Mountjoy quoted in Grist on how California could get smarter about droughts and flooding
First comes the drought, then the deluge. It’s not just that climate change is making the weather more extreme, with hotter dry spells and warmer winters that transform mountain snowpack to water. It’s also that the drought has actually made flooding more likely by diminishing the soil’s capacity to soak up moisture. It’s as if dryness defends its turf against wetness — baking the dirt into an impermeable crust, or turning it into a hydrophobic crumb that causes raindrops to bead off.
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There’s a potential solution: redirect swollen rivers onto farmland to recharge groundwater while also protecting cities in flood zones. As Heather Mack has written for Grist, researchers have tested this out with a few innovative farmers in California’s San Joaquin Valley, and it worked great. The water sank into the ground, and the crops were none the worse for wear.
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If the combined estimates of floodwater and land to absorb it hold true for the rest of the state, we may have solved 20 percent of the problem. But we are still missing 80 percent of that 1.2 to 2.6 million acre feet of overdraft. “It’s obviously not solving the problem, but it’s a first big bite,” said Daniel Mountjoy, director of resource stewardship for Sustainable Conservation, a California nonprofit that has been an active player in the groundwater recharge investigation. Where does the rest of the water come from?