Exploring Solutions with Government Leaders

UC research catches the eye of policymakers and government leaders. After Jay Famiglietti, director of the UC Center for Hydrologic Modeling, a multicampus research program, showed that California’s Central Valley is losing groundwater at an alarming rate, farm bureaus and state water managers quickly took note.

With data captured by NASA satellites, center researchers later reported the same phenomenon—and threat—in other parts of the Earth. Today, some 2 billion people rely on groundwater as a primary source for drinking water and agricultural irrigation. But because of climate change, many regions are drying out, and few recognized the problem.

Famiglietti helped convince Congress to maintain the NASA satellites so that they may continue to monitor underground water supplies and pick out the dry spots. The U.S. State Department, the Clinton Global Initiative and policymakers from several countries were among those to invite Famiglietti to share his findings so they may explore aggressive water conservation strategies. This is the kind of UC-sponsored research that draws policymakers’ attention to problems before they become full-blown crises.

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