Commentary on ecohydrologic separation accepted in WRR

Since I met Scott in November 2017, we discussed about the concept of "ecohydrologic separation", as introduced by Renée Brooks and colleagues in a Nature Geoscience paper in 2010. In early 2019, we decided to write our thoughts down in a commentary, which was now published in the journal Water Resources Research, titled: "What ecohydrologic separation is and where we can go with it". Our main messages are:
A) Isotope ratios of plant water should differ from water flowing in soils to streams & so we need to move beyond confirming this difference
B) By focusing on dynamics of how water infiltrates into the subsurface & becomes available to plants we can better interpret past findings
C) We discuss four aspects that should be considered:

1. Soil waters seem to almost never be isotopically homogeneous, but it would be useful to identify under what conditions they are.
2. Trees do not prefer water under high tensions, but they might root in less conductive pores.
3. Concepts of plant-water availability should account for lateral heterogeneities.
4. Preferential flows should be represented to accurately model soil-water transport and plant uptake.