By: Andrew Avitt, June 28, 2023-

National forests provide an estimated 20% of the nationâs water, and 60% in California. Hydrologists on those national forests know its importance. Itâs meaningful work, and those that care for water on those public lands will tell you.
âWater is vital to every part of our daily life,â said Kaci Spooner, a forest hydrology technician for the Modoc National Forest. âWater and the study of water â hydrology â impact our food, what we drink, wildlife, and our recreation opportunities. Working to maintain the function of water in our ecosystem is my job and I love it.â
Spooner considers herself more of a âfieldâ person than a âmeetingâ person. Her projects take her all across the landscape in the northeast corner of California. She monitors every aspect of water across the plateau, though there doesnât always seem to be a lot to monitor.
âWhen you come out to an area like the Modoc National Forest, water doesnât come immediately to mind. Itâs a dry, semi-arid sage steppe landscape. The amount of water varies a lot throughout the year,â said Spooner. âItâs part of what makes these water resources all the more important because we don’t always have a lot.â
Work as a hydrologist for the Forest Service takes many forms. She conducts snow surveys, enterprising hikes through drifts of snow, to measure snow accumulation. These measurements help predict how much water will be released into the tributaries and rivers as the snow slowly melts. She measures stream temperatures, pH levels, and the amount of dissolved oxygen in the water which supports life. She locates and monitors critical spawning habitats for endangered fish. Just to name a few examples.

All of the data from Spoonerâs field-going efforts serves to answer a variety of land management questions informing how the Modoc National Forest can best manage water running across and beneath the landscape. But that data is also being used to help answer a larger question, one that scientists around the world have been pursuing in recent years with increasing fervor.
âA big portion of the data is important to understanding how our waterway resources are responding to climate change,â said Spooner. âOver the next 10 years we will gather baseline data on how our streams are changing in response to climate change, so we can understand what’s going on quantitatively and adapt our land management actions around the forest accordingly.â
Jurisdictions: Water on the Move
But land management practices for water arenât localized to a certain stream or spring; they are interconnected and widespread. The Klamath River Basin Watershed, 12,000 square miles spanning Oregon out to the Pacific Ocean, is one of the larger watersheds on the Modoc National Forest. The water in the rivers, streams and tributaries run across the landscape just as the ground water runs beneath. Water isnât confined to a national forest, instead it travels through many jurisdictions and landownerships.
Spooner, along with tribal governments, state and federal partners, all work together to get the big picture of watershed health and to maintain it, to provide drinking water to communities.
âIf we don’t have a healthy landscape and ecosystem here to help filter out pollutants and help filter out sediment, it will eventually get into the drinking water downstream,â said Spooner. âQuality drinking water is also important in rural areas because residents get their water from wells that arenât treated like water provided by municipal water systems.â
While drinking water is important, it’s not only drinking water for humans but for cattle and migratory wildlife in the area such as elk, mule deer, wild horses, and pronghorn antelope.
âAll of those species depend on accessible drinking water to have a successful migratory journey through the area,â said Spooner. âSo we assess the condition of water resources to better inform our management actions for humans and for animals.â
Reflecting on a Future Career
Spooner and hydrologists like her are constantly assessing the physical function of a stream and a watershed. Itâs that same predisposition to observe and assess that brought Spooner to hydrology a few years back. Sometimes a little self-assessment can go a long way, though her interest in water and hydrology was not apparent at first.
âFor me, it started in college. I was studying to be a geologist but realized most of my extracurricular classes were related to hydrology,â said Spooner. âAnd then once I started my career here with the Forest Service in geology, I found that most of the geology projects I was working on were things I wasnât necessarily passionate about.â
As is often the case, a job with the Forest Service tends to expose employees like Spooner to many different fields and types of projects. Spooner soon found herself helping out the forest hydrologist and realized she rather liked the work.
âIt was a point of reflection. I thought about my career and what it might look like over the next 10-20 years and asked âWhat do I see myself doing? What kind of projects do I want to work on?â I realized it was hydrology, that was my path.â

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