Professor Daniele Zaccaria: Applying Science-Based Solutions to Growing Water Concerns in the Central Valley
A
t the University of California, Davis (UC Davis), and the University of California Cooperative Extension, researchers help growers adopt advanced water management solutions in the face of recurring drought and dwindling water supplies. In this interview, Irrigation Leader speaks with Daniele Zaccaria, an associate professor at UC Davis and an agricultural water management specialist at the University of California Cooperative Extension, about how his work helps growers, state agencies, and regulators. Irrigation Leader: Please tell us about your background and how you came to be in your current position. Daniele Zaccaria: I’m an irrigation engineer by training. I completed a PhD in civil and environmental engineering at Utah State University in the irrigation engineering division. Before that, I got an MS degree in land and water resources management for irrigated agriculture at the International Center for Mediterranean Agronomic Studies in Italy, focusing on engineering aspects of the performance of largescale pressurized water delivery systems. The distinctive feature of my background is that I have worked for a long time in irrigated agricultural production under limited and impaired water supplies in semiarid climatic conditions, and I have collaborated with professionals from a variety of fields, including hydrologists, civil engineers, agronomists, horticulturists, soil physicists, and crop physiologists. For the last 9 years, I have been at UC Davis’s department of land, air, and water resources, where I have been conducting applied research, extension education, and outreach activities on agricultural water management and irrigation. Irrigation Leader: Please describe the geographical and hydrological characteristics of the Central Valley, particularly as they affect irrigated agriculture.
34 | IRRIGATION LEADER | June 2022
groundwater, and treated wastewater). Irrigation Leader: Please tell us about the University of California Division of Agriculture and Natural Resources (UC ANR) and the UC Cooperative Extension. Daniele Zaccaria: The UC Cooperative Extension is the executive arm of the UC ANR. We engage with the community and the agricultural production industry to provide science-based solutions to their problems. We have about 700 academic researchers in 40 departments at 4 campuses, about 130 campus-based Cooperative Extension specialists, and 200 locally based Cooperative Extension farm advisors and specialists. We have nine research and extension centers throughout the state of California and 57 local county offices, where farm advisors and specialists provide support to the agricultural production industry and local communities. We tend to work from the bottom up to anticipate problems and to try to address them before they become too serious or complex. Irrigation Leader: How do you engage with farmers? Daniele Zaccaria: Sometimes, farmers ask for help or technical support, and we put together a solution to address their specific challenges. Sometimes, we work with crop commodity boards, such as the Pistachio Board, the Citrus Board, the Almond Board, the Walnut Board, or the Avocado and Table Grape Commissions, to address specific production and marketing challenges. We also work on irrigationleadermagazine.com
PHOTOS COURTESY OF THE UC COOPERATIVE EXTENSION.
Daniele Zaccaria: Geographically, it’s a pretty large agricultural production area with a range of environmental conditions for growing a wide variety of high-value crops and is characterized by various hydrological setups that result in multiple water-related challenges, including water quantity and water quality issues. The scale and intensity of agricultural production in the valley is distinctive. I’ve seen a similar setup in the Central Valley of Chile, but the competition for water among the environmental, agricultural, and municipal sectors in the Central Valley of California is particularly intense and contentious. The heterogeneity of water use challenges and problems across California’s Central Valley is distinctive, as is the variability of water supplies and sources (surface water,
Daniele Zaccaria installing an energy flux station to measure grapevine evapotranspiration in a vineyard at the UC Oakville Experimental Station in the Napa Valley.
