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Vicky Espinoza

Photo of Vicky Espinoza

Address:

4800 Oak Grove Drive

Pasadena, CA 91109

Curriculum Vitae:

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Website:

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Member of:

Water & Ecosystems

JIFRESSE Research Associate

Biography

Vicky Espinoza joined JPL as a JPL/UCLA JIFRESSE researcher in December 2023. Before joining JPL, she served as a project manager at The Nature Conservancy, where she led water and land use management projects and developed equitable community engagement strategies in the San Joaquin Valley. Vicky's prior research experiences at Argonne National Laboratory and NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, focusing on energy-water systems and climate change impacts on atmospheric and hydrologic systems, contribute to her research expertise. While at JPL, Vicky will assess coastal community and habitat vulnerability in California using remote sensing. She aims combine remote sensing and community engagement to develop locally tailored and representative climate change resilience strategies for California and beyond.

In her doctoral research, Vicky focused on sustainable water management for global food, energy, and water security. Her dissertation analyzed how anticipated agricultural land use transitions to address groundwater overdraft under California’s Sustainable Groundwater Management Act (SGMA) could affect socioeconomically vulnerable communities in the region. Vicky is dedicated to developing climate change strategies with a focus on equity for underrepresented communities. To address an information access inequity among underserved communities and farmers across California and make the science and policy behind California water and land use management, she created the trilingual (Spanish, Hmong, and English) YouTube Channel, CaliWaterAg.

Education

  • Ph.D. Environmental Systems, University of California Merced, 2022, Dissertation: A Framework for Strategic and Equitable Multibenefit Land Repurposing to Sustain Food-Energy-Water Systems and Address Water Injustice in the San Joaquin Valley, California
  • M.S. Environmental Engineering, University of Southern California, 2017
  • B.S. Geophysical Sciences, University of Chicago, 2013

Professional Experience

  • Assistant Researcher, NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory/UCLA JIFRESSE, 2023- Present
  • Founder & Educational Content Creator, CaliWaterAg YouTube Channel, 2020 – present
  • California Consultant – Water Resources & Farmer Outreach, American Farmland Trust, 2022 - Present
  • Strategic Restoration Project Manager, The Nature Conservancy, 2022 – 2023
  • Graduate Student Researcher & Lecturer, UC Merced, 2017 – 2022
  • Earth Sciences Research Assistant, NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, 2016 – 2017
  • Graduate Student Researcher & Teaching Assistant, University of Southern California, 2015 – 2016
  • Earth Sciences Research Assistant, Argonne National Laboratory, 2014 – 2015
  • Oceanic Chemistry Laboratory Technician, Pomona College, 2013 – 2014
  • NSF REU Atmospheric Science Intern, University of Alaska Fairbanks Geophysical Institute, 2012
  • Atmospheric Science Intern, Argonne National Laboratory, 2011

Community Service

  • CaliWaterAg YouTube Channel (Present)
  • American Farmland Trust’s Women For The Land Learning Circle Presenter (2022-Present)
  • American Farmland Trust’s Water Resources Workshops (2022-Present)
  • Department of Conservation’s Multibenefit Land Repurposing Program Implementation Partner (2022 – Present)
  • Water Solutions Network Cohort 4 Member (2021 –2022)
  • INFEWSer Challenge Cohort (2020 -2021)
  • Bilingual San Joaquin Valley Grower SGMA Workshops (2020-2022)
  • Merced County Cortez Grower’s Association (2019-2020)
  • U.S. Department of Agriculture K-12 Science Outreach (2020)
  • Community Water Center (2017-2019)

Research Interests

California water, groundwater, wetlands, habitat restoration, community resilience, climate change, water and land use management, remote sensing, atmospheric and oceanic science, community engagement, environmental policy, information access equity.

Selected Awards

  • UC President’s Dissertation Year Fellowship Award, 2022
  • UC Merced Global Food Initiate Grow Grant Award, 2021
  • Partnership with Environmental Defense Fund dissertation on community engagement, 2020 - 2022
  • UC Merced Environmental Systems Summer Fellowship, 2020
  • Clinton Global Institute University Fellow, 2020
  • Switzer Foundation Fellowship Finalist, 2019, 2020
  • USDA-CAMINOS Graduate Fellow, 2019
  • Next Generation Delegate at the Chicago Council on Global Affairs, 2019
  • UC Merced Graduate Student Representative for Graduate Research Advocacy Day, 2019
  • Clean Energy Research Center for Water-Energy Technologies (CERC WET) Graduate Fellowship, 2017-2019
  • Imagine H2O Water Innovation Policy Program Fellow, 2018
  • Graduate Group Recruitment Fellowship, 2017
  • National Science Foundation (NSF) Research Experiences for Undergraduates (REU), 2012

Selected Publications

  1. Espinoza, V. and Viers, J.H.. The paradox of production: surface water supply drives agricultural productivity but not prosperity in California’s San Joaquin Valley. PLOS. Under Review.
  2. Espinoza, V., Bernacchi, L.A., Eriksson, M., Schiller, A., Hayden, A., Viers, J.H.. 2023. From fallow ground to common ground: Perspectives on future land uses in the San Joaquin Valley under sustainable groundwater management. Journal of Environmental Management, 33. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jenvman.2023.117226
  3. Espinoza, V., Booth, L.A., Viers, J.H.. 2023. Land Use Misclassification Results in Water Use, Economic Value, and GHG Emission Discrepancies in California’s High-Intensity Agriculture Region. Sustainability, 15, 6829. https://doi.org/10.3390/su15086829
  4. Rallings, A.M., Clifton, B., Espinoza, V., Hao, Z., Chen, W., Duan, W., Peng, Q., Luo, P., and Viers, J.H.. 2022. Regional hydrologic classification for sustainable dam operations in China: exploratory applications in the Yangtze River basin. JAWRA, 58 (6), 1216-1229. https://doi.org/10.1111/1752-1688.12966
  5. Hao, Z., Rallings, A.M., Espinoza, V., Luo, P., Duan, W., Peng, Q., Gao, Y., Viers, J.H.. 2021. Flowing from East to West: A bibliometric analysis of recent advances in environmental flow science in China. Ecological Indicators,125, 107358. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecolind.2021.107358
  6. Massoud, E. C., Massoud, T., Guan, B., Sengupta, A., Espinoza, V., De Luna, M., Raymond, C., Waliser, D.E..2020. Atmospheric rivers and precipitation in the middle east and north africa (Mena). Water, 12 (10) 2863. https://doi.org/10.3390/w12102863
  7. Massoud, E.C., Espinoza, V., Guan, B., Waliser, D.E.. 2019. Global climate model ensemble approaches for future projections of atmospheric rivers. Earth’s Future, 7 (10), 1136-1151. https://doi.org/10.1029/2019EF001249
  8. Espinoza, V., Waliser, D. E., Guan, B., Lavers, D. A., & Ralph, F. M.. 2018. Global analysis of climate change projection effects on atmospheric rivers. Geophysical Research Letters, 45, 4299–4308. https://doi.org/10.1029/ 2017GL076968
  9. Medellín-Azuara, J., Sumner, D.A., Pan, Q.Y., Lee, H., Espinoza, V., Cole, S.A., Bell, A., Davila Olivera, S., Viers, J.H., Herman, J., Lund, J.R.. (University of California, Davis and University of California, Merced). 2018. Economic and Environmental Implications of California Crop and Livestock, Adaptation to Climate Change. California´ s Fourth Climate Change Assessment, Issue, California Natural Resources Agency. Publication number: CCCA4-CNRA-2018-018.