About the California Water Plan and Watershed Resilience Program

The California Water Plan (CWP) is the state's strategic plan for managing water resources sustainably, analyzing California's water-dependent natural resources, supplies, and demands across agricultural, urban, and environmental sectors under various future scenarios. The California Water Plan Update 2023 emphasizes the need for watershed-based solutions, climate resilience, and equity through collaboration with local partners to address climate extremes. The California Water Plan recommended establishment of the Watershed Resilience Program (WRP) which supports regional collaboration across water sectors at the watershed scale to address climate change impacts. Key aspects of the Watershed Resilience Program include:

• Managing water from headwaters to outflow at a watershed scale.
• Prioritizing equity and inclusiveness.
• Analyzing climate risks and adaptations at the watershed scale
• Collaborating across water supply, flood, groundwater, water quality, forest/fire, ecosystem, and land use sectors
• Developing indicators to track outcomes regionally and statewide

What is the Watershed Hub?

The Watershed Hub is a vulnerabilities assessment and performance tracking tool that provides a rapid snapshot of conditions, potential risks, vulnerabilities, projects, and trends. The Watershed Hub uses a variety of indicators, which serve as “vital signs,” in each watershed throughout California. The Watershed Hub serves local resource managers, watershed network participants, state agency executives and managers, legislative staff, and the public by:

• Tracking existing watershed conditions and trends over time throughout the State
• Reporting on watershed outcomes to communicate the value of past actions and inform future actions and investments
• Supporting the formulation and prioritization of multi-benefit adaptation strategies
• Providing watershed networks with data and collaboration tools

How the Watershed Hub Works

The Watershed Hub creates a centralized information source that tracks current conditions and trends across watersheds, along with proposed and completed projects.

The Hub uses specific indicators to monitor existing conditions, and track changes over time at the watershed scale, that may be influenced by various factors including climate conditions, environmental changes, investments, and projects.

This Watershed Hub is currently in a “Beta” version. This Beta version of the Watershed Hub includes a draft set of statewide indicators that are common to all watersheds throughout California. These indicators allow users to compare and contrast watershed conditions throughout the State using consistent, statewide data sets.

Future versions of the Watershed Hub are planned to incorporate watershed-specific indicators identified by regional watershed networks and provide added functionality. This allows regional partners throughout a watershed to tailor the Watershed Hub to the unique conditions of their specific watershed.

How to Use the Watershed Hub

A tutorial on how to use the various features of the hub can be found here: View Tutorial