Valerie Olson, assistant professor, and Emily Brooks, post-doctoral researcher, are environmental anthropologists at UC Irvine. They have a new project aimed at getting a better understanding of how communities, particularly the underserved, think about and use their water, and how the agencies that provide water can better serve them.

Can you talk a bit about how your project working with underserved communities and how they use water came about?

Our...

Maryam Kia-Keating, Ph.D. is an Associate Professor of Clinical Psychology at UC Santa Barbara and a Licensed Clinical Psychologist. Her work focuses on coping and resilience in the context of adverse childhood experiences, trauma, and stress, particularly for vulnerable and understudied populations. She is on Twitter @drkiakeating.

You have done research related to resilience and trauma in the wake of disasters in California. What have you learned?

It's important to pay attention to the psychological impact of disasters. Oftentimes, there is an initial, understandable focus on basic needs...

When it comes to using climate change science to help guide decisions, researchers have found that California water managers fall into three fairly distinct groups based on how they work with scientific information and how they think about the future. While some water managers are actively using climate change science, others are not using it at all. In between these two extremes is a group that uses some climate information, but tends to defer to politics in decision-making.

As part of a research team, Zeke Baker...

Don Hankins is a professor of geography and planning at Chico State and a Miwkoʔ (Plains Miwok) traditional cultural practitioner. He has spent his academic career working on water and fire issues in California, with a focus on applied traditional Indigenous stewardship.

You've done work on the use of Indigenous traditional knowledge related to fire and