Groundwater: An Introduction

What is groundwater? Delineations between surface water, groundwater, and underground water can be distressingly murky. E.C. Pielou (1998) provides one of the clearest definitions of groundwater when she notes that the word applies “only to water that saturates the ground, filling all the available spaces,” or to water within the saturated zone, the upper boundary of which … Read more

Owens Lake Birds

Historically, Owens Lake was one of the most important stopover sites for migrating waterfowl and shorebirds in the western United States for thousands of years. Joseph Grinnell, visiting the lake in 1917 from the Museum of Vertebrate Zoology in Berkeley, reported, “ Great numbers of water birds are in sight along the lake shore–avocets, phalaropes, … Read more