Water in motion: Mysteries of Northern California

“Water is everybody’s business”. Too much, too little, too early, too late can all be devastating and costly for society as well as for the biosphere. California just ended a four-year drought. How do some trees survive the drought? What are the climatic impacts of the drought?

The data have revealed many surprises. The water table ~20 meters below the surface rises by about 1 meter after the first storms of the season. Adjacent evergreen trees transpire in different seasons. Professor Fung presents a simple model of the fast processes that redistribute water in the subsurface, and hypothesize that the weathered bedrock could be a non-negligible reservoir of moisture to sustain trees through dry seasons and cool the summers.

Speaker: Inez Fung, UC Berkeley