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 15th, 2004

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, Califor

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.

Addressing Multiple Stressors and Multiple Goals in the Delta Plan

Delta Stewardship Council (Delta Council) | January 26th, 2011

Addressing Stakeholder Science Needs for Integrated Drought Science in the Colorado River Basin

U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) | May 31st, 2022

Advanced Quantitative Precipitation Information: Improving Monitoring and Forecasts of Precipitation, Streamflow, and Coastal Flooding in the San Francisco Bay Area

American Meteorological Society (AMS) | October 26th, 2022

Advanced Quantitative Precipitation Information (AQPI) is a synergistic project that combines observations and models to improve monitoring and forecasts of precipitation

Advanced Quantitative Precipitation Information (AQPI) is a synergistic project that combines observations and models to improve monitoring and forecasts of precipitation, streamflow, and coastal flooding in the San Francisco Bay area. As an experimental system, AQPI leverages more than a decade of research, innovation, and implementation of a statewide, state-of-the-art network of observations, and development of the next generation of weather and coastal forecast models. AQPI was developed as a prototype in response to requests from the water management community for improved information on precipitation, riverine, and coastal conditions to inform their decision making processes. Observation of precipitation in the complex Bay Area landscape of California’s coastal mountain ranges is known to be a challenging problem. But, with new advanced radar network techniques, AQPI is helping fill an important observational gap for this highly populated and vulnerable metropolitan area. The prototype AQPI system consists of improved weather radar data for precipitation estimation; additional surface measurements of precipitation, streamflow and soil moisture; and a suite of integrated forecast modeling systems to improve situational awareness about current and future water conditions from sky to sea. Together these tools will help improve emergency preparedness and public response to prevent loss of life and destruction of property during extreme storms accompanied by heavy precipitation and high coastal water levels - especially high-moisture laden atmospheric rivers. The Bay Area AQPI system could potentially be replicated in other urban regions in California, the United States, and world-wide.

Advances in Sub-seasonal to Seasonal Prediction Relevant to Water Management in the Western United States

American Meteorological Society (AMS) | July 21st, 2022

Water management in the semi-arid western United States (U.S.) is a challenging endeavor that evolves from year to year based on large-scale atmospheric and oceanic condi

Water management in the semi-arid western United States (U.S.) is a challenging endeavor that evolves from year to year based on large-scale atmospheric and oceanic conditions. This region has frequently experienced prolonged periods of drought with substantial socioeconomic impacts; the most recent instance involves California entering its third consecutive drought year. As context for the economic implications of drought, California’s enacted state budget for the Fiscal Year 2021-22 authorizes more than $600 million for the California Department of Water Resources for providing immediate drought support to local water agencies (CA State Budget 2021a); this amount is part of a package of more than $5 billion over four years for water resilience and drought preparedness (CA State Budget 2021b). For drought preparedness, state and local water managers would like to rely on skillful forecasts on timescales that span the spectrum between weather forecasts and climate predictions. Despite recent improvements in developing sub-seasonal (2- to 6-weeks lead) and seasonal (2- to 6-months lead) prediction systems that compete with and/or outperform existing dynamical and statistical models (e.g., Gibson et al. 2021, Switanek et al. 2020, DeFlorio et al. 2019), forecasting limitations have hindered crucial management decisions for western U.S. water managers, especially related to longer-lead planning, budgeting, resource allocation, and better preparedness for wet and dry extremes (DeFlorio et al. 2021). Improved understanding of physical phenomena and processes governing weather and climate extremes and utilization of emerging forecast methodologies are critical to developing skillful S2S forecast products relevant to water management.

Advances in Subseasonal to Seasonal Prediction Relevant to Water Management in the Western United States

American Meteorological Society (AMS) | October 1st, 2022

Water management in the semiarid western United States is a challenging endeavor that evolves from year to year based on large-scale atmospheric and oceanic conditions. T

Water management in the semiarid western United States is a challenging endeavor that evolves from year to year based on large-scale atmospheric and oceanic conditions. This region has frequently experienced prolonged periods of drought with substantial socioeconomic impacts; the most recent instance involves California entering its third consecutive drought year. As context for the economic implications of drought, California’s enacted state budget for the fiscal year 2021/22 authorizes more than $600 million for the California Department of Water Resources for providing immediate drought support to local water agencies (State of California 2021a); this amount is part of a package of more than $5 billion over 4 years for water resilience and drought preparedness (State of California 2021b). For drought preparedness, state and local water managers would like to rely on skillful forecasts on time scales that span the spectrum between weather forecasts and climate predictions. Despite recent improvements in developing subseasonal (2–6-weeks lead) and seasonal (2–6-months lead) prediction systems that compete with and/or outperform existing dynamical and statistical models (e.g., Gibson et al. 2021; Switanek et al. 2020; DeFlorio et al. 2019), forecasting limitations have hindered crucial management decisions for western U.S. water managers, especially related to longer-lead planning, budgeting, resource allocation, and better preparedness for wet and dry extremes (DeFlorio et al. 2021). Improved understanding of physical phenomena and processes governing weather and climate extremes and utilization of emerging forecast methodologies are critical to developing skillful subseasonal to seasonal (S2S) forecast products relevant to water management.

Advancing Affordability through Water Efficiency

Pacific Institute | September 19th, 2022

This paper examines the relationship between water conservation and efficiency and affordability. Specifically, it examines the near-term effect of water conservation and

This paper examines the relationship between water conservation and efficiency and affordability. Specifically, it examines the near-term effect of water conservation and efficiency on utility bills, i.e., water, wastewater, and energy bills, for conserving households and the longer term effect on water and wastewater costs for the larger community. Finally, the paper identifies common barriers for low- income and other hard-to-reach customers to participate in conservation and efficiency programs, and proposes strategies to overcome those barriers.

Aging dams, political instability, poor human decisions and climate change: recipe for human disaster

Nature Portfolio (Springer Nature) | January 16th, 2025

Agricultural Water Use Efficiency (Resource Management Strategy)

California Department of Water Resources (DWR) | July 29th, 2016

The agricultural water use efficiency strategy describes the use and application of scientific processes to control agricultural water delivery and use to achieve a benef

The agricultural water use efficiency strategy describes the use and application of scientific processes to control agricultural water delivery and use to achieve a beneficial outcome. It includes an estimation of net water savings or increased production resulting from implementing efficiency measures as expressed by the ratio of output to input, resulting benefits, and strategies to achieve efficiency and benefits.

Airborne Geophysical Method Images Fast Paths for Managed Recharge of California’s Groundwater

Environmental Research Letters (IOP) | November 17th, 2022

Given the substantial groundwater level declines in the Central Valley of California, there is an urgent need to supplement the recharge of the groundwater systems by imp

Given the substantial groundwater level declines in the Central Valley of California, there is an urgent need to supplement the recharge of the groundwater systems by implementing managed aquifer recharge. With approximately 170 km3 (140 million acre-feet) of available groundwater storage space, water deemed to be excess during wet years could be spread on the ground surface at selected locations allowing it to move downward to recharge the underlying aquifer system. Along the eastern edge of the Central Valley there are large paleovalleys that can act as fast paths expediting the downward movement of water. These paleovalleys, incised and then filled with coarse-grained materials – sand, gravel, cobbles – at the end of the last glacial period, are referred to as incised valley fill (IVF) deposits. An IVF deposit has been mapped at one location in the Kings River alluvial fan, with others proposed to exist in the fans of major rivers. If located, these deposits would be optimal sites for managed recharge. In this study, we assessed the use of a helicopter-deployed geophysical method to efficiently locate IVF deposits throughout the Central Valley. We acquired 542 line-kilometers of airborne electromagnetic (AEM) data in the Kings River alluvial fan, with dense line-spacing over the Kings River IVF deposit which had been mapped as ~2 km wide, extending over 20 km into the Central Valley, from the ground surface to a depth of 30 m. The IVF deposit was unambiguously imaged in the AEM data as an extensive linear feature that was more electrically resistive than the surrounding materials due to the high percentage of coarse-grained sediments. This study provides the evidence to support the rapid adoption of the AEM method to locate IVF deposits along the eastern edge of the Central Valley. These deposits provide valuable natural infrastructure for recharging California’s groundwater.