Fellow Story
Hall on outsized impacts some forests have on local water
"We’re documenting over and over again the importance of forests for mitigating floods and providing dry season water,” says Jefferson Hall, a forest ecologist at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute (STRI) in Panama.
A new report from STRI and the Inter-American Development Bank focuses on tropical steeplands in Central and South America—notoriously tricky places to live and work because they are situated at slopes greater than 7 degrees, where erosion and gravity present constant challenges. Because of their location, those areas also have an outsized influence on rivers, lakes, cities and farms below, since any water flowing downhill carries with it toxins, waste material and loose soil from higher up.