About

Ying Fan Reinfelder is a Professor at Rutgers University in the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, with additional faculty affiliation in the Department of Environmental Sciences at SEBS. Her research interests encompass hydrology, ecology, and global change, with a focus on the role of water in shaping landscapes through geological time and in the present. She investigates water-mediated global environmental change, plant ecology, and ecophysiology, emphasizing the interconnectedness of water with Earth's systems. Reinfelder is dedicated to understanding how water influences landscape processes, biogeochemical cycles, and climate interactions, both historically and in contemporary contexts. Her academic contributions include teaching courses on hydrologic processes, hydrogeology, and earth history, and she has been recognized with numerous honors such as being named an AGU Fellow in 2022, a Boussinesq Lecturer, and an AAAS Fellow. Reinfelder leads a research team comprising graduate students, postdoctoral researchers, and collaborators, working on topics like groundwater modeling, plant hydraulics, Amazonian water cycles, and the impact of water on environmental change. Her work has significantly advanced understanding of water's role in Earth's systems, emphasizing the importance of water in ecological and geological processes across different temporal and spatial scales.

Selected publications

• The Earth's Greatest Porous Media

  Perspectives of Earth and Space Scientists · 2026-04-28

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  Abstract How deeply does modern meteoric water circulate into the continental crust? How deep is the Earth's Critical Zone (CZ), the top layer of the continental lithosphere that co‐evolves with the atmosphere, hydrosphere, and biosphere, extending from vegetation canopy down to fresh bedrock and the base of active groundwater circulation? The answers depend on the substrate porosity and permeability. The difficulties in seeing the subsurface have prevented a global 3D vision. Site studies reveal that the CZ is far deeper than agricultural soils, commonly exceeding 10s but can reach 100s of meters in karsts or ancient shields in the tropics. We know that it is the main terrestrial water‐storage tank for societies and ecosystems. We know that it is a biogeochemical factory transforming rocks into porous growth media, releasing nutrients for life, mobilizing solutes, and consuming atmospheric CO 2 . Unlike in the atmosphere and the ocean, water on land mostly resides in and moves through the porous earth materials. Thus, we have a porous media problem. Yet we know little about the shape and size of this porous media, hindering its inclusion in Earth‐system models. CZ scientists are in the best position to deliver such a planetary‐scale vision of the upper lithosphere, so that we can fully comprehend the functions of the land in the whole‐Earth system in the past and the future. We have enough knowledge to start.

  PublisherDOI

• Still standing: persistence traits capture belowground plant functions beyond resource exploration and acquisition

  bioRxiv (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory) · 2026-05-07

  articleOpen access

  Summary Belowground plant trait research has predominantly focused on trade-offs in fine root traits via the root economics space. Yet, this fine root framework captures only a fraction of the functional strategies plants employ beneath the soil surface. Here, we broaden the perspective on belowground plant functioning by integrating traits related to root system extent, clonality and bud banks, using data from the new UNDERPLOT database. This integration links measurable traits to key belowground functions: resource acquisition, spatial exploration, and persistence. Our analysis shows that the fine root economics space explains less than 5% of the variation in traits related to root system extent, clonality, and bud banks. Instead, an expanded trait analysis reveals three significant dimensions, explaining 62% of total trait variation. The third dimension, represents an independent, persistence-related gradient, not captured by existing root economics frameworks. We propose that understanding belowground plant strategies requires embracing additional functional gradients. The strategy of persistence, in particular, varies significantly across growth forms and is a critical dimension of plant response to resource limitation and stress, becoming increasingly important as global change shifts disturbance regimes.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Where do we expect to find deep plant roots?

  Ecography · 2025-08-08 · 2 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  Plant roots have been observed up to 70 m in depth – what would compel a plant to root so deeply? Earlier work shows that the climate, soil and drainage all affect rooting depth, but with conflicting results. For example, both the deepest and shallowest roots are found in arid regions. Here, we compiled > 2400 globally distributed rooting‐depth observations of individual plants and applied simple correlation analysis to assess the impact of global climate, local topography and substrate, and individual plant size, and their combinations controlling where and why plants root deeply. At the global scale, deep roots are driven by climate. Both concentrated wet periods and prolonged droughts are required to drive deep roots, and we find the deepest roots in semi‐arid climates with strong precipitation seasonality or interannual variability. At the landscape scale, drainage modulates rooting depth. An accessible water table facilitates deep roots at midslopes, but it is too deep to impact roots further upslope. Instead, the deep vadose zone moisture reserve is the primary driver for deep rooting. Thus, the deepest roots are observed on well‐drained uplands with deep vadose zones under climates with distinct wet and dry periods. At the plot scale, substrate structure and hydraulic properties modulate deep rooting – B‐horizons limit deep roots, while woody plants often root below the bedrock surface, provided it is fractured. At the individual plant scale, deep roots are limited to high‐biomass woody plants. Together, these findings sharpen our understanding of where and why plants root deeply, highlighting intersections of climate, drainage, terrain and biomass and identifying conditions where deep roots may serve as a lifeline during prolonged drought, meanwhile weathering rock, sequestering carbon, and bringing the living world far deeper than the conventional ‘root zone'.

  PublisherDOI

•  Infiltration depth, rooting depth, and regolith flushing—A global perspective

  2025-03-15

  preprintOpen accessSenior author

  How deep does the rain regularly infiltrate into the ground? Do plant roots follow? How much infiltration is pumped back to the atmosphere (short-circuiting)  and how much passes below plant roots reaching the water table, flushing the regolith, recharging aquifers and rivers, and eventually reaching the ocean (long-circuiting) thus regulating global biogeochemical cycles and long-term climate? What is the depth that supplies evapotranspiration, and what is the regolith flush rate? What are the implications to global material and energy cycles? The answers depend on local climate–terrain–vegetation combinations. We use observations and high resolution numerical modeling at the global scale to shed light on multiscale causes–feedbacks among climate, drainage, substrate, and plant biomass that interactively create a global structure in the depths and rates of hydrologic plumbing of the Earth's critical zone, informing global models on critical depths and processes to include in Earth-system predictions.

  PublisherDOI

• Groundwater influence on vegetation: water source, waterlogging, or both?

  ARPHA Conference Abstracts · 2025-05-28

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  From a broad, global-to-hillslope perspective, I will discuss some observational evidence and model results suggesting that the groundwater can directly influence vegetation through three mechanisms: as a water source for plant root uptake in dry places/times where/when the water table is accessible, as a cause for waterlogging and soil anoxia where/when the water table is too near the surface, and as a double-stressor if the water table fluctuates wildly, too deep in dry times but too shallow in wet times. as a water source for plant root uptake in dry places/times where/when the water table is accessible, as a cause for waterlogging and soil anoxia where/when the water table is too near the surface, and as a double-stressor if the water table fluctuates wildly, too deep in dry times but too shallow in wet times. The dominance of each mechanism, and the resulting mode of vegetation feedback, can be analyzed in a 2D space, with the climate on one axis, and the topographic structure on the other, forming a climotopo-matrix to frame the distinct modes of groundwater-vegetation interactions. On top of this framework, the subsurface structure of the Critical Zone forms a 3 rd dimension that regulates the infiltration and water table depths, further enriching the models of groundwater-vegetation interactions. I will end by posing a set of hypotheses as food for further thoughts.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Author response for "Where do we expect to find deep plant roots?"

  2025-05-06

  peer-reviewSenior author
  PublisherDOI

• Sustainable Housing Redevelopment in Hong Kong

  WORLD SCIENTIFIC eBooks · 2025-11-01

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Spatiotemporal Dynamics and Key Drivers of Potential Evapotranspiration Across the Yangtze River Basin from 1975 to 2018

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2025-01-01

  preprintOpen accessSenior author
  PublisherDOI

• Belowground persistence types relevant to severe disturbance

  Trends in Plant Science · 2025-07-07 · 3 citations

  reviewOpen access
  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• A global humidity index with lateral hydrologic flows

  Nature · 2025-08-06 · 6 citations

  articleSenior authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

Labs

• Earth and Planetary Science Isotope Laboratory (EPSIL)PI

Awards & honors

• 2022 - AGU Fellow
• 2022 - Boussinesq Lecturer
• 2021 - AAAS Fellow
• 2014 - Peter Eagleson Lecturer
• 2024 Cargese Summer Institute on Flow in Porous Media