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A freshwater conservation blueprint for California: prioritizing watersheds for freshwater biodiversity

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A freshwater conservation blueprint for California: prioritizing watersheds for freshwater biodiversity
Freshwater Science, University of Chicago Press Journals | April 18, 2018...
Summary
Conservation scientists have adapted conservation planning principles designed for protection of habi- tats ranging from terrestrial to freshwater ecosystems. We applied current approaches...

Conservation scientists have adapted conservation planning principles designed for protection of habi- tats ranging from terrestrial to freshwater ecosystems. We applied current approaches in conservation planning to prioritize California watersheds for management of biodiversity. For all watersheds, we compiled data on the pre- sence/absence of herpetofauna and fishes; observations of freshwater-dependent mammals, selected invertebrates, and plants; maps of freshwater habitat types; measures of habitat condition and vulnerability; and current manage- ment status. We analyzed species-distribution data to identify areas of high freshwater conservation value that op- timized representation of target taxa on the landscape and leveraged existing protected areas. The resulting priority network encompasses 34% of the area of California and includes ≥10% of the geographic range for all target taxa. High-value watersheds supported nontarget freshwater taxa and habitats, and focusing on target taxa may provide broad conservation value. Most of the priority conservation network occurs on public lands (69% by area), and 46% overlaps with protected areas already managed for biodiversity. A significant proportion of the network area is on private land and underscores the value of programs that incentivize landowners to manage freshwater species and habitats. The priority conservation areas encompass more freshwater habitats/ha than existing protected areas. Land use (agriculture and urbanization), altered fire regimes, nonnative fish communities, and flow impairment are the most important threats to freshwater habitat in the priority network, whereas factors associated with changing climate are the key drivers of habitat vulnerability. Our study is a guide to a comprehensive approach to freshwater conservation currently lacking in California. Conservation resources are often limited, so prioritiza- tion tools are valuable assets to land and water managers.

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A Legal Guide to the Public’s Rights to Access and Use of California’s Navigable Waters

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A Legal Guide to the Public’s Rights to Access and Use of California’s Navigable Waters
California State Lands Commission | November 20, 2017...
Summary
In California, members of the public have rights to access and use navigable waters for many beneficial uses, including, but not limited to navigation, fishing, and recreation. These public rights are expressed in federal law, California’s Act of...
In California, members of the public have rights to access and use navigable waters for many beneficial uses, including, but not limited to navigation, fishing, and recreation. These public rights are expressed in federal law, California’s Act of Admission, the California Constitution, court opinions, and state statutes. However, the public’s rights to access and use the state’s navigable waters are sometimes misunderstood.

California public officials are periodically called on to address disputes about the public’s rights to access and use the state’s navigable waters. These disputes may arise between recreational water users, such as boaters, fishermen, hunters, shoreline and beach users, and adjacent private property owners. In this guide, the California State Lands Commission seeks to inform and clarify, for the public, government officials, and private property owners, the public’s rights to access and use the state’s navigable waters by summarizing the relevant legal principles.

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Adaptability and adaptations of California’s water supply system to dry climate warming

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Adaptability and adaptations of California’s water supply system to dry climate warming
Climactic Change, Springer | November 27, 2007...
Summary
Economically optimal operational changes and adaptations for California’s water supply system are examined for a dry form of climate warming (GFDL CM2.1 A2)...
Economically optimal operational changes and adaptations for California’s water supply system are examined for a dry form of climate warming (GFDL CM2.1 A2) with year 2050 water demands and land use. Economically adaptive water management for this climate scenario is compared to a similar scenario with the historical climate. The effects of population growth and land use alone are developed for comparison. Compared with the historic hydrology, optimized operations for the dry climate warming scenario raise water scarcity and total operation costs by $490 million/year with year 2050 demands. Actual costs might be somewhat higher where non-economic objectives prevail in water management. The paper examines the economical mix of adaptation, technologies, policies, and operational changes available to keep water supply impacts to such modest levels. Results from this screening model suggest promising alternatives and likely responses and impacts. Optimized operations of ground and surface water storage change significantly with climate. Dry-warm climate change increases the seasonal storage range of surface reservoirs and aquifers. Surface reservoir peak storage usually occurs about a month earlier under dry-warm climate change.

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Addressing California’s Uncertain Water Future by Coordinating Long-Term Land Use and Water Planning: Is a Water Element in the General Plan the Next Step

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Addressing California’s Uncertain Water Future by Coordinating Long-Term Land Use and Water Planning: Is a Water Element in the General Plan the Next Step
Ecology Law Quarterly | January 15, 2004...
Summary
More people, less water: this is the widely anticipated future of the state of California. As the state's population grows to 46 million...

More people, less water: this is the widely anticipated future of the state of California. As the state's population grows to 46 million by the year 2020, California will strive to meet water demand with a reduced water supply from the Colorado River, and struggle with the devastating impacts to the Sierra Nevada snow pack caused by global warming. Yet isCalifornia preparingfor this future today? Does the law direct land-use planners on the city and county levels to work in concert with their water planning counterparts to prepare for these significant challenges? Asconcern over these issues has grown, recent judicial and legislative action has added new substantive requirements for land-use and water planning, as well as adding procedural requirements that ask land use and water planners to communicate with one another more consistently. In addition,both the Governor's Office of Planning and Research (OPR) and the

California Department of Water Resources (DWR) are currently updating influential reference documents for land use and water planning professionals.

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Agricultural Land Stewardship (Resource Management Strategy)
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Agricultural Land Stewardship (Resource Management Strategy)
California Department of Water Resources (DWR) | July 29, 2016...
Summary
This resource management strategy focuses primarily on private land in agriculture including cultivated land and rangeland. Agricultural land in California comprises about 31.6...
This resource management strategy focuses primarily on private land in agriculture including cultivated land and rangeland. Agricultural land in California comprises about 31.6 million acres (California Department of Conservation, Division of Land Resource Protection, Farmland Mapping and Monitoring Program 2008). About 12.4 million of these acres are cultivated, while the remaining 19.2 million acres are rangeland (California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection 2010).

Agricultural systems in California are varied in the way resources are used, ranging from intensive conventional agriculture (irrigated crop cultivation) to more extensive systems such as livestock grazing, each with a different relationship to natural resources. They also affect and are affected by surface hydrology and groundwater recharge in different ways. Stewardship of this land requires constant balancing among natural constraints, market forces, and ever-changing social expectations. Institutions and policies have been developed in response to these challenges. Public investment in water infrastructure (reservoirs, canals, drains, levees, dykes) has been in the forefront of these.

This resource management strategy report focuses on agricultural land stewardship (ALS) strategies that can be incorporated into relevant adaptive management of agricultural land at different levels, including landscape, regional and project.

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Bayesian nitrate source apportionment to individual groundwater wells in the Central Valley by use of elemental and isotopic tracers

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Bayesian nitrate source apportionment to individual groundwater wells in the Central Valley by use of elemental and isotopic tracers
American Geophysical Union (AGU) | July 31, 2016...
Summary
Groundwater quality is a concern in alluvial aquifers that underlie agricultural areas, such as in the San Joaquin Valley of California. Shallow domestic wells...
Groundwater quality is a concern in alluvial aquifers that underlie agricultural areas, such as in the San Joaquin Valley of California. Shallow domestic wells (less than 150 m deep) in agricultural areas are often contaminated by nitrate. Agricultural and rural nitrate sources include dairy manure, synthetic fertilizers, and septic waste. Knowledge of the relative proportion that each of these sources contributes to nitrate concentration in individual wells can aid future regulatory and land management decisions. We show that nitrogen and oxygen isotopes of nitrate, boron isotopes, and iodine concentrations are a useful, novel combination of groundwater tracers to differentiate between manure, fertilizers, septic waste, and natural sources of nitrate. Furthermore, in this work, we develop a new Bayesian mixing model in which these isotopic and elemental tracers were used to estimate the probability distribution of the fractional contributions of manure, fertilizers, septic waste, and natural sources to the nitrate concentration found in an individual well. The approach was applied to 56 nitrate-impacted private domestic wells located in the San Joaquin Valley. Model analysis found that some domestic wells were clearly dominated by the manure source and suggests evidence for majority contributions from either the septic or fertilizer source for other wells. But, predictions of fractional contributions for septic and fertilizer sources were often of similar magnitude, perhaps because modeled uncertainty about the fraction of each was large. For validation of the Bayesian model, fractional estimates were compared to surrounding land use and estimated source contributions were broadly consistent with nearby land use types.

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Before the Well Runs Dry: Improving the Linkage Between Groundwater and Land Use Planning

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Before the Well Runs Dry: Improving the Linkage Between Groundwater and Land Use Planning
Water in the West, Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment, The Bill Lane Center for the American West | April 17, 2014...
Summary
There is no comprehensive regulation of groundwater use in the state of California,* and the right to withdraw groundwater is based on surface...
There is no comprehensive regulation of groundwater use in the state of California,* and the right to withdraw groundwater is based on surface land ownership. This creates a direct linkage between every land use that requires water and the groundwater underneath that land. Because so many aspects of groundwater use are not regulated by the state, local governments’ land use decisions become a key driver of demands on groundwater. Nonetheless, land use decisions and planning are not well coordinated with groundwater management.

Understanding how land use decisions affect groundwater resources has become increasingly important in recent years, as groundwater provides approximately 30 percent of California’s water supply in average years and 40 percent of the supply in dry years. In some places, the reliance on groundwater during droughts is much higher, due to reduced supplies of surface water. Growth from housing and irrigated agriculture, among other demands, have led to chronic overdraft and declining groundwater elevations in many communities that rely heavily on groundwater.

To address this problem, Water in the West convened groundwater managers, land use planners, water lawyers, consultants and academics at Stanford University for an Uncommon Dialogue in the fall of 2013. Its aim was to discuss a growing consensus that more effective integration of land use planning and groundwater management is an essential component of preserving groundwater aquifers for the future, and to share possible means of accomplishing this in California.

This report, shaped in part by the Dialogue, provides the background and regulatory context for land use planning and groundwater management in California, shares case studies that highlight the intersection of groundwater and land use, and makes specific recommendations to improve the linkage between land use decisions and groundwater management in the state.

*The Sustainable Groundwater Management Act (SGMA) was signed into law five months after this was published.

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Bringing Water and Land Use Together

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Bringing Water and Land Use Together
The Local Government Commission | April 11, 2019...
Summary
In 2005, the California Legislature passed new laws that enable communities to join together to adopt Integrated Regional Water Management (IRWM) policies and...
In 2005, the California Legislature passed new laws that enable communities to join together to adopt Integrated Regional Water Management (IRWM) policies and practices. This comprehensive planning approach considers water resources in the context of an interconnected watershed with a network of regional governance, rather than as a combination of fragmented parts. Unfortunately, the IRWM program is dominated by the water sector and in most regions has not pursued alignment with land use.

Similarly, the Sustainable Communities Strategies (SCS) mandated through SB 375 establish a framework for aligning land use practices (predominantly housing and transportation) across jurisdictions within a larger geographic region. Yet very few SCSs have taken water resources into account.

While water management and land-use planning remain highly fragmented across the state, we are making progress toward a more integrated approach, especially when setting new state-level policies, regulations and guidance. The 2014 Sustainable Groundwater Management Act (SGMA) is a leap forward in this direction. For the first time, local land use agencies have an opportunity to be full partners with water agencies in shaping groundwater governance. It is too soon to determine how well these two sectors are integrating under SGMA, but early results are promising.

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California against the sea

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California against the sea
Los Angeles Times | July 7, 2019...
Summary
THE CALIFORNIA COAST GREW AND PROSPERED during a remarkable moment in history when the sea was at its tamest. But the mighty Pacific,...
THE CALIFORNIA COAST GREW AND PROSPERED during a remarkable moment in history when the sea was at its tamest.

But the mighty Pacific, unbeknownst to all, was nearing its final years of a calm but unusual cycle that had lulled dreaming settlers into a false sense of endless summer.

Elsewhere, Miami has been drowning, Louisiana shrinking, North Carolina’s beaches disappearing like a time lapse with no ending. While other regions grappled with destructive waves and rising seas, the West Coast for decades was spared by a rare confluence of favorable winds and cooler water. This “sea level rise suppression,” as scientists call it, went largely undetected. Blinded from the consequences of a warming planet, Californians kept building right to the water’s edge.

But lines in the sand are meant to shift. In the last 100 years, the sea rose less than 9 inches in California. By the end of this century, the surge could be greater than 9 feet.

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California Essential Habitat Connectivity Project: A Strategy for Conserving a Connected California
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California Essential Habitat Connectivity Project: A Strategy for Conserving a Connected California
California Department of Fish and Wildlife (CDFW) | March 2, 2010...
Summary
The California Department of Transportation (Caltrans) and California Department of Fish and Game (CDFG) commissioned the California Essential Habitat Connectivity Project because a...
The California Department of Transportation (Caltrans) and California Department of Fish and Game (CDFG) commissioned the California Essential Habitat Connectivity Project because a functional network of connected wildlands is essential to the continued support of California’s diverse natural communities in the face of human development and climate change. This Report is also intended to make transportation and land-use planning more efficient and less costly, while helping reduce dangerous wildlife-vehicle collisions.

This Essential Habitat Connectivity Report includes three primary products: (1) a statewide Essential Habitat Connectivity Map, (2) data characterizing areas delineated on the map, and (3) guidance for mitigating the fragmenting effects of roads and for developing and implementing local and regional connectivity plans. These products will be made available for public use on two websites—BIOS, managed by the California Department of Fish and Game [now Wildlife], and Data Basin, managed by the Conservation Biology Institute. Both are interactive web-based systems that allow users to download, print, combine, comment on, or otherwise use the maps, data layers, and other information.

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A freshwater conservation blueprint for California: prioritizing watersheds for freshwater biodiversity

A freshwater conservation blueprint for California: prioritizing watersheds for freshwater biodiversity

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A Legal Guide to the Public’s Rights to Access and Use of California’s Navigable Waters

A Legal Guide to the Public’s Rights to Access and Use of California’s Navigable Waters

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Adaptability and adaptations of California’s water supply system to dry climate warming

Adaptability and adaptations of California’s water supply system to dry climate warming

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Addressing California’s Uncertain Water Future by Coordinating Long-Term Land Use and Water Planning: Is a Water Element in the General Plan the Next Step

Addressing California’s Uncertain Water Future by Coordinating Long-Term Land Use and Water Planning: Is a Water Element in the General Plan the Next Step

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Agricultural Land Stewardship (Resource Management Strategy)

Agricultural Land Stewardship (Resource Management Strategy)

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Bayesian nitrate source apportionment to individual groundwater wells in the Central Valley by use of elemental and isotopic tracers

Bayesian nitrate source apportionment to individual groundwater wells in the Central Valley by use of elemental and isotopic tracers

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Before the Well Runs Dry: Improving the Linkage Between Groundwater and Land Use Planning

Before the Well Runs Dry: Improving the Linkage Between Groundwater and Land Use Planning

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Bringing Water and Land Use Together

Bringing Water and Land Use Together

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California against the sea

California against the sea

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California Essential Habitat Connectivity Project: A Strategy for Conserving a Connected California

California Essential Habitat Connectivity Project: A Strategy for Conserving a Connected California

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