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Working with California Tribes on Upper Watershed Restoration

By Lori Pottinger

A new program taps into tribal understanding of natural resources to ensure indigenous voices are being heard and to provide a more expansive approach to how state and tribal programs can align in the management of rivers, fisheries, and forests.

blog post

How Water Agencies Could Catalyze Headwater Forest Management

By Henry McCann, Van Butsic

Forest managers, community and environmental stakeholders, and policymakers alike have called for an increase in the pace and scale of proactive forest management to prevent extreme wildfires. Could water agencies lead the effort?

blog post

Commentary: Four Strategies for Managing California’s Crucial Watershed

By Ellen Hanak, Greg Gartrell

California is not doing a good job of tracking changes to the Sacramento–San Joaquin Delta and its watershed. In our recent commentary, we argue that’s making it even tougher to manage the water that is available for the benefit of the state’s communities, economy, and environment.

blog post

Connecting the Drops in Watershed Management

By Lori Pottinger

The Yuba Water Agency manages its watershed for hydropower, water supply, flood control, and ecosystem health. We talked to the agency’s manager, Curt Aikens, about lessons learned from this integrated approach.

blog post

The Russian River: Managing at the Watershed Level

By Gokce Sencan

Water managers across the state face new and more extreme conditions as the climate warms. We talked to Grant Davis of Sonoma Water about his agency’s comprehensive approach to these challenges.

Fact Sheet

The Sacramento–San Joaquin Delta

By Jeffrey Mount, Ellen Hanak, Greg Gartrell

The Sacramento–San Joaquin Delta is California’s largest estuary and a vital hub in the state’s water supply system. Three interlinked issues currently face the Delta: an increasingly unreliable water supply, a decline in ecosystem health, and a fragile system of levees. Learn more about this key watershed in our new fact sheet.

blog post

How Unhealthy Forests Affect Water Supply

By Lori Pottinger

California’s forested watersheds are feeling the effects of drought and fire suppression practices that encourage overly dense stands of trees.

Policy Brief

Policy Brief: Tracking Where Water Goes in a Changing Sacramento–San Joaquin Delta

By Greg Gartrell, Jeffrey Mount, Ellen Hanak

The Sacramento–San Joaquin Delta supplies water to roughly 30 million Californians, over 6 million acres of farmland, and countless ecosystems. But the watershed’s climate is changing: recent decades have seen record warmth, higher evaporation, and declining snowpack. We track where the water is going—and how to adapt.

blog post

California’s Changing Headwaters

By Lori Pottinger

Much of the state’s water supply originates in forested headwaters. An expert interview on how a warming climate and extreme wildfires are changing these ecosystems.

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