Water for Wetlands and Floodplains: Adapting Management for a Changing Climate (Lunch-MAR | Oct 2025)
In California’s Central Valley, nearly all wetland habitat relies on actively managed water. As climate change brings less snow and more variable rainfall, wetland and floodplain managers must adapt. This session explores emerging strategies to capture, store, and distribute water based on ecological goals and water year conditions.
How Much Water is Available for Recharge in the Central Valley? (Lunch-MAR | Sept 2025)
Designing better policies to bolster recharge during wet periods is key. But California’s complex regulatory environment makes it difficult. In a survey we conducted last year, we found that even though California made great deal of progress on groundwater recharge during the banner wet year of 2023, a lot of water was left on the table. We suspected that more water could have been captured for recharge without impacting the environment or downstream users: approximately 3.5 million acre-feet, a
An Overview of the Groundwater Accounting Platform (Lunch-MAR | Aug 2025)
The Groundwater Accounting Platform is an open-source tool that helps California water managers, landowners, and water users track water budgets and usage more easily in near real-time. The California Water Data Consortium and Environmental Defense Fund have partnered to expand the Platform to new regions, and to provide additional features and functionalities to help more groundwater agencies and growers track water use allocations under the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act (SGMA).
