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Eco-hydrology: Tracking Water Cycle

There is a limited amount of water on Earth. It does not stay still in one place or form, but rather, it goes around and around in what is called the water cycle. As it moves around the globe, water can be in different forms: liquid, gaseous or solid. The water you see today in a river was previously stored in the soil or deep in the ground before it came out to the surface, forming a spring. That same water will flow downhill until it reaches another river or lake and eventually it will flow into the ocean. At some point in its history, that same water was taken up by the roots of plants and...

Evapotranspiration: What I Study

I study the process by which water returns from the surface of the Earth to the atmosphere in the form of vapor. This process is called evapotranspiration. Without it, water would not cycle around the globe! It includes the evaporation of water from all surfaces, for example, a lake, ocean, or the top of the soil. It also includes transpiration, which is the process by which plants return the water they take from the soil to the atmosphere through tiny pores in their leaves. Because water vapor is a gas, it is harder to measure it compared to water in its liquid form. For example, if you...

Susana Alvarado

I am an eco-hydrologist which means that I study how ecosystems and their components interact with the water cycle. For example, I might measure sap flowing in a tree to estimate how much water it drinks during a day or year, which is easier said than done.

I love to be out in nature (and travel!) so I have lived and done fieldwork in pretty cool and diverse places of our planet, mostly in the tropics. Some of my time is also spent in the lab preparing or building equipment to deploy in the field and doing experiments, as well as in front of a computer analyzing a lot of data.

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