In California, the word 'drought' has been thrown around more this year than I can ever remember. According to the California Department of Water Resources, the 2007 water year is on track to be one of the driest precipitation years on record in California history. This new development will soon affect all of us. In August, officials stated that they will cut water to Southern California farmers 30% by early next year and are drafting plans that could force residential water rationing for the first time in more than a decade. Our water supply is a commodity that we can not live without. Understanding and managing this resource is becoming a growing concern not only in California, but around the world.
Researchers at the Berkeley Institute of the Environment have taken the initiative to do what they can to understand and create solutions to help the future of the planet. Specifically, the HydroWatch project is designing a new framework for quantifying the incredibly complex pathways of water. By designing advanced new sensors that can monitor water above, within, and below plant canopies as well as in soils and streams, the team has a prototype system that can readily be replicated to investigate
the effects of climate change and urban development on freshwater supply. The data they can gather will help to inform public policy and planning frameworks for California and beyond.
For most people, all we care to know is whether water will come out of the faucet when we turn the knob, but with the rapid pace of global warming, this may not always be true! In an effort to understand the complete life cycle of water, the researchers at HydroWatch hope to predict droughts, floods and water supply. By tracking water through the atmosphere, trees, soil, streams, oceans and back into the skies the data will provide better climate models for scientists and researchers. Inez Fung, a professor of earth and planetary science and of environmental science, policy and management at UC Berkeley, is the co-director of the Berkeley Institute of the Environment. As she noted, researchers have discovered that only 30-50% of the rain that falls on the Amazon comes from the ocean, the rest comes from recycled precipitation of the previous year. This type data would be integrated into a computer model incorporating atmospheric, surface and below ground variations of the life cycle of water serving as a benchmark for broader studies worldwide.
The HydroWatch center has deployed systems at two watersheds within the UC Natural Reserve System to set out water monitors that will send researchers real-time data on rain, air moisture, soil water content and stream flow via a wireless network and satellite uplink. This information combined with data on temperature, pressure and humidity will come from wireless sensor motes that will be placed in the tops of trees, embedded in the ground or scattered around the water shed. Before sensor networks, most environmental data was collected from small local areas infrequently, while wireless sensor networks allow data to be collected both at a higher frequency and over large spatial extents. These motes self-assemble into a wireless network that sends data to the UC Berkeley laboratories. The two California watersheds are along Elder Creek in the Angelo Coast Range Reserve and at the Sagehen Creek Field Station on the South Fork of the Eel River 20 miles north of Lake Tahoe. Other information will come from rain monitors that can chemically analyze the samples to determine where water fell and the particular area it originated from. As Fung states, "We have to plan for change in the water supply because of climate change and human actions." HydroWatch aims to track the Earth's hidden water and monitor the visible sources more intensely. The climate models and water life cycle data this project develops and collects will help to predict changes in California's water cycle and help the public be prepared for the impacts on California's economy should drought become something very real to all of us.
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