About

Elizaveta Litvak is a Research Professor at the School of Sustainability at Arizona State University and serves as a Senior Global Futures Scientist within the Global Futures Scientists and Scholars. Her research focuses on ecohydrological processes in urban environments, aiming to identify environmental, biological, and social factors that influence city landscapes. She employs an interdisciplinary approach, engaging with local communities and collaborating with hydrologic modelers, remote sensing experts, and social scientists to develop sustainable solutions tailored to diverse climatic and hydrologic conditions. Her work is grounded in in situ measurements of urban evapotranspiration and the physiological responses of urban plants to their environments. This research is key to understanding the relationships between plant water use, landscape composition, environmental conditions, and management practices. Litvak's educational background includes a PhD in Earth System Science from the University of California, Irvine, a Master's degree in Earth System Science from the same institution, a postdoctoral research position at the University of Utah, and a Bachelor's degree in Physics (diploma cum laude) from Moscow State University, Russia.

Research topics

• Environmental science
• Geography
• Forestry
• Water resource management
• Environmental planning

Selected publications

• Advancing a transdisciplinary approach for a paradigm shift in water management in US cities

  Environmental Research Water · 2026-01-20

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  Advancing a transdisciplinary approach for a paradigm shift in water management in US cities, Litvak, Elizaveta, Groffman, Peter M, Vörösmarty, Charles J, Stoler, Justin B, Famiglietti, James S, Albrecht, Kate, Bixler, R Patrick

  PublisherDOI

• Urban forests as essential infrastructure for climate resilience and biodiversity: A call to policymakers

  Plants People Planet · 2025-11-06 · 1 citations

  articleOpen access

  By 2050, nearly 70% of the global population will live in cities (UN, 2018), increasing the demand for urban green spaces. Urban areas are facing increasing risks from climate change, including heatwaves, flooding, wildfires, and growing social inequality, which challenges urban planning and design. Urban forests form the backbone of green infrastructure supporting resilient, equitable, and sustainable cities. Importantly, their cost-effective benefits advance sustainable development, climate action, and biodiversity conservation. Urban forests include all woody and understorey vegetation within and around dense settlements, from cultivated trees in streets, parks, and gardens to self-sustaining stands in remnant and peri-urban woodlands (FAO, 2016). As essential nature-based solutions (Cohen-Shacham et al., 2016), urban forests provide multiple ecosystem services. They help cool urban temperatures, reduce air pollution, enhance soil infiltration, slow stormwater runoff, buffer extreme weather, and support human health (Livesley et al., 2016). They contribute significantly to climate adaptation and moderately to mitigation by reducing the energy demand for cooling (McPhearson et al., 2023). Urban forests also enhance biodiversity by providing habitats and climate refugia at multiple scales (Alvey, 2006). Trade-offs in urban forest benefits, costs, and the impacts of policy interventions, such as those related to measurement, outcomes, or implementation, remain complex (Vogt et al., 2015), but the loss of canopy reduces air quality, biodiversity, and resilience to floods, droughts, pests, and extreme heat (Nowak, 2018). Canopy loss impairs recreation and impacts physical and mental health (Carrus et al., 2015). Because urban forests are inherently dynamic systems, the death or removal of large and mature trees should be anticipated through proactive planning for their replacement, including careful consideration of which species are selected and why. Unequal access drives social-environmental injustice and health inequities, which can be addressed through greenspace expansion, equitable distribution, and better management (Esperon-Rodriguez et al., 2025). Urban forests are increasingly at risk due to significant stewardship gaps. Despite the existence of international management standards, ongoing tree losses result from pests introduced through trade, climate and pollution stress, inadequate legal protections, rapid urban densification, and insufficient maintenance (Esperon-Rodriguez et al., 2022; Paap et al., 2017; Vogt et al., 2015). Planting alone cannot offset accelerated mature tree losses or replace the vital functions these trees provide over their shortened lifespans in urban environments. Closing the stewardship gap demands urgent investment, robust funding, and stronger policy to sustain diverse and resilient urban forests. Urban forests are among the most effective, equitable nature-based solutions available. When protected and resourced, they cool neighborhoods, manage stormwater, store carbon, support biodiversity, and improve health, especially in underserved communities. Yet mature tree loss outpaces replacement amid increasing climate and biological stresses. We urge COP30 policymakers to treat urban forests as essential and critical city infrastructure: safeguard mature trees, set and finance SMART canopy, diversity and access targets, mainstream urban forests in climate and biodiversity plans, and fund long-term operations, monitoring, nursery capacity, and biosecurity. Implementing this visionary action delivers cooler, healthier, more biodiverse, and more equitable cities now and for future generations. MER and MGT led the initiative and drafted the letter. All authors provided feedback, edited, and agreed with the content of the letter. All authors, except MER and MGT, are listed alphabetically. MER received funding from Western Sydney University's Research Theme Program. KDP was supported by the Research Foundation Flanders (FWO, grant 12A0L25N). RMM was supported by a Discovery Early Career Researcher Award (project DE200100649), funded by the Australian Research Council of the Australian Government. JCS received funding from the Danish National Research Foundation (grant DNRF173) and EARTHKEEPER (Global South Biodiversity Leadership Initiative). CS's contribution was funded by the National Research Foundation of South Africa (grant no 84379). We declare no conflict of interest. There are no data associated with the article.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Barriers and opportunities for resilient and sustainable urban forests

  Nature Cities · 2025-02-28 · 34 citations

  article
  PublisherDOI

• Evapotranspiration and Irrigation of Residential Turfgrass Lawns in Los Angeles, Salt Lake City, and Tallahassee

  HydroShare Resources · 2025-08-24

  datasetOpen access1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Author Correction: Barriers and opportunities for resilient and sustainable urban forests

  Nature Cities · 2025-03-17

  articleOpen access
  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• A Machine Learning Framework for Post-processing Satellite Observations of Soil Moisture in Urban Areas

  2025-03-15

  preprintOpen accessCorresponding

  Soil moisture, a key hydrologic variable that determines hydroclimatic extremes including catastrophic flooding, is generally considered less important in cities compared to natural, agricultural and rural areas due to the prevalence of impervious surfaces. However, recent empirical studies on stormwater runoff reduction by turfgrass lawns (which cover nearly half of the cumulative urban area in the USA), have demonstrated that soil moisture is a highly significant factor in urban flooding. Yet, urban soil moisture remains highly uncertain due to the high heterogeneity of urban land cover and irrigation practices. Although in-situ soil moisture data are very limited in urban areas, satellite-based soil moisture products provide spatiotemporally continuous datasets worldwide. However, existing products are subject to substantial errors in urban areas due to the complexity introduced by a combination of impervious surfaces, built structures, green spaces and the effects of landscape management activities, especially irrigation. Post-processing of satellite-based soil moisture promises to resolve this issue and help improve the accuracy of urban soil moisture products. Here, we present a machine learning (ML)-based framework for post-processing satellite-based soil moisture products in urban areas. Using this framework, we post-processed the European Space Agency’s Climate Change Initiative (CCI) daily soil moisture product in two cities in the USA with contrasting geographic locations, climates and vegetation covers: Los Angeles and Tallahassee. Los Angeles is located in the State of California on the West Coast and has a semi-arid climate and mild vegetation cover, while Tallahassee is located in the State of Florida on the East Coast and has a humid subtropical climate and very high vegetation cover. Land surface characteristics (imperviousness and Normalized Difference Vegetation Index—NDVI), precipitation and air temperature were used as inputs in the ML model. The model performance was evaluated using the coefficient of determination (R2) and root mean square error (RMSE). Our findings indicate that ML-based post-processing substantially improved the accuracy of CCI soil moisture products in both cities. At five monitoring sites in Los Angeles, R2 increased from 0.00-0.29 to 0.81-0.86 and RMSE decreased from 0.06-0.15 m3/m3 to 0.02-0.07 m3/m3. At the three monitoring sites in Tallahassee, R2 increased from 0.01-0.07 to 0.88-0.92 and RMSE decreased from 0.06-0.12 m3/m3 to 0.01-0.02 m3/m3. Our analysis also revealed that five-day antecedent precipitation had the greatest importance for improving the satellite-based soil moisture data at the sites in Los Angeles and Tallahassee. The framework developed in this study can be used to improve the accuracy of other satellite-based soil moisture products and advance urban flood projections around the world.

  PublisherDOI

• Barriers and opportunities for resilient and sustainable urban forests

  Research Portal (King's College London) · 2025-02-28

  article

  As cities heat up and expand in area and population, urban forests offer a nature-based solution to enhance liveability and reduce rising temperatures in cities. However, urban forests are vulnerable to climate change and face costly establishment and maintenance challenges. Here we explore four key ecological and socioeconomic barriers to achieving resilient urban forests: species selection, tree supply, tree life cycle (establishment and maintenance, including irrigation) and community engagement. We discuss how integrating traditional urban forestry practices with emerging technology offers a holistic approach to creating resilient, sustainable urban forests that can adapt to climate change while meeting community needs.

  Publisher

• Irrigation rates and turfgrass evapotranspiration in cities with contrasting water availability

  JAWRA Journal of the American Water Resources Association · 2024-10-31 · 2 citations

  articleOpen access

  Abstract As water scarcity is worsened by drought and climate change, there is more interest in efficient management of urban irrigation, requiring understanding of the drivers of evapotranspiration (ET) and the role of irrigation inputs. We developed and validated a method to accurately measure ET of turfgrass lawns in contrasting climates using portable static chambers. We made in situ measurements of ET and irrigation inputs in lawns across three metropolitan areas in the United States with varying climatic conditions, water availability, and water conservation policies: Salt Lake Valley, Utah; San Fernando Valley, California; and Tallahassee, Florida. In full sun, mean daily ET estimates (ET sun ) were 0.7 ± 0.4 mm day −1 in Tallahassee, 1.6 ± 0.8 mm day −1 in Los Angeles, and 3.3 ± 1.1 mm day −1 in Salt Lake Valley. In the shade, daily ET estimates (ET shade ) were two to three times lower. In all three regions, ET was primarily driven by solar radiation ( I 0 ) and atmospheric vapor pressure deficit ( D ). Across the cities, irrigation rates were a key driver of ET, along with I 0 and D . Daily irrigation ranged from 0 mm day −1 in Tallahassee (most were unirrigated) to 1.9 ± 1.2 mm day −1 in Los Angeles and 5.1 ± 2.9 mm day −1 in Salt Lake Valley. ET increased linearly with irrigation up to ~3 mm day −1 , after which ET remained relatively constant despite irrigation increases. Our results highlight the importance of accounting for nonlinear responses and shading effects on ET in developing accurate irrigation recommendations.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• How do urban trees vary across the <scp>US</scp>? It depends on where and how you look

  Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment · 2024-06-19 · 5 citations

  reviewOpen access

  Urban forests provide ecosystem services important for regulating climate, conserving biodiversity, and maintaining human well‐being. However, these forests vary in composition and physiological traits due to their unique biophysical and social contexts. This variation complicates assessing the functions and services of different urban forests. To compare the characteristics of the urban forest, we sampled the species composition and two externally sourced traits (drought tolerance and water‐use capacity) of tree and shrub species in residential yards, unmanaged areas, and natural reference ecosystems within six cities across the contiguous US. As compared to natural and unmanaged forests, residential yards had markedly higher tree and shrub species richness, were composed primarily of introduced species, and had more species with low drought tolerance. The divergence between natural and human‐managed areas was most dramatic in arid climates. Our findings suggest that the answer to the question of “what is an urban forest” strongly depends on where you look within and between cities.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• The influence of climate and management on transpiration of residential trees during a bark beetle infestation

  Ecosphere · 2024-05-01 · 1 citations

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  Abstract Trees in residential environments are affected by a unique combination of environmental and anthropogenic factors, including occasional insect outbreaks that are increasing in frequency and severity due to climate change. We studied loblolly pine trees infested by bark beetles in a residential backyard in a southeastern US city. We investigated the responses of tree and stand‐level transpiration to environmental factors (solar radiation, atmospheric vapor pressure deficit, and soil moisture), severe weather events (strong winds and heavy storms), bark beetle infestation, and human actions (insecticide treatments and tree removals). We used constant heat dissipation probes to make continuous sap flux measurements ( J 0 ) in tree boles. Over 22 months of the study, J 0 of trees with confirmed infestation decreased from ~90 to ~60 g cm −2 day −1 and J 0 of the rest of the trees increased from ~60 to ~80 g cm −2 day −1 . One infested tree died, as its J 0 steadily declined from 110 g cm −2 day −1 to zero over the course of 2 months, followed by a loss of foliage and visible signs of severe infestation 6 months later. J 0 was sensitive to variations in incoming solar radiation and atmospheric vapor pressure deficit. In most trees, J 0 linearly responded to soil water content during drought periods. Yet despite complex dynamics of J 0 variations, plot‐level transpiration at the end of the study was the same as at the beginning due to compensatory increases in tree transpiration rates. This study highlights the intrinsic interplay of environmental, biotic, and anthropogenic factors in residential environments where human actions may directly mediate ecosystem responses to climate.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Diane E. Pataki

  Arizona State University

  24 shared

• Heather R. McCarthy

  University of Oklahoma

  7 shared

• Peter M. Groffman

  The Graduate Center, CUNY

  6 shared

• T. S. Hogue

  6 shared

• Kimberly F. Manago

  Colorado School of Mines

  5 shared

• Stéphanie Pincetl

  University of California, Los Angeles

  5 shared

• Desirée L. Narango

  4 shared

• Anika R. Bratt

  Macalester College

  4 shared