Keeping Water in Climate-Changed Headwaters Longer

Climate-change projections for California confidently describe a future with warmer temperatures, more evaporative demand, less snow, more rain, earlier and flashier runoff and streamflow, and drier summer conditions. The future of annual precipitation is much less certain, but a fairly unanimous projection of drier, more drought-prone conditions punctuated by occasional stronger-than-historical storms is almost as common among projections as is the warming itself. Rather than focusing on the less certain annual precipitation changes, we recommend more focus on keeping water in the headwaters longer. Doing so will involve reducing winter flood flows from headwater catchments, reducing the summer aridification (and wildfire risks) there, salvaging some groundwater recharge that would likely otherwise be lost, and overall, perpetuating headwater (and downstream) hydrologies under more historical and natural conditions. Among the available near-term adaptation strategies for keeping water in the headwaters longer, we discuss several examples here: (1) an increased emphasis on soils and percolation management as a priority and co-benefit in forest-health restoration activities; (2) beaver-population restoration or proliferation of beaver-inspired infrastructures; and (3) upstream-focused, forecast-informed reservoir-operation (FIRO) strategies.