Measuring What Matters

The report examines how California's local groundwater sustainability agencies (GSAs) can develop effective measurable objectives to avoid 'undesirable results' and achieve sustainable yield by 2040. It outlines six characteristics of effective objectives—including clear baselines, quantitative thresholds, and adaptive management—and recommends that the state provide a common framework, identify consistent data sources, and define shared assumptions for modeling sustainable yield.

• Effective measurable objectives for groundwater management must include clear baselines to ensure transparency and fairness, quantitative thresholds to assess progress and prompt management changes, and protective triggers that serve as warning systems to prevent thresholds from being crossed.
• Sustainable groundwater management requires a process of adaptive management, which relies on regular measurement and monitoring to learn from findings and explicitly accounts for inherent uncertainty in long-term planning.
• To support the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act, the state should establish a common framework for thresholds and milestones, identify consistent data sources to fill gaps, and define common assumptions for the models used to project sustainable yield by 2040.
• The state should provide guidance on common metrics and standardized reporting protocols to improve coordination between and within basins and to protect water users.

APA

Union of Concerned Scientists (2015). Measuring What Matters. https://www.ucs.org/resources/measuring-what-matters

Chicago

Union of Concerned Scientists. Measuring What Matters. 2015. https://www.ucs.org/resources/measuring-what-matters.

Wikipedia

{{cite report |author=Union of Concerned Scientists |title=Measuring What Matters |date=3 September 2015 |url=https://www.ucs.org/resources/measuring-what-matters |access-date=23 October 2026 |via=Climate Insights Directory}}

BibTeX

@techreport{unionofconcernedscientists2015measuring, author = {{Union of Concerned Scientists}}, title = {{Measuring What Matters}}, institution = {Union of Concerned Scientists}, year = {2015}, month = sep, url = {https://www.ucs.org/resources/measuring-what-matters}, urldate = {2026-10-23}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }