SGMA Land Use Models
Tim Hammerich
News Reporter
Some experts estimate that the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act, or SGMA, could take 10% of agricultural land out of production. UC Merced PhD candidate Vicky Espinoza is asking the questions of where and how this might take place, and who will be affected.
Espinoza… “That's our growers, small scale farmers, our underrepresented communities. A lot of these communities and our growers rely on agriculture for their livelihood. So developing solutions that include their voices and their perspectives is essential in creating solutions that are climate change resilient, water scarcity resilient, and, you know, equitable and representative.”
Espinoza is focusing her work on creating a community-informed land use model to determine how some of this land might be re-purposed.
Espinoza… “They could be low water-intensive water crops. It could be implementing pollinator friendly cover crops. It could be the implementation of solar onto farms. It could be parks and green space in and around underrepresented communities that are lacking these resources or these spaces. Those are the ones that have been talked about and have been researched and there's literature out there for the ideal places to implement them. But, you know, I'm really interested in hearing from our growers, from our community members, what they think.”
Learn more about this work on her YouTube channel: CaliWaterAg.