Today’s Lunch-MAR presentation will be in collaboration with the California Water Data Consortium’s Data for Lunch Series. Hannah Ake will provide an overview of the Groundwater Accounting Platform, an open-source tool that helps California water managers, landowners, and water users track water budgets and usage more easily in near real-time. This tool has been expanded to provide additional features and functionalities to help more groundwater agencies and growers track water use allocations under the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act. Today’s hour-long webinar begins at 12:30 p.m.

The Draft 2025 Agricultural Water Management Plan (AWMP) Guidebook is now available for public review and comment. Updates to this guidebook were made to improve clarity and to provide additional resources and references. The written comment period ends on Friday, August 22, 5 p.m. An AWMP template (in PDF) is available for download. An editable version of the template in Microsoft Word is also available via email request to agWUE@water.ca.gov. For instructions on how and where to submit a public comment, see the DWR press release about the guidebook.

A user-friendly catalog of climate-smart agriculture strategies and alternative revenue streams is available to farmers in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta. This new resource is the result of a project by a team of graduate students from the University of California, Davis (UCD), Environmental Policy and Management Program, who were mentored by staff from the Delta Stewardship Council. The project aims to help farmers navigate barriers to bringing in new funding and adapting their operations to be more productive and resilient to climate change. Read more about the project in the full article on the Delta Stewardship Council website.

The Water Resilience Coalition (WRC) had released its 2024 Impact Report, From Risk to Opportunity: Driving Business Action for Corporate Water Stewardship. The WRC is an industry-driven, CEO-led initiative of the CEO Water Mandate that aims to address the global water crisis and preserve the world’s freshwater resources through collective action in water-stressed basins and ambitious, quantifiable commitments. The 2024 Impact Report dives into the WRC’s progress, highlights from collective action in priority basins, and examines the road ahead. The report provides a snapshot of WRC member companies’ impact in 2024 and discusses the benefits of harnessing the power of technology and AI to prevent operational, financial, and reputational consequences attributed to water risks.

On Wednesday, August 13, the CEO Water Mandate and the Water Resilience Coalition will host a one-hour webinar focused on strengthening global efforts for water resilience through collective action. This event will spotlight corporate leadership in water stewardship and showcase commitments toward achieving net positive water impact across 100 of the world’s most water-stressed basins, including the newly launched European Basins Initiative. This webinar will be held in the United Kingdom and begins at 6 a.m. in California. To register, contact ceowatermandate@unglobalcompact.org.