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Fall 2024 Newsletter | Volume 11, Issue 2
The California Institute for Water Resources (CIWR) is a hub for water research, extension, and education programs in California. We are based in University of California Agriculture and Natural Resources.
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In this issue: Nitrogen and Irrigation Impact Report: 2021-2024 | Integrated Land and Water Management Workshops | Water Systems Research | Academic Water Jobs | |
Impact Report: Nitrogen and Irrigation Initiative | |
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In Fall 2024, project partners of the Nitrogen and Irrigation Initiative (NII) published our 2021-2024 Progress Report, which details program offerings, achievements, and impacts to date.
The NII is a collaboration of the California Department of Food and Agriculture (CDFA), CIWR, UC Cooperative Extension, and UC Davis. Through the NII, UCANR Cooperative Extension advisors and staff conduct on-farm consultations, field trials, and workshops to help growers adopt efficient nitrogen and irrigation practices. Through 2024, the program has resulted in over 60 events and 300 consultations reaching more than 3,400 growers.
Read the Report
Fact sheets for the NII are also available in English and Spanish.
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Integrated Land and Water Management Workshop | |
Participants at the workshop "Integrated Land and Water Management: Merging Research and Policy" at UC Merced (Photo credit: E. Porse) | |
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In October 2024, CIWR partnered with UC Merced's Secure Water Future (SWF) and the Environmental Defense Fund to sponsor a pair of workshops at UC Merced focused on research and policy needs for integrated land and water management transitions in the Central Valley. The workshops brought together researchers and practitioners from universities, agencies, non-profits, and communities.
In the first workshop, community and agency leaders spoke about the challenges faced in planning for land use transitions with the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act and other drivers of change, as well as emerging research solutions for new crops. Workshop participants also had a chance to learn about restoration and integrated land management practices through a tour of Dos Rios State Park hosted by River Partners. The second workshop, led by EDF and SWF, explored the "State of the Science" for land repurposing in California and will result in an upcoming report to guide future research and investments.
View presentations and learn more on our website.
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Celebrating Healthy Soils Week | |
Hope Zabronsky speaking with state legislative staff and policy makers during CDFA's Yolo County Farm tour in December 2024 (Photo credit: CDFA Office of Environmental Farming and Innovation). | |
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In December 2024, Hope Zabronsky, program manager for the Climate Smart Agriculture program in CIWR, presented at and helped organize a Yolo County Farm Tour hosted by the California Department of Food and Agriculture to recognize Healthy Soils Week. At the workshop, farmers who have received state grants for soil health improvements showed examples of mulching and cover cropping, and discussed the importance of these practices for improving soil structure, fertility, and water retention.
Read more about the event from CDFA's Planting Seeds Blog
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Welcome to New Colleagues at CIWR! | |
Danielle Duyst joined UCCE Tulare/Kern and CIWR in June 2024 as a Community Education Specialist with the Climate Smart Agriculture team. Danielle has a B.S. in Environmental and Sustainability Studies from University of Utah and grew up in Tulare County. | |
Hope Hauptman joined CIWR in November 2024 as a Project Scientist based in Merced, CA. Hope has a Ph.D. in Environmental Systems from UC Merced and a Masters in Instructional Technology from Cal State Monterey Bay. Hope's PhD research focused on water quality for 1,2,3 TCP and Hope was previously a Peace Corps volunteer and high school science teacher. | |
Erika Cassio Madrazo joined CIWR in May 2024 as a Project Scientist focused on water, wastewater, and environmental justice. Erika was previously the Deputy Director of Academia and Research academic at the Instituto Politecnico Nacional, Mexico and led the Water and Culture Department in the Durango, MX state government. | |
Daniel Swain joined UC ANR and CIWR in November 2024 as a Professional Researcher and Climate Scientist through a joint appointment with UC ANR, UCLA's of the Environment and Sustainability, and the National Center for Atmospheric Research. Daniel's work focuses on research and communications of extreme events, including droughts, floods, storms, and wildfires. | |
Ben Witeck joined CIWR in September 2024 as a student employee. Ben is a fourth year undergraduate in Conservation and Resource Studies at UC Berkeley. Ben previously worked on research at the Wheeler Water Institute at UC Berkeley Law, studying groundwater sustainability plans | |
Bethany Rader worked in CIWR in the Summer of 2024 as a student employee. Bethany is a Ph.D. student at Oregon State University studying household economic responses to drinking water scarcity. Bethany previously worked for the California Department of Water Resources and has degrees from Sacramento State and UC Davis. | |
Academic Jobs in California Water | |
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New academic water-related positions with CIWR, UC ANR, and collaborators at University of California and California State University campuses:
Check out other positions available with UC ANR at ucanr.edu/jobs.
Interested to advertise a job? Send us a note at anrwater@ucanr.edu
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UC ANR Water Program Team Webinars | |
Join us for the 6th season of the UC ANR Water Webinar series on the fourth Monday of the month at 12pm PT. Recent speakers have included Monica Palta, UCCE and UC Irvine, Ali Montazar, UCCE Imperial; and Andre Daccache, UC Davis.
This seminar series, organized by the ANR Water Program Team led by Ted Grantham, Ali Montazar, and Tobias Oker, provides a virtual platform to get to know water colleagues around the state.
You can catch up on all the talks in the series here.
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Blog: Drivers of Water-Wise Urban Landscapes | |
What drives households to adopt water-wise landscapes and how do landscapes vary across a city? UC ANR Cooperative Extension Advisor and CIWR Affiliate Researcher Joanna Solins explored these questions on CIWR's The Confluence Blog, describing recently published research from a collaborative team, which examined the patterns of water-wise landscapes across the City of Sacramento.
Check out the blog entry.
Read the research article.
Photo credit: Cadenasso Lab, UC Davis
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Supporting Soil Sampling and Project Verification | |
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The Climate Smart Agriculture team is supporting CDFA's data collection and project verification efforts for its incentive programs. In the fall, the CSA team verified the successful completion of 83 projects for healthy soils and 63 projects for agricultural water efficiency across the state. The CSA Team has also been collecting soil samples for a CDFA-funded Healthy Soils Demonstration Project that is evaluating the effects of biochar and compost application on soil health in orchards.
Image on Right: Climate Smart Agriculture Community Educator, Danielle Duyst, uses a soil auger to collect samples at varying depths in the orchard at the Center for Land Based Learning in Woodland.
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Workshop participants learning about restoration and integrated land management practices at Dos Rios State Park near Modesto, CA, via a tour hosted by River Partners (October 2024). | |
In September 2024, the American Water Resources Association (AWRA), the Universities Council on Water Resources (UCOWR) and the National Institutes for Water Resources celebrated their 60th anniversaries with a joint conference in St. Louis, MO. CIWR co-sponsored two panels. First, a panel on Groundwater Management, Science & Policy in the Western US including Helen Dahlke (UC Davis) explored critical groundwater issues facing western states. Second, a panel entitled Scaling Water Equity: Cross Sector Solutions to Key Water Challenges, sponsored by the U.S. Water Alliance, the Colorado Water Center, and CIWR, discussed examples of environmental justice challenges and solutions for water in Colorado, California, Pennsylvania, and nationally, including a presentation by Erik Porse on recent efforts in California.
In fall 2024, our new website for the Nitrogen and Irrigation Initiative went live, highlighting project partners at CDFA, UC ANR, and UC Davis, and offering resources for Nitrogen and Irrigation management. The website includes the newly published Progress Report and fact sheets.
In summer 2024, CIWR completed a baseline survey of community needs for water-related sanitation as part of the California Wastewater Needs Assessment, a 4-year project to evaluate statewide needs for water-related sanitation in California. In October, Sam Sandoval Solis, Erika Cassio Madrazo, and Erik Porse presented results from the survey to the Wastewater Needs Assessment Advisory Group and published an executive summary of findings from the survey. A recording from the Advisory Group meeting is available online.
CIWR continued working closely with CDFA and UC Cooperative Extension offices throughout the state on the Climate Smart Agriculture (CSA) Program managed by Hope Zabronsky. Since April 2024, the Climate Smart Agriculture team hosted more than 20 in-person and online events with over 450 participants. The Climate Smart Agriculture (CSA) Team provides technical assistance to agricultural producers for several CDFA financial incentive programs including the Healthy Soils Program (HSP) aimed at improving soil health and the State Water Efficiency and Enhancement Program (SWEEP) targeting irrigation efficiency practices.
The Nitrogen Irrigation Initiative and Climate Smart Agriculture Programs, including Brady Holder, Lizzeth Mendoza, and Hope Zabronsky, provided outreach materials and resources to agricultural producers at the 2024 Almond Board of California Annual Conference in Sacramento, California. The annual conference held in December brings together hundreds of producers, companies, researchers, and partners working in the almond industry.
CIWR's student employee and fellow programs welcomed two new student employees, Ben Witeck ('24-'25, UC Berkeley) and Bethany Rader (summer '24, Oregon State University). Students and fellows have tackled research on drinking water access, water systems finance, and water system resilience. Since July 2023, CIWR and UC Merced's Colleen Naughton have co-hosted a UC Berkeley GrizzlyCorps fellow, Celeste Navarrete, based at UC Merced.
Finally, CIWR continued supporting the drinking water use case of the COEQWAL Project, the Collaboratory to Support Equitable Water Allocation in the California Delta led by UC Berkeley. Ben Witeck, Hope Hauptman, and Erik Porse are leading an assessment of water supply vulnerability for Southern California water systems who may be affected by future changes in water availability, climate, and management.
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Reports, Publications, and Presentations | |
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Erik Porse. Water and Environmental Justice in California. American Water Resources Association 2024 Conference. September 30, 2024. St. Louis, MO.
Marie-Philine Gross, Alvar Escriva-Bou, Erik Porse, and Andrea Cominola. Leveraging explainable Machine Learning to discover trade-offs between water supply and demand management strategies in California. European Geophysical Union 2024 Conference. April 18, 2024. Vienna, Austria.
Gross, Marie-Philine, Alvar Escriva-Bou, Erik Porse, and Andrea Cominola. "CaRDS-the statewide California Residential water Demand and Supply open dataset." Scientific Data 11, no. 1 (2024): 632.
Courtney Crosson, Stephanie Pincetl, Caroline Scruggs, Neha Gupta, Rashi Bhushan, Sybil Sharvelle, Erik Porse, Andrea Achilli, Adriana Zuniga-Teran, Gregory Pierce, Dominic L. Boccelli, Charles P. Gerba, Melinda Morgan, Tzahi Y. Cath, Bruce Thomson, Steve Baule, Steve Glass, Mark Gold, James MacAdam, Luke Cole, Mead Mier, Catlow Shipek, and Thomas Meixner. (2024). Advancing a Net Zero Urban Water Future in the United States Southwest: Governance and Policy Challenges and Future Needs (2024). Environmental Science and Technology Water.
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“A reliable supply of water for drinking, growing food and sustaining our natural resources remains one of California’s greatest challenges. UC’s California Institute for Water Resources is vital to integrating California’s research, extension, and education programs to help mitigate current water-related issues and develop practical long-term solutions.”
Secretary Karen Ross, California Dept. of Food and Agriculture
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