A Forest Service Hydrologist Talks Water

By: Andrew Avitt, June 28, 2023-

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National forests provide an estimated 20% of the nation’s water, and 60% in California. Hydrologists on those national forests know its importance. It’s meaningful work, and those that care for water on those public lands will tell you.

“Water is vital to every part of our daily life,” said Kaci Spooner, a forest hydrology technician for the Modoc National Forest. “Water and the study of water — hydrology — 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.”

Spooner considers herself more of a “field” person than a “meeting” 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 doesn’t always seem to be a lot to monitor.

“When you come out to an area like the Modoc National Forest, water doesn’t come immediately to mind. It’s a dry, semi-arid sage steppe landscape. The amount of water varies a lot throughout the year,” said Spooner. “It’s part of what makes these water resources all the more important because we don’t always have a lot.”

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 Spooner’s 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.

“A big portion of the data is important to understanding how our waterway resources are responding to climate change,” said Spooner. “Over 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.”

Jurisdictions: Water on the Move

But land management practices for water aren’t 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 isn’t 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.

“If 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,” said Spooner. “Quality drinking water is also important in rural areas because residents get their water from wells that aren’t treated like water provided by municipal water systems.”

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.

“All of those species depend on accessible drinking water to have a successful migratory journey through the area,” said Spooner. “So we assess the condition of water resources to better inform our management actions for humans and for animals.”

Reflecting on a Future Career

Spooner and hydrologists like her are constantly assessing the physical function of a stream and a watershed. It’s 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.

“For me, it started in college. I was studying to be a geologist but realized most of my extracurricular classes were related to hydrology,” said Spooner. “And 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 wasn’t necessarily passionate about.”

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.

“It was a point of reflection. I thought about my career and what it might look like over the next 10-20 years and asked ‘What do I see myself doing? What kind of projects do I want to work on?’ I realized it was hydrology, that was my path.”

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