The rain regulator
How healthy ecosystems and aquifers can moderate extreme rainfall and drought
Trees and mycelia work modulate extreme rainfall by sucking up groundwater to evapotranspire when its dry season, and pushing down rainwater down underground during wet season. (References below)
This is a reader supported publication.
References:
[1] Martinez, J. Alejandro, Francina Dominguez, and Gonzalo Miguez-Macho. "Effects of a groundwater scheme on the simulation of soil moisture and evapotranspiration over southern South America." Journal of Hydrometeorology 17, no. 11 (2016): 2941-2957
https://journals.ametsoc.org/view/journals/hydr/17/11/jhm-d-16-0051_1.xml
[2] Jiang, Xiaoyan, Guo‐Yue Niu, and Zong‐Liang Yang. "Impacts of vegetation and groundwater dynamics on warm season precipitation over the Central United States." Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres 114, no. D6 (2009)
https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1029/2008JD010756
[3] Lee, E., Kumar, P., Barron-Gafford, G. A., Hendryx, S. M., Sanchez-Cañete, E. P., Minor, R. L., et al. (2018). Impact of hydraulic redistribution on multispecies vegetation water use in a semiarid savanna ecosystem: An experimental and modeling synthesis. Water Resources Research, 54, 4009– 4027. https://doi.org/10.1029/2017WR021006 https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1029/2017WR021006
I want to clarify why I think trees pushing down water in wet season will lead to less rains. This is because the soil will be less wet, and so will evapotranspire less, which then leads to less rain. So pushing down the water underground decreases the small water cycle. My hypothesis is that in Pakistan this year when there were huge floods from monsoons and glaciers melting, that if the water higher up in the landscape had been funneled underground by tree roots, then there would have been less evapotranspiration and thus less rains......... In Australia in 2020 there were huge fires that burnt a lot of trees. In 2022 those trees could not slow the huge rains that led to huge floods. They also could not funnel it underground higher up in the landscape, which I believe led to more evapotranspiration and more rain.
What do you think the effect of restoring flood plains in the CA Central Valley will be on rain? I would think that the flood plains, like Dos Rios Ranch, might increase the water table over time. The rewilding adds trees so maybe more rain over time? One can hope.