Water Resources

If you have ever witnessed the damage done by hurricanes that result in severe flooding to regional roads and wash outs at stream crossings, you may long for a crystal ball that would help prevent future destructive scenarios. However, the University of Massachusetts and their collaborators have a much better plan: assess and develop protocols that determine which roadway stream crossings are most vulnerable to climate change conditions well in advance of a disaster. Oh, and place culverts at the top of that list.

As California battles its worst drought in 1,000 years — and after massive wildfires swept across the state for two consecutive summers — a number of tribe members, scientists and U.S. Forest Service officials are working to revive traditional Native American land management practices that some believe could help contain the blazes and lessen effects of the drought. ...

“The longer the supply chain, the weaker the connection between the farmer’s management information and the ultimate consumer,” said Daniel Mountjoy of Sustainable Conservation, which led a recent tour of [Chris] Willoughby’s fields. Inexact water use data is more of a problem in fragmented supply chains such as Willoughby’s, where each link acts independently and contracts are subject to change. Read more

For California to meet its climate goals, we need to rethink the role that water plays as a significant electricity consumer and producer.

Doug Johnson sees the increasingly severe drought in California as a chance to educate people about the importance of invasive plant management at the landscape level in the Sierra Nevada mountain range. The Sierras are an important source of water for all of California, with snowpack formed in winter melting over the spring and summer months and running down to the dry parts of the state. Invasives, some of which are known to be water hungry compared to competing vegetation, can reduce the capacity of Sierra meadows to perform this valuable function. For the state’s residents and agricultural industry, this could make a bad problem worse.

It is easy to overlook the pipes and boxes carrying water under our roads, but these parts of our transportation infrastructure can have huge impacts on freshwater health and road safety. 2003 Fellow Jessica Levine is working in the northeastern United States to replace and upgrade road crossings to benefit aquatic species and habitat along with other community goals.