Small Changes Can Yield Big Savings in Agricultural Water Use

Good news for California water: Anna Boser just published research in Nature Communications showing that we might not need to make drastic changes to farming to address the state’s water crisis.

Anna combined remote sensing, big data and machine learning to estimate how much water crops actually use in the Central Valley. The results suggest that variation in irrigation efficiency due to farming practices could save as much water as switching crops or fallowing fields entirely.

“There’s an opportunity for less obtrusive methods of saving water to be more important than we originally thought,” Anna said. “So we might not have to make as many changes in land use as we originally thought.”

California’s fertile soils and Mediterranean climate enable farmers to cultivate high-value crops that just aren’t viable in the rest of the country. But declining groundwater and a changing climate put pressure on water availability. Anna’s work offers a more optimistic path forward—showing how we can “do more with less.”

Read the full story at UCSB Current →