Towards a more active dialogue between hydrologists and ecophysiologists for interdisciplinary studies in forest ecosystems

Understanding the internal functioning of natural systems often requires interdisciplinary approaches and competences that allow encompassing and disentangling different and strictly intertwined physical and biological processes. Hydrology and ecophysiology are examples of complementary and highly interconnected disciplines that share water as a common analysis element when investigating the functioning of vegetated ecosystems. In this discussion paper, we call for more frequent and active dialogue and collaboration between (field) hydrologists and ecophysiologists to study natural processes at the boundary between the two disciplines. We report some examples of the specific approaches of hydrologists and ecophysiologists to analyse water movement in the soil-vegetation-atmosphere continuum at increasing spatial scales, highlighting how the same mechanisms can be seen from different, but largely complementary, points of view. We argue that these different perspectives can and should be merged in order to overcome possibly fragmented vision of complex processes and provide a more holistic comprehension of ecohydrological mechanisms in forest ecosystems.