CEPB Seminar: Mandating climate-informed groundwater sustainability planning: a path to adaptive decision making?
Dr. Courtney Hammond Wagner
Postdoctoral Research
Stanford University Woods Institute of the Environment
Abstract: Dr. Courtney Hammond Wagner is a postdoctoral scholar in sustainable groundwater at Stanford University’s Water in the West program at the Woods Institute for the Environment. As an environmental social scientist, Courtney’s research broadly aims to understand how we design incentives, rules and policies to change behavior in water resource dilemmas and improve community well-being and ecological outcomes. Courtney will present work examining how regulatory mandates and incentives shape water managers’ decision making. Specifically, Courtney is interested in two aspects of California’s 2014 Sustainable Groundwater Management Act (SGMA) policy process: the mandated use of climate information in groundwater sustainability plans and the role of incentives for managed aquifer recharge on agricultural lands. The goal of this research is to improve our understanding of policy approaches for achieving sustainable management in groundwater-dependent regions.