Managing California's Water for Multiple Objectives and Multiple Stressors

Explore California's complex water management challenges and solutions in this 34-minute conference talk from the Georgia Water Resources Conference. Learn about North America's most variable climate and how California has developed extensive infrastructure including 40 million acre-feet of surface storage and triple that in groundwater capacity. Understand the state's water rights system based on prior appropriation principles and constitutional requirements for public trust resource management. Examine three major challenges: climate change impacts including warming temperatures and declining snowpack, unsustainable groundwater usage leading to land subsidence, and ecosystem degradation threatening native species. Discover ongoing reform efforts including the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act requiring balanced basins by 2040, climate adaptation planning, and proposed environmental management approaches like granting water rights to ecosystems. Gain insights into how agricultural land use, water markets, and demand management strategies are being employed to address these multiple stressors on California's water resources.