Document Details

Priorities for California’s Water — Stewarding the Wet Years

Jeffrey Mount, J. Letitia Grenier, Ellen Hanak, Caitlin Peterson, Sarah Bardeen, Spencer A. Cole, Greg Gartrell, Brian Gray, Zaira Joaquín Morales, Gokce Sencan | November 2nd, 2023


The 2023 water year provided a case study of California’s increasingly volatile climate, with large swings between wet and dry conditions both within and between years. It highlighted our need to better navigate multiple imperatives: storing more water during intense wet periods to build water supply reliability, protecting communities and infrastructure against the threat of increasingly damaging floods, and taking better advantage of wet years to improve the health of freshwater ecosystems and native fish and wildlife.

Keywords

ecosystem management, planning and management, water supply forecasting