An Interview with Dr. Laurel Larsen, the Delta Stewardship Council’s Former Lead Scientist
by John Hart
Since the turn of the century, there has been a Delta Lead Scientist. Created in the year 2000 under the bygone program CALFED, the post signaled a new resolve: to give science a voice in the circles governing Delta affairs. Since 2009 the role has been a function of CALFED’s successor, the Delta Stewardship Council.
Sam Luoma, the first Lead Scientist, recalls a heady time, full of discovery and improvisation, when money flowed freely and large decisions about the Delta seemed just around the corner. His immediate successors had a more sobering experience as the CALFED energy waned. The fourth Lead Scientist, Peter Goodwin, consolidated the job in its new slot under the Stewardship Council, getting an ambitious Delta Science Program up and running. The fifth, John Callaway, had notable success in putting the program’s funding on solid ground. The sixth, Laurel Larsen, has just ended her stint. On her last day on the job, I asked her what she has learned about the role she played and the amazing place that is its focus.
Like her predecessors, Larsen brought impressive credentials to the post. Among other roles, she headed the Environmental Systems Dynamics Laboratory at U.C. Berkeley. “We liked to deal with so-called ‘wicked problems,’” she says: complex and intractable messes, like the Delta. “That’s one reason that this position was attractive to me.”
Dr. Larsen feels that she arrived at a good moment. After a decade of settling in, the Delta Science Program had reached firm footing. Like Dr. Luoma at the beginning, Dr. Larsen felt a new freedom to reach out to the “brain trust” of scientists working on these problems, both in other agencies and on university campuses. “We are a boundary-crossing organization,” she says proudly. “One of my favorite parts of the job has been the inter-agency work. For instance, are we all using the same projections about climate change and sea-level rise? And I’ve been passionate about forging collaborations with academia.” (She has encountered criticism about the closeness of some of these collaborations.)
Another kind of boundary she hoped to cross was the one between the physical and the social sciences. Here, she says, she found herself pushing on an open door: the “tremendous dearth” on the sociological side was recognized in all quarters. “Resiliency is by and large a social problem,” she says. She points to the ongoing struggle to reconceive water rights. And Larsen, the first woman in her post, welcomed the recent emphasis on hearing formerly silenced voices: “Science does need to be more inclusive.”
During her term she has noticed more calls from sister agencies seeking independent review of their models and plans. This consulting role is somewhat different from that of the Independent Science Board, another creation 2009’s Delta Reform Act. The ISB is a sort of scientific grand jury, picking its own targets of investigation. In the kind of consultation Larsen is talking about, “They come to us.”
Does her experience give her any new insight on the relative importance of the five stressors usually blamed for the Delta’s perilous condition—flow alteration, habitat loss, invasive species, fisheries management, and pollution? “No,” she says simply. “Synthesis studies are still needed to tease apart the relative impacts.” But she has grown more and more concerned about that pollution factor, in the form of new contaminants. Novel pesticides. Irresistibly handy household chemicals. Sunscreen components. Flea-and-tick products. Pharmaceuticals for ailing human bodies that may act strangely in the wider biotic world. “They’re ubiquitous, in the tissues of all kinds of organisms that inhabit the Delta. The science doesn’t develop as rapidly as the products do. For me, the alarm bells are ringing.” The next Bay-Delta Science Conference—another innovation of the CALFED years—will pay special attention to these substances.
Larsen also welcomes the increasing focus on what happens high up in the Delta watershed. With the prospect of fading snowpack, mountain meadows and beaver ponds are looking like important water retainers and slow releasers. “The powers that be are coming to terms with the importance of beavers,” she says. The newly prized rodents will be discussed in a Delta Adapts Strategy, due early 2024.
Another recent revelation is the “the immense potential of the Delta for deep carbon sequestration”–not in wetlands or soils, but rather in the stable sedimentary bedrock that underlies the Central Valley, as it does few zones in the geologically turbulent West. These types of formations kept hydrocarbons out of circulation for millions of years; by deliberate injection of carbon dioxide, they might be called to keep the lid on again.
Returning to academia, Laurel Larsen will be continuing her lab’s work on hydrologic forecasting while following the progress of initiatives she started as Delta Lead Scientist from a distance. One of her causes has the acronym COEQWAL, standing for COllaboratory for EQuity in Water ALlocations. Its aim is “to develop new water planning tools to advance sustainable, inclusive and equitable water distribution” in California.
This story was produced by Estuary News Group with support from the Delta Stewardship Council.
