Farrel A. Branson | USGS Science

USGS1991

Soil water and vegetation responses to precipitation and changes in depth to ground water in Owens Valley, California

Vegetation on the floor of Owens Valley, California, is composed predominantly of phreatophytic desert communities that are adapted to small quantities of precipitation and alkaline soils. These plant communities are believed to be dependent on the continuing presence of a shallow water table. Maintaining existing plant communities is important to preserve the environmental quality of the valley. Proposals to pump additional quantities of ground water from the valley for export to the city of Los Angeles caused concern about the effect of pumping on the existing vegetation and how the plants would adapt to short- or long-term declines of the shallow water table. To test the ability of selected major shrub species to adapt to water-table decline, four sites were selected, pump-equipped wells were installed, and water-table drawdown was monitored. Soil samples were collected with a hand auger and analyzed by using the filter-paper method to monitor changes in soil water content and soil matric potential at test sites. Plant reactions were determined by measurements of plant cover, shoot growth, and xylem pressure potential. Results of 3 years of monitoring show that growth and cover repetition of the shrubs studied are affected greatly by the quantity of annual precipitation, especially at sites with coarse-textured soils. Plants were not affected by drying soil in the root zone until the maximum matric potential exceeded 4.3 pF (-1,950 kilopascal) at depths greater than 0.5 meter. Rabbit-brush was most sensitive to dry soil and was the only shrub species that died as the result of water stress from water-table drawdown. The change in cover repetition correlated positively with the magnitude of water-table drawdown at one site and negatively at another site. Measurements of xylem pressure potential taken before dawn correlated well with water content in the upper 1.5 meters of soil. The magnitude of water-table drawdown achieved by the pump-equipped wells was less than expected at three of the four sites. Additional water-table drawdown for a longer period of time would be needed to separate the effects of water-table drawdown from the effects caused by differences in soil textures and natural fluctuations in the quantity of precipitation.

Water Supply Paper↗

USGS1989

Estimating soil matric potential in Owens Valley, California

Much of the floor of Owens Valley, California, is covered with alkaline scrub and alkaline meadow plant communities, whose existence is dependent partly on precipitation and partly on water infiltrated into the rooting zone from the shallow water table. The extent to which these plant communities are capable of adapting to and surviving fluctuations in the water table depends on physiological adaptations of the plants and on the water content, matric potential characteristics of the soils. Two methods were used to estimate soil matric potential in test sites in Owens Valley. The first, the filter-paper method, uses water content of filter papers equilibrated to water content of soil samples taken with a hand auger. The previously published calibration relations used to estimate soil matric potential from the water content of the filter papers were modified on the basis of current laboratory data. The other method of estimating soil matric potential was a modeling approach based on data from this and previous investigations. These data indicate that the base-10 logarithm of soil matric potential is a linear function of gravimetric soil water content for a particular soil. The slope and intercepts of this function vary with the texture and saturation capacity of the soil. Estimates of soil water characteristic curves were made at two sites by averaging the gravimetric soil water content and soil matric potential values from multiple samples at 0.1-m depth intervals derived by using the hand auger and filter-paper method and entering these values in the soil water model. The characteristic curves then were used to estimate soil matric potential from estimates of volumetric soil water content derived from neutron-probe readings. Evaluation of the modeling technique at two study sites indicated that estimates of soil matric potential within 0.5 pF units of the soil matric potential value derived by using the filter-paper method could be obtained 90 to 95 percent of the time in soils where water content was less than field capacity. The greatest errors occurred at depths where there was a distinct transition between soils of different textures.

Water Supply Paper↗