David Butman

About

David Butman is an Associate Professor in the Department of Civil & Environmental Engineering at the University of Washington. His research focuses on environmental engineering, specifically on hydrology and hydrodynamics, as well as the biogeochemical connections between land and waters systems. His work involves understanding global and regional carbon cycling, contributing to the knowledge of how land and water systems interact within the context of environmental processes.

Research topics

• Environmental science
• Ecology
• Computer Science
• Geology
• Biology
• Meteorology
• Earth science
• Evolutionary biology
• Geography
• Geomorphology

Selected publications

• Representing the function and sensitivity of coastal interfaces in Earth system models

  Nature Communications · 2020 · 344 citations

  Between the land and ocean, diverse coastal ecosystems transform, store, and transport material. Across these interfaces, the dynamic exchange of energy and matter is driven by hydrological and hydrodynamic processes such as river and groundwater discharge, tides, waves, and storms. These dynamics regulate ecosystem functions and Earth's climate, yet global models lack representation of coastal processes and related feedbacks, impeding their predictions of coastal and global responses to change.…

  DOI

• The importance of hydrology in routing terrestrial carbon to the atmosphere via global streams and rivers

  Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences · 2022 · 253 citations

  evasion to discharge than GPP. This highlights the importance of hydrology, in particular water throughput, in terrestrial-fluvial carbon transfers and the need to account for this effect in plumbing the terrestrial carbon budget.

  DOI

• Substantial decrease in CO2 emissions from Chinese inland waters due to global change

  Nature Communications · 2021 · 226 citations

  emissions from Chinese inland waters have greatly offset the terrestrial carbon sink and are therefore a key component of China's carbon budget.

  DOI

• Revealing the hidden carbon in forested wetland soils

  Nature Communications · 2024-01-25 · 41 citations

  articleOpen access

  Abstract Inland wetlands are critical carbon reservoirs storing 30% of global soil organic carbon (SOC) within 6% of the land surface. However, forested regions contain SOC-rich wetlands that are not included in current maps, which we refer to as ‘cryptic carbon’. Here, to demonstrate the magnitude and distribution of cryptic carbon, we measure and map SOC stocks as a function of a continuous, upland-to-wetland gradient across the Hoh River Watershed (HRW) in the Pacific Northwest of the U.S., c…

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Seasonality Drives Carbon Emissions Along a Stream Network

  Journal of Geophysical Research Biogeosciences · 2023-08-01 · 12 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  Abstract Headwater stream networks contribute substantially to the global carbon dioxide terrestrial flux because of high turbulence and coupling with terrestrial environments. Heterogeneity within headwater stream networks, both spatially and temporally, makes measuring and upscaling these emissions challenging because measurements of carbon dioxide in streams are often limited to a few monitoring points. We modified a stream network model to reflect real measurements made under base flow and h…

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Robert G. Striegl

  United States Geological Survey

  59 shared

• M. Dornblaser

  United States Geological Survey

  29 shared

• Peter A. Raymond

  29 shared

• Kimberly P. Wickland

  United States Geological Survey

  28 shared

• Matthew J. Bogard

  University of Lethbridge

  24 shared

• C Kuhn

  Custom Electronics (United States)

  23 shared

• Robert G. M. Spencer

  Florida State University

  23 shared

• S. M. Stackpoole

  United States Geological Survey

  21 shared

Awards & honors

• DISCCRS: Early Career Symposium Scholar

Similar researchers at University of Washington

• Xuegang Banh-43
• Jeffrey Bermanh-30
• Michael Bretth-29