Research Paper On California Drought

California’s continuous drought not only affects California, but essentially impacts the entire food system. Could you imagine an entire state unable to contribute to the growing demands of a thriving economy? As California enters its fifth year of drought the consequences of an ever depleting natural resource, water, continues to negatively impact landscape plants, agricultural production, wildlife, and the economy. The lack of water in California has the potential to have a devastating effect on an ever thriving economy.

Over the years, California's drought has progressively gotten worse. Although some years we experience some rain, it is not enough to fulfill the need for water throughout the state. So where exactly is all the water going? Well, all of California’s water is split into three different sections: Environmental, Agricultural, and Urban.

In the article “Richard Goode: California drought crisis is everyone’s fault,” Richard Goode (2015), states that California does not have enough water to provide and everyone is responsible for it. California’s water problem has been an ongoing situation for years. Hydrologists have predicted and advised us about the water deficit in California, but everyone chose to ignore it. California has been pumping its water straight from the aquifer for years and now it is becoming dry. An enormous amount of water is being pumped each year which causes the water table to go low. When the water table is low, wells go dry and people are left without water. Richard Goode mentions, that California will be in a drought until we are able to receive the same amount of groundwater that we withdraw. However, we might be too late.

“Drought can best be thought of as a condition of water shortage for a particular user in a particular location” (DWR). Although droughts seem to come unexpectedly they actually form over a long period of time with most of their effects being felt by those dependent on annual rainfall. The Department of Water Resources explains that water reservoirs and groundwater basins are buffers for drought impacts and the drought will not be considered over until these storages have been fully replenished. In the past, California’s “significant multi-year droughts have been ended by an above-average water year where statewide precipitation was in the range of 150 percent average.” (DWR) Recently, California has experienced several consecutive years where rainfall and snowfall were well below average. This problem is important because the lack of precipitation means the state is compelled to

California is experiencing its worst drought in history. Throughout the state you can see lakes, rivers and streams drying up and leaving farmers and communities without water. Although it seems that science and global weather patterns caused this severe drought, however irresponsible usage of water paired with state laws on water rights and population growth have all played a role in prolonging this drought that is going into its eighth year. California’s central valley is the world leader in Agriculture, however the valley is also the perfect area for a drought to occur due to climate change. California is in a state of emergency, with the help of reduced water usage along with the state and federal government need to aid in lessening

California is entering its fourth year of a record-breaking drought. The combination of dryness and record warmnth have acted to produce the most severe drought conditions experienced in Califronia. The states drought affected Central Valley which is considered the richest food-producing region in the world, much of America's fresh fruits, nuts and vegetables are grown there. Due to the lack of water in California, there has been many argumentative decisions on water conservation such as fining people for overuse of water, bringing glaciers from the Arctic to California and building major water pipelines, but these ideas require much time and money which the governemnt isn't willing to risk.

Is California’s drought affecting some of California’s ecosystems? Hopefully not since there are many short term and long term effects of the drought on California. Also, limited water is a big problem in California.

This historical timeline of government mandates and corporate processes demonstrates just how much they have made the current drought even worse, and has transformed what would looked like a natural disaster into an unnatural one. The drought will have a tremendous social impact on California; executive orders now make it essentially illegal for citizens to take showers longer than five minutes due to punitive fees . People and corporations will have to drastically alter the way they do business now. Housing developments will have to subside and the drought will, I imagine, make housing much more expensive, thus forcing people to move away. Peoples’ idea of the California lifestyle will shift into one that embraces conservancy and environmental awareness. The same goes for the farming industry. Droughts in California have always been a threat to the state of California, but it’s a shame that these historical developments had to make this problem even worse. Yet, the state will have to adapt whether its citizens like it or

We Californians are to blame for California's Water Shortage.It's as simple as that we really don't think about the consequences that will come with washing our cars (thinking were saving something such as money),Taking long showers and baths,filling pools,and watering our plants more often than is necessary.Also In the article In paragraph 3 states “Brown ordered The State Water Resources Control Board To put Forced Restriction In Place To Reduce Water Use by 25 percent”Yet even the restriction did nothing to help California's drought.This again is the fault of Californians many of us Have the mindset to just not care until its to late to care..And California doesn't have time to finally have people truly caring about how much water they use

Let’s take it back to how this started, back in 2011 to be exact. Reading the California-Nevada Climate Applications Program (CNAP) a NOAA Regional Integrated Sciences and Assessments (RISA) program magazine, from an unknown publisher published on August of 2014 a “drought occurs when water supplies cannot meet demands, and can happen for a variety of reasons” (2). This being said the cause of the drought today is due to the lack of precipitation and humans creating global warming, which is only making it worse, and speeding up the drought. Aside from this, there are other reasons that caused this drought one other being traced back to 2014 where the water vapor transport split into two branches and resulted in flowing either north or south of California (2) according to the (CNAP) magazine. In other words, the evaporation from the year of 2014, it strays from its familiar route across the Pacific. Today, California is relying on other states leading, to purchase water from nearby states like Nevada. Doesn’t it seem embarrassing for California to be asking other states for water and pay millions of dollars simply on account of the state running

Agriculture uses 80% of California’s water. The Central Valley, produces a quarter of the nation's food. For years, scientists have warned farmers to prepare for climate change.

California has been in a drought for about 4 years now and it has been considered the most severe drought in the last 15 years. The California drought has been causing multiple ongoing problems for the last few years. The state of California has tried to take actions toward ending the drought, but the efforts put forth are clearly not enough to end this drought. The main focus in ending the drought has been water conservation, but many California resident are taking the seriousness of the drought too lightly. The drought has already caused several problems, for example water shortages, dying crops, and wildfires all across the state. If serious actions towards ending the drought are not taken soon, California will continue to surface or may get worse. There are a few ideas underway to try and end the drought in California such as, desalination, wastewater recycling, ground water digging, and the main focus water conservation. All of the solutions to ending the drought will cost a good amount of money, so the fact of the matter is which idea would be most efficient and less costly.

The 2014-2017 California drought affected many aspects of living in America. The drought did not only affect California, but America as a whole because of the simple fact that California produces over 75% of U.S fruits, and 2/3 of U.S nuts. Without the necessary amount of water, there would be no way that California could upkeep their regular production. This means that if fruit and nut businesses receive a less amount of product that they usually receive, they won't be able to make a s much money, and in the end that can really end up hurting the economy. In the entire span of the drought, an estimated 2.7 billion dollars have been lost. Besides just hurting the economy, the drought also has forced people to regulate their water usage in

ENSO (El Niño/La Niña Southern Oscillation) has a large effect on climate patterns in Southern California. Long-term precipitation patterns associated with El Niño may have an impact on flooding, mudslides, crop damage, coastal erosion, and fishery damage. Yet, there is some uncertainty as to its effects on drought, if at all. This study attempts to understand the effect of ENSO and Drought by analyzing long-term precipitation, sea surface temperatures, and the Palmer Drought Index data as a function of time for three locations in Southern California. The above data was acquired from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), and the State of California Drought Portal for three ENSO events dating back to 1980 and used to developed

According to Doyle Rice of USA Today Newspaper, “California is currently in it's fourth year (2012-2015) of one of the state's worst droughts in the past century.” In August of 2014, all of California was declared to be in a drought and over half of the state was in “exceptional” drought, the worst level (Rice). This drought has led to violent wildfires, water shortages, and potentially staggering agricultural losses. Because of the severity of the drought, the California Governor, Jerry Brown, declared a statewide drought emergency to reduce water usage and regulate restrictions on the use of outdoor water. One of the areas in California that would be greatly affected by the drought is the San Joaquin Valley, a place well-known for it's agricultural success because of it's environment. My goal in this paper is to inform you of what the San Joaquin Valley environment is like, partially in result of the California drought, and how the valley environment is impacting the lives of the residents.