blog post A Winning Approach for Managing Groundwater in the San Joaquin Valley By Alvar Escriva-Bou, Ellen Hanak, Josué Medellín-Azuara Mar 7, 2019 The transition to groundwater sustainability will be challenging and costly. Some approaches can greatly reduce the costs of bringing basins into balance.
blog post Can We Capture More Water in the Delta? By Sarah Bardeen Jan 17, 2023 A massive amount of water is moving through the Sacramento–San Joaquin Delta in the wake of recent storms, and calls have risen from all quarters to capture more of this bounty. We spoke with PPIC Water Policy Center adjunct fellow Greg Gartrell to understand what’s preventing that—and to dispel the myth of “water wasted to the sea.”
blog post A Pragmatic Reason to Protect Freshwater Fish By Ellen Hanak, Jeffrey Mount, Peter Moyle Dec 15, 2015 When species make the endangered species list, we’ve not only failed them, we’ve made it harder to manage water during drought.
blog post The Future of Fog By Sarah Bardeen Apr 1, 2024 Fog is central to life in California, but climate change is going to disrupt this quintessentially Californian weather experience. We asked Todd Dawson, a scientist who has long studied the relationship between fog and redwoods, to divine the future of fog for us.
blog post 2020 Census: Counting the Central Coast By Tess Thorman, Vicki Hsieh, Sarah Bohn Oct 31, 2018 California's Central Coast is home to more than 2 million people, and Monterey, Santa Barbara, and Ventura Counties will have some of the hardest areas to count in the 2020 Census.
blog post New Opportunities for Trading Surface Water in the Sacramento Valley under SGMA By Alex Ehrens, Joy Collins, Andrew Ayres Sep 14, 2021 Successful groundwater stewardship under the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act (SGMA) demands good information—not only about groundwater conditions, but also about surface water availability. We produced a new dataset of how access to this vital resource varies across irrigated farmland in the Sacramento Valley and the Delta, so it’s now possible to assess surface water conditions across the entire Central Valley.
blog post Californians Are Worried about Wildfires By Lynette Ubois, Mark Baldassare Aug 16, 2023 An overwhelming majority of Californians say the threat of wildfires is a problem in their part of the state. Around one in three residents have a great deal of confidence in government readiness to respond to wildfires.
Report Priorities for California’s Water By Jeffrey Mount, Letitia Grenier, Ellen Hanak, Caitlin Peterson ... Nov 1, 2023 California has made great strides in preparing for a drier, hotter future, but it remains a challenge to harness the bounty of wet years while also reducing flood risk. How did California’s water sector manage the unusually wet 2023 water year—and what lessons can we glean for the future?
blog post A State of Water Independence By Brian Gray Jan 4, 2017 California’s authority to protect its water resources will be largely insulated from changes in federal environmental policy.