sheila Murphy is a hydrologist who focuses on how disturbances (such as wildfire, floods, hurricanes, land use change) alter watershed response, water quality, and water quantity. Her recent research has evaluated the effects of wildfire on water quality in the western U.S., and the hydrologic and geochemical responses to geology, land cover change, and hurricanes in a tropical forest in Puerto Rico.
Science and Products
Developing a "fire-aware" stream gage network by integrating USGS enterprise databases
Wildfires affect streams and rivers when they burn vegetation and scorch the ground. This makes floods more likely to happen and reduces water quality. Public managers, first responders, fire scientists, and hydrologists need timely information before and after a fire to plan for floods and water treatment. This project will create a method to combine national fire databases with the...
Connections between Forested and Urban Landscapes and Implications for Water Supply
Interactions between forested and urban landscapes can lead to reciprocal effects that have substantial impacts on water supply and ecology. Air pollution from urban and forested landscapes can be deposited on adjacent forests, while forest disturbance, such as wildfires and floods, can remobilize those contaminants. Additionally, pollutants from legacy land use (e.g., mining) can also be...
Water chemistry data for Fourmile Creek Watershed, Colorado, 2010-2015
Extreme climate events– such as hurricanes, droughts, ice storms, extreme precipitation, and wildfires– have the potential to cause large changes in watershed processes, response, and function. A five-year post-wildfire study of stream chemistry in the Colorado Front Range USA, enabled the analysis of the effects these events have water quality, which is published
Geospatial data for Luquillo Mountains, Puerto Rico: Mean annual precipitation, elevation, watershed outlines, and rain gage locations
These geospatial data sets were developed as part of a new analysis of all known current and historical rain gages in the Luquillo Mountains, Puerto Rico published in the journal article Murphy, S.F., Stallard, R.F., Scholl, M.A., Gonzalez, G., and Torres-Sanchez, A.J., 2017, Reassessing rainfall in the Luquillo Mountains, Puerto Rico: Local and global ecohydrological
Fates and fingerprints of sulfur and carbon following wildfire in economically important croplands of California, U.S.
Sulfur (S) is widely used in agriculture, yet little is known about its fates within upland watersheds, particularly in combination with disturbances like wildfire. Our study examined the effects of land use and wildfire on the biogeochemical “fingerprints,” or the quantity and chemical composition, of S and carbon (C). We conducted our research...
Hermes, Anna L.; Ebel, Brian A.; Murphy, Sheila F.; Hinckley, Eve-Lyn S. Wildfire-driven changes in hydrology mobilize arsenic and metals from legacy mine waste
Wildfires burning in watersheds that have been mined and since revegetated pose unique risks to downstream water supplies. A wildfire near Boulder, Colorado that burned a forested watershed recovering from mining disturbance that occurred 80-160 years ago allowed us to 1) assess arsenic and metal contamination in streams draining the burned area...
Murphy, Sheila F.; McCleskey, R. Blaine; Martin, Deborah A.; Holloway, JoAnn; Writer, Jeffrey H. Changes in climate and land cover affect seasonal streamflow forecasts in the Rio Grande headwaters
Seasonal streamflow forecast bias, changes in climate, snowpack, and land cover, and the effects of these changes on relations between basin‐wide snowpack, SNOw TELemetry (SNOTEL) station snowpack, and seasonal streamflow were evaluated in the headwaters of the Rio Grande, Colorado. Results indicate that shifts in the seasonality of precipitation...
Penn, Colin A.; Clow, David W.; Sexstone, Graham A.; Murphy, Sheila F. Atmospheric dust deposition varies by season and elevation in the Colorado Front Range, USA
As atmospheric dust deposition continues to increase across the southwestern United States, it has the potential to alter ecosystem productivity and structure by delivering nutrients, base cations, and pollutants to remote mountain sites. Due to the sparse distribution of dust monitoring sites, open questions remain about the spatial and temporal...
Heindel, Ruth C.; Putman, Annie Laura; Murphy, Sheila F.; Repert, Deborah A.; Hinckley, Eve-Lyn S. Inorganic nitrogen wet deposition gradients in the Denver-Boulder metropolitan area and Colorado Front Range – Preliminary implications for Rocky Mountain National Park and interpolated deposition maps
For the first time in the 40-year history of the National Atmospheric Deposition Program / National Trends Network (NADP/NTN), a unique urban-to-rural transect of wet deposition monitoring stations were operated as part of the NTN in 2017 to quantify reactive inorganic nitrogen wet deposition for adjacent urban and rural, montane regions. The...
Wetherbee, Gregory A.; Benedict, Katherine ; Murphy, Sheila F.; Elliott, Emily Fire, flood, and drought: Extreme climate events alter flow paths and stream chemistry
Extreme climate events—such as hurricanes, droughts, extreme precipitation, and wildfires—have the potential to alter watershed processes and stream response. Yet due to the destructive and hazardous nature and unpredictability of such events, capturing their hydrochemical signal is challenging. A 5‐year postwildfire study of stream chemistry in...
Murphy, Sheila F.; McCleskey, R. Blaine; Martin, Deborah A.; Writer, Jeffrey H.; Ebel, Brian A. Before the storm: Antecedent conditions as regulators of hydrologic and biogeochemical response to extreme climate events
While the influence of antecedent conditions on watershed function is widely recognized under typical hydrologic regimes, gaps remain in the context of extreme climate events (ECEs). ECEs are those events that far exceed seasonal norms of intensity, duration, or impact upon the physical environment or ecosystem. In this synthesis, we discuss the...
McMillan, Sara K.; Wilson, Henry F.; Tague, Christina L.; Hanes, Daniel M.; Inamdar, Shreeram; Karwan, Diana L.; Loecke, Terry; Morrison, Jonathan; Murphy, Sheila F.; Vidon, Philippe Anthropocene landscape change and the legacy of nineteenth- and twentieth-century mining in the Fourmile Catchment, Colorado Front Range
Human impacts on earth surface processes and materials are fundamental to understanding the proposed Anthropocene epoch. This study examines the magnitude, distribution, and long-term context of nineteenth- and twentieth-century mining in the Fourmile Creek catchment, Colorado, coupling airborne LiDAR topographic analysis with historical documents...
Dethier, David P.; Ouimet, William B.; Murphy, Sheila F.; Kotikian, Maneh; Wicherski, Will; Samuels, Rachel M. A method for quantifying cloud immersion in a tropical mountain forest using time-lapse photography
Quantifying the frequency, duration, and elevation range of fog or cloud immersion is essential to estimate cloud water deposition in water budgets and to understand the ecohydrology of cloud forests. The goal of this study was to develop a low-cost and high spatial-coverage method to detect occurrence of cloud immersion within a mountain cloud...
Bassiouni, Maoya; Scholl, Martha A.; Torres-Sanchez, Angel J.; Murphy, Sheila F. Reassessing rainfall in the Luquillo Mountains, Puerto Rico: Local and global ecohydrological implications
Mountains receive a greater proportion of precipitation than other environments, and thus make a disproportionate contribution to the world’s water supply. The Luquillo Mountains receive the highest rainfall on the island of Puerto Rico and serve as a critical source of water to surrounding communities. The area’s role as a long-term research site...
Murphy, Sheila F.; Stallard, Robert F.; Scholl, Martha A.; Gonzalez, Grizelle; Torres-Sanchez, Angel J. Critical zone properties control the fate of nitrogen during experimental rainfall in montane forests of the Colorado Front Range
Several decades of research in alpine ecosystems have demonstrated links among the critical zone, hydrologic response, and the fate of elevated atmospheric nitrogen (N) deposition. Less research has occurred in mid-elevation forests, which may be important for retaining atmospheric N deposition. To explore the fate of N in the montane zone, we...
Hinckley, Eve-Lyn S.; Ebel, Brian A.; Barnes, Rebecca T.; Murphy, Sheila F.; Anderson, Suzanne P. Water-quality response to a high-elevation wildfire in the Colorado Front Range
Water quality of the Big Thompson River in the Front Range of Colorado was studied for 2 years following a high-elevation wildfire that started in October 2012 and burned 15% of the watershed. A combination of fixed-interval sampling and continuous water-quality monitors was used to examine the timing and magnitude of water-quality changes...
Mast, Alisa; Murphy, Sheila F.; Clow, David W.; Penn, Colin A.; Sexstone, Graham A.
Wildfires in Old Mining Areas Pose Risk to Water Quality
This article is part of the Fall 2020 issue of the Earth Science Matters Newsletter.
Fires, floods, and the future of water supplies in the southwestern U.S.
This article is part of the Spring 2016 issue of the Earth Science Matters Newsletter.