The San Joaquin Valley: Past, Present, and Future, from the Air

Welcome to the summer feature podcast miniseries—EWN On The Road. As we teased in Episode 5, in this special series, Todd Bridges, Senior Research Scientist for Environmental Science with the US Army Corps of Engineers and the National Lead of the Engineering With Nature® Program, is sharing some highlights of his travels across the country over the past 2 years visiting people, places, and projects relevant to EWN. The miniseries includes 4 episodes and will post August 3, 10, 17 and 24:

• Episode 1—The San Joaquin River National Wildlife Refuge: A Natural Landscape Revived
• Episode 2—The San Joaquin Valley: Past, Present, Future and from the Air
• Episode 3—The Heartland Tour: Five Rivers in One Day
• Episode 4—Rivers as Resources to be Valued

We hope you’ll find these special podcast episodes enlightening and easy listening for your summer travels. You can read more about Todd’s travels and see additional pictures in the EWN On The Road blog on the EWN Website. In Episode 2, Todd Bridges shares his perspective on the transformation of the wider San Joaquin Valley where he grew up. In December 2021, he took a helicopter tour of the Valley with an eye toward the landscape transformations that are evident. In 1772, Pedro Fages and his company—the first Europeans to visit the San Joaquin Valley—described the valley as filled with a diversity of wildlife and immense lakes and wetlands. The arrival of the Spanish, other Europeans, and eventually the Americans transformed California’s landscape. Dams, reservoirs, levees, canals, pumps, tunnels, and pipelines associated with the major rivers were the tools used to transform the San Joaquin Valley, draining the wetlands and lakes, resulting in a system that is unsustainable. As Todd describes it, “It’s clear to me that today’s and tomorrow’s climate cannot be reconciled with current practices in the valley and its landscape. It’s also clear to me that nature provides a source of hope for the valley’s future. A new balance could be achieved by resurrecting natural features and processes that were ‘engineered out’ of the Valley in the 20th century. Applying the principles and practices of Engineering With Nature could provide the means to realign the social-ecological system for enduring sustainability, water, and social resilience, and to produce the diversity of benefits and values that nature can provide.” Related Links

• EWN Website
• ERDC Website
• Todd Bridges at EWN
• Todd Bridges at LinkedIn
• EWN On The Road
• EWN On The Road: The California Swing
• EWN On the Road Blog: The California Swing: The San Joaquin Valley: Past, Present and Future from the Air
• EWN On the Road Blog: The California Swing: Engineering Water in California and the Case of the San Joaquin River
• Garden of the Sun: A History of the San Joaquin Valley
• Pedro Fages expeditions to the San Joaquin Valley
• EWN Podcast S3E8: The Dreamt Land – California Water, Sustainability, and EWN
• EWN Podcast S3E9: The Dreamt Land – Rebalancing the System