California Heartbeat Initiative- Freshwater (CHI-FW): advancing understanding of California's freshwater resources using the University of California Natural Reserves and innovative technology.
Abstract
California boasts some of the highest species and ecosystem diversity on Earth. The availability of freshwater resources is one of the main drivers of this diversity. As climate change influences patterns of freshwater availability across California, understanding the range of spatial and temporal patterns of freshwater availability required by species and ecosystems is urgent. In water limited systems, plants and plant health may be understood as a surface expression of water availability and could prove to be a reliable way to assess water content at the landscape level. However, these relationships are a challenge to measure and to generalize across vast temperature-precipitation gradients and varying geomorphology.
Using a series of 10 University of California Natural Reserve System and 2 University of California Research and Extension sites that traverse broad spatial gradients of vegetation, water availability and temperature, the California Heartbeat Initiative - Freshwater (CHI-FW) will study variations in plant- water relations across California by linking field-based experiments and sensor networks with repeat aerial surveys and satellite data Using these sites as critical nodes from which to study plant-water interactions CHI-FW has three main objectives. 1.) To determine how to effectively measure and use vegetation water content as a proxy for ecosystem health and vulnerability. 2.) To establish parameters for quantifying and identifying hydrologic refugium and ecological conditions in which hydrology is serving to buffer local scale effects of changing climates and novel ecological settings. 3.) Integrating CHI-FW remote sensing and field datasets to advance the application and calibration of remote ecophysiology. 4.) Identify specific interactions between freshwater hydrology and vegetation that will be key to ecosystem resilience going forward. Here, we provide an overview of the CHI-FW project and novel field protocols. We conclude that CHI-FW project is an important model for understanding landscape scale plant-water interactions under a changing climate.- Publication:
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AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts
- Pub Date:
- December 2018
- Bibcode:
- 2018AGUFM.H12A..05E
- Keywords:
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- 0414 Biogeochemical cycles;
- processes;
- and modeling;
- BIOGEOSCIENCESDE: 0476 Plant ecology;
- BIOGEOSCIENCESDE: 1630 Impacts of global change;
- GLOBAL CHANGEDE: 1813 Eco-hydrology;
- HYDROLOGY