Nature's Archive #60: Dr. Sam Sandoval - Hydrology and Water Management
No matter who you are or where you live, you depend on water. Often, water access is so reliable and ubiquitous that many of us rarely stop to consider the natural and human-made systems that capture, store, and transport water to where it is needed. But climate change and decades of growing consumption are forcing us to reconsider the ways of the past.
Water management and hydrology are huge topics, and I couldn't have found a better guest than Dr. Sam Sandoval Solis to help us understand it. Sam is an assistant professor and cooperative extension specialist at UC Davis, and is involved in many water management education and outreach efforts.
Today, Sam helps us understand landscape-scale water management. We discuss water storage and transport, including natural systems such as snowpack and rivers, and human made systems such as reservoirs and aqueducts. We discuss the importance of groundwater, and the dramatic subsidence, or land sinking, caused by overuse of groundwater.
Sam also helps us understand why building more reservoirs is disproportionately costly and ineffective, and gives us insights into how and where our water is used.
Despite our challenges, Sam is an optimist, and also provides solutions we can pursue, and helps us bust some water management myths.
Water management could easily be a series of podcasts - and in fact, Sam and some colleagues host a podcast called Water Talk, so please check that out. Also, Sam's website, watermanagement.ucdavis.edu, is full of wonderful resources and webinars that anyone wishing to learn about hydrology will love.
FULL SHOW NOTES
Links
Human Right to Sanitation (no website yet)
latinosforwater.org
watermanagement.ucdavis.edu - Dr. Sandoval's website. Be sure to check out the cooperative extension section for numerous videos and resources!
eflows.ucsdavis.edu - an interactive exploration of California's hydrology
Water Talk Podcast
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Music: Spellbound by Brian Holtz Music
License (CC BY 4.0): https://filmmusic.io/standard-license
Artist site: https://brianholtzmusic.com
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Check past Nature's Archive episodes for amazing guests like Doug Tallamy, Elaine Ingham, and Rae Wynn-Grant, covering topics from bird migration to fungi to frogs and bats!