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Welcome to the archives of Water Deeply. While we paused regular publication of the site on November 1, 2018, we are happy to serve as an ongoing public resource on water resilience. We hope you’ll enjoy the reporting and analysis that was produced by our dedicated community of editors and contributors.
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Jane Braxton Little is a freelance journalist based in California’s northern Sierra Nevada who writes for Audubon, Discover, National Geographic and Scientific American.
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Just 5 percent of California farmers use cover cropping, but that’s likely to increase as researchers work to quantify the amount of water that can be saved by the practice and its benefit for river ecosystems.
New research into how drought kills trees has helped reveal a potentially huge climate consequence of an increase in dead and dying forests that one scientist cautioned could result in a “carbon death spiral.”
Above-average precipitation in California and other parts of the West doesn’t necessarily mean there will be fewer wildfires this season – the Golden State has already seen more than twice as many acres burned as it did last year.
Residents near Mt. Shasta concerned about a water bottling plant launched a ballot initiative to tighten bottling rules, but were defeated. Now, one claims the other side used an astroturf campaign and violated campaign finance rules.
Based in Bozeman, Montana, Headwaters Economics is helping communities across the Western U.S. that are in the “wildland-urban interface” to develop fire resiliency in their planning processes.
A newly published study examined more than 400 years’ worth of information on wildfire behavior in the Sierra Nevada and compared it with temperature and moisture data. But it turned out that climate was not the biggest influencer of fire behavior.
Paskenta is facing its third year in a row of water shortage because a creek, which is its sole source of water, is dropping. The town is one of more than a dozen in northern California facing water shortages.
Drought is taking its toll on Mono Lake, which is hovering close to a level that endangers its vital bird habitat. Low lake levels also affect air quality and water diversions to Los Angeles.
California is the first state to have a law declaring the human right to water, and now it also has a resolution from the Water Board prioritizing it. But the legislation lacks enforcement and financing, even as nearly a million people in the state are without access to safe drinking water.
New research using high-tech tools to measure the moisture in trees found that 120 million trees across nearly every part of California are at risk of dying. Predictions that trends of higher temperatures and decreased precipitation will continue in the future could transform the state’s forests.
This year’s devastating wildfires provide a peek at the future. With climate change and, now, massive tree deaths caused by the drought, it makes an ugly forecast for future fire seasons.
A forthcoming study of Crystal Geyser’s project to open a new water bottling operation is an important step. But critics fear it won’t go far enough.
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