Vicky Espinoza

UC Merced, Ph.D. Candidate

Vicky Espinoza is a Ph.D. Candidate at UC Merced, supervised by Dr. Joshua Viers. She analyzes how California’s Sustainable Groundwater Management Act (SGMA) could drive changes to the San Joaquin Valley’s agricultural lands and how these potential land-use changes could affect our farmers and the already socioeconomically vulnerable communities in the region. She is addressing a knowledge inequity gap that has persisted among underrepresented communities in the region. She is creating trilingual resources, such as the CaliWaterAg Youtube channel (www.tinyurl.com/caliwaterag), and workshops that help inform underrepresented communities and farmers about SGMA, potential impacts on agriculture, and how they can have a say in future water and land-use decisions.