Michelle Stern, PhD (Former Employee)

The California Department of Fish and Wildlife (CDFW) installed more than 40 climate and biodiversity monitoring stations, called sentinel sites, on public lands across the state. These sites collect detailed data on things like temperature, precipitation, soil moisture, and more to track how the environment is changing. Each site is meant to reflect conditions in the surrounding area, but...

Culturally prescribed burning has been long practiced by the Yurok Tribe for a variety of reasons. This study explores using culturally prescribed fire as a land management tool for increasing the resiliency of streams and watersheds.

Changes in vegetation in a large watershed due to wildfire can have a substantial influence on actual evapotranspiration rates and water availability. After a large, intense wildfire, evapotranspiration rates are expected to decrease. As vegetation reestablishes, the evapotranspiration rates increase over a period of years, back to pre-fire conditions. Watershed models typically use input layers...

Drought, along with recent wildfires, have had enormous impacts downstream on water quantity and quality. These conditions have greatly impacted the agriculture and the residents of the nearby Central Valley.

A partnership between the USGS, Pepperwood Preserve, and Black Swift LLC aims to map soil and fuel moisture over wildfire-prone landscapes.

Sediment supply is important to the health of the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta and San Francisco Bay (Bay-Delta) ecosystem. Sediment eroded from upland source areas in the Sacramento and San Joaquin watersheds is transported through the rivers to the Bay-Delta where it is deposited in mudflats and tidal wetlands, which in turn helps protect against the effects of sea-level rise. Sediment...

Soil moisture is a critical variable for understanding the impacts of drought on ecological, hydrological, and agricultural systems, as soil moisture content has a direct affect on runoff amounts. Runoff occurs as the result of precipitation (both rainfall and snowfall) that is in excess of the demands of evaporation from land surfaces, transpiration from vegetation, and infiltration into soils...

In California, drought and warmer climates have increased the prevalence, severity, and duration of wildfires. These fires have destroyed over 129 million trees. In the aftermath of this devastation, there is heightened urgency to increase the capacity of seedling production, particularly for the lower-elevation and private lands that CAL FIRE is responsible to help manage. To support CAL FIRE in...

The Basin Characterization Model (BCM) is a simple grid-based model that calculates the water balance for any time step or spatial scale by using climate inputs, precipitation, minimum and maximum air temperature. The BCM can translate fine-scale maps of climate trends and projections into the hydrologic consequences, to permit evaluation of the impacts to water availability at regional, watershed...

Rising air temperatures are projected to continue to drive up urban, agricultural, and rangeland water use, straining both surface and groundwater resources. Scientific studies have shown that managing farms, ranches, and public lands to increase soil carbon can increase soil waterholding capacity and increase hydrologic benefits such as increased baseflows and aquifer recharge, reduced flooding...