ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (AP) — Scott Jasechko used his road trip from Canada to Albuquerque, where he was about to start a graduate program at UNM, to gather water samples.

Less than two years later, his study of those water samples has landed him in Nature, the prestigious science journal. Jasechko is the lead author of “Terrestrial Water Fluxes Dominated by Transpiration,” a study that found plants use a vast amount of fresh water in their life cycles, which can help predict future climate change effects on water resources.