Alternate Paradigms

In many ways the notion of Rainfall to Groundwater is so simple, Verna wonders why it hasn’t come up before.

Indeed, in the time since Verna first began limited efforts to bring this to public attention in 2008, apparently no one else has arrived at this conclusion by 2022, despite that other public perspectives have seemingly come so close.

Verna is reminded of a game her mother Margaret, a northwestern Washington farm girl, taught her as a child.

Hide the Thimble.

Mom would hide the thumb-sized thimble in plain sight and the game was to find it.

It often felt challenging, doubtless helped develop perceptual skills and, above all, demonstrated that finding things, ideas, etc., can depend on one’s perspective – literally how one “sees”.

So it is with opportunities to restore catchment detention storage – opportunities abound, but certain perspectives are necessary to “see” them.

The forthcoming book, Rainfall to Groundwater: California and Beyond, discusses several paradigmatic contrasts that shape how we “see” (or not).

These seem especially worth encapsulating here:

Figure vs. Ground

Reductionism vs Holism

Stream Networks vs Watersheds/ Catchments

“Water Yield” vs Baseflow Augmentation

Surface Water Diversions vs Baseflow Augmentation

California “Grasslands” vs. Altered State(s)

Domination vs Collaboration