Photomontage of four images: a class jar in a lab with a yellow translucent substance in it, a tree trunk with a hose leading to a large trash bin, an image of 6 clear glass bottles with varying translucent yellow to clear tones, and an image of pollution hanging over a city with mountains in the background.

Let's just sit quietly and listen to the secrets the rain wants to tell us.

-John Mark Green 

A row of three different images. The first image is a colorful, animated graphic, perspective looking up the bark of a large tree as rain droplets fall in the foreground, each rain drop contains a labeled item, the labels read "solutes, viruses, soot, bacteria, dust, seeds, insect carcasses, spores, radionuclides, tardigrades, pollen, nematodes," additional trees in the background. The second image is an animated graphic of a pine tree against a white background, above the tree, text reads, "Some of the unseen things that can be found in rain after falling through a forest canopy. The third image is a photo of a copse of tall trees with textured bark and high branches, shrubbery in the background.
A brown rectangle overlayed with white text reading, "A drop of rain falls through the sky, lands on a forest tree, and then falls to the ground below - what does it pick up? And why should you care? The rainwater we collect in the forest is full of nutrients, pollutants, and even bugs - all of which alter the color and content of the water.
Color image of vials of rain water in a laboratory , with various translucent colors, ranging from clear, to yellow, and to amber as the darkest color. Text box on the right reads: Different types of rainwater collected in a U.S. National Ecological Observatory Network (NEON) forest research site. Different types of rain have starkly different colors.
Text box reads: Have you ever seen a crusty spot left behind on your freshly cleaned car? Or maybe your spring allergies go away after a storm? Whatever it might be, this is caused by the interactions that rain has with other entities along its path to the ground. These interactions have receipts, and we study them. A receipt can be a number of things: a filter, color left behind in water, spots on a car, or even bugs washed away. They define what interactions happen between a drop of water and the nature around it. 
A row of three photographs. The first photograph depicts dust-colored residue left on the roof of a black car after rainfall. The second photograph depicts a collection of labeled bottles in a laboratory, the bottles are all half-filled with liquid ranging in color from transparent to brown. The third image depicts a gloved human hand pointing tweezers toward a small dish of liquid and sediment. On the table beside the dish of liquid are two balls of tinfoil and a paper chart with both typed and hand-written text.
A gray rectangle overlaid with white text reading, "If fate decides that the drop of rain lands on the canopy of a tree in the forest, an d falls to the ground below, it will pick up even more materials. Organic matter, pollen, fungal spores, particulates, bugs, and other pollutants that cling to the tree during the dry period between storms can get transported with water to the forest floor in throughfall or stemflow. Throughfall is the water that falls through or drips from forest caopies and stemflow is water that flows down tree stems."
Two images with text boxes to the right. Top image of a tree's canopy, taken from below. Adjacent text box reads: A tree in the forest canopy. Bottom image of a mountainous landscape with rays of light through a misty cloud with a rainbow. Adjacent text box reads: Rain in the Wasatch Front.
Text box on left reads: Although  rain is the reason for life, it is nowhere near "pure." That is why it is so important to understand. The Ecosystems Lab at the Natural History Museum of Utah, the Environmental Biogeochemistry & Paleolimnology Lab at the Utah State University, and the Stan Lab at Cleveland State University are takin ga closer look at rainfall in forests from around the country to uncover what it really contains.