Water on the brain; joining OpenET board

June 9, 2022

I’m becoming a Westerner (in an age of aridification) because I have water permanently on the brain.

vacation reading: Introduction to Water in California
vacation activity: teaching A about center pivot and drip irrigation
recent Wikipedia editing: evapotranspiration

An unpaved dirt road, with a large puddle in the middle of it and green grass on both sides.

Sprinkler irrigation, gone awry.

A dark green tree-covered hillside, with a brighter green swathe of grass below it and a browning stretch of grass and a fence in the foreground.

Center-pivot irrigation. Enjoyed showing to A how this looked in satellite.

A farm scene. In the foreground, rows of small vegetables. In the middle ground, a red barn. In the far distance, a snow-covered tall mountain peak.

Drip irrigation, with Mt. Shasta.

Wooded green hills in the distance, framed by a wooden structure. Far off farm accoutrements are visible, including a tractor and farm building.

View from vacation dinner. In almost the center (but you’ll have to squint) was a pump that was filling trucks, moving the water to other (nearby?) farms.

Four forms of water usage, one farm.

Quite related, I’ve joined the board of OpenET to help bring open data on evapotranspiration (a key part of the water cycle) to Colorado River water management, and eventually to the whole world. I’ll be advising on both basics like licensing and of course the more complex bits like economic sustainability, where (via Tidelift) my head mostly is these days.

Many thanks to John Fleck (GNOME documentation project, ret.) for dragging my head into this space years ago by writing about it so well for so long.