Hello and welcome to the fascinating world of plants and water in cities!
I am a research professor at the School of Sustainability at Arizona State University. I earned my PhD in Earth System Science at the University of California, Irvine after being trained as a physicist at Moscow State University, Russia.
Cities are home to most people on Earth. The environments in contemporary cities are shaped by land use change, climate change, and direct human actions. Urban environments are often perceived as heavily built-up and paved. However, about half of the total land area of US cities is covered by soil and plants. One-fiftieth of the US land area — an area the size of Florida — is covered by grass lawns. These living landscapes strongly influence local and regional hydrology, as well as water and energy budgets at municipal and watershed scales.
My research focuses on the scientific uncertainties related to ecohydrological processes in cities. These processes are interlinked with many aspects of urban functioning, as well as climate change, land use change and their local hydrologic and climatic effects. My research is based on actual measurements in cities that include sap flow of urban trees, evaporation from lawns, and many others related to soil, air, and sunlight. The resulting datasets help establish quantitative relationships between plant water use, plant physiology and ecology, landscape composition, environmental conditions, and management practices.