Water availability for cannabis in northern California: intersections of climate, policy, and public discourse

Authors:
Betsy MorganKaitlyn SpanglerJacob Stuivenvolt AllenChristina MorrisettMark BrunsonS.-Y. Simon WangNancy Huntly
Owners: Betsy Morgan
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Type: Resource
Storage: The size of this resource is 344.8 MB
Created: Jan 23, 2020 at 5:41 p.m.
Last updated: Jan 12, 2021 at 7:32 p.m.
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Content types: Multidimensional Content  Multidimensional Content 
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Abstract

Availability of water for irrigated crops is driven by climate and policy, as moderated by public priorities and opinions. We explore how climate and water policy interact to influence water availability for cannabis (Cannabis sativa), a newly regulated crop in California, as well as how public discourse frames these interactions. Grower access to surface water covaries with precipitation frequency and oscillates consistently in an energetic 11–17 year wet-dry cycle. Assessing contemporary cannabis water policies against historic streamflow data showed that legal surface water access was most reliable for cannabis growers with small water rights (<600 m3) and limited during relatively dry years. Climate variability either facilitates or limits water access in cycles of 10–15 years—rendering cultivators with larger water rights vulnerable to periods of drought. How-ever, news media coverage excludes growers’ perspectives and rarely mentions climate and weather, while public debate over growers’ irrigation water use presumes illegal diversion. This complicates efforts to improve growers’ legal water access, which are further challenged by climate. To promote a socially, politically, and environmentally viable cannabis industry, water policy should better represent growers’ voices and explicitly address stakeholder controversies as it adapts to this new and legal agricultural water user.

Subject Keywords

Coverage

Spatial

Coordinate System/Geographic Projection:
WGS 84 EPSG:4326
Coordinate Units:
Decimal degrees
Place/Area Name:
Emerald Triangle, CA
North Latitude
41.5147°
East Longitude
-121.8842°
South Latitude
39.2130°
West Longitude
-124.4880°

Temporal

Start Date: 01/01/1891
End Date: 12/01/2019
Leaflet Map data © OpenStreetMap contributors

Content

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Data Services

The following web services are available for data contained in this resource. Geospatial Feature and Raster data are made available via Open Geospatial Consortium Web Services. The provided links can be copied and pasted into GIS software to access these data. Multidimensional NetCDF data are made available via a THREDDS Data Server using remote data access protocols such as OPeNDAP. Other data services may be made available in the future to support additional data types.

THREDDS Data Service

https://thredds.hydroshare.org/thredds/catalog/hydroshare/resources/699227b982f5498281709e3d23a8cfce/data/contents/catalog.html

THREDDS Documentation    OPeNDAP Documentation

Related Resources

This resource is referenced by Morgan, B.; Spangler, K.; Stuivenvolt Allen, J.; Morrisett, C.N.; Brunson, M.W.; Wang, S.-Y.S.; Huntly, N. Water Availability for Cannabis in Northern California: Intersections of Climate, Policy, and Public Discourse. Water 2021, 13, 5.
This resource belongs to the following collections:
Title Owners Sharing Status My Permission
Climate Adaptation Science Project Work CAS Coordinator · David Rosenberg  Public &  Shareable Open Access

Credits

Funding Agencies

This resource was created using funding from the following sources:
Agency Name Award Title Award Number
National Science Foundation NSF NRT, Climate Adaptation Science 1633756

How to Cite

Morgan, B., K. Spangler, J. Stuivenvolt Allen, C. Morrisett, M. Brunson, S. S. Wang, N. Huntly (2021). Water availability for cannabis in northern California: intersections of climate, policy, and public discourse, HydroShare, http://www.hydroshare.org/resource/699227b982f5498281709e3d23a8cfce

This resource is shared under the Creative Commons Attribution CC BY.

 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
CC-BY

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