Hey ER, with respect to the green spot(s). Seems to me that a botanist may be able to contribute to the conversation. There are plant(s), native to the area, that have a life cycle and when they are done with the cycle they turn brown with water present or no water present. Have you seen any reference to DWR having a plant specialist inspect the growth in these areas and catalogue the vegetation?
You are correct about the photosynthesis process reaching a "stress" crisis leading to a reaction in the type of plant to dormancy or death.
However, the most important factor to this "plant" green to brown discussion has been completely ignored by DWR in their latest report. This is a huge item. The item is the evaporation rate induced by the thermal absorption of the embankment face. Temperatures can reach 125F in the typical Oroville summer average temperatures on this embankment face. Given the large square footage of this elevated surface temperature, the rate of any water source would experience a significant evaporation rate.
This evaporative rate was calculated to be in the hundreds of gallons per minute (conservative calc over the observed greenage area square footage).
If you use a surface temperature that is 105F from a "shading" from grasses, the gallons per minute evaporative rate is still very large.
Looking carefully at what this means reveals that deeper water must be present to act as a "heat sink" to facilitate the presence of this embankment surface water - even in the midst of the significant evaporative rate.
IF DWR had included all of these factors in their recent Green Area report, they would have uncovered a bigger problem that their report couldn't answer...the sheer volume of water necessary to facilitate such conditions, even when the grasses "brown" from photosynthesis shutdown/dormancy "stresses".
In 2015, in the midst of a drought and brown grasses, DSOD inspectors found water present. So for this water to be present, with such heat and high evaporative rates, during an on-going drought, the only mechanism that can result in this condition is a "source" that is not rainfall, and a "source" that has a "flow", and a "source" with a depth of flow to "cool" the surface enough so that the evaporative escape volume still will not overcome the balance such that "water" can still be present.
That is exactly one of the reasons why Professor Robert Bea's recent analysis and commentary to the media in his statement that DWR only created a "superficial report" & that DWR needs to fully investigate this problem. It is too important to try to "make up a rainfall only" report when there are significant issues NOT even considered - thus they are risking the UNKNOWNS that could lead to a dam crisis (or worse, an escalation to a failure).