Erin Haacker

Background

About Erin Haacker

Groundwater is there when you need it. When the rains fail, when the soil is dry, groundwater can be counted on to irrigate crops. When the snows melt and runoff ceases, groundwater can keep streams flowing. Groundwater is uniquely reliable, and uniquely difficult to recover if it is depleted or contaminated. I am interested in the effects of management on groundwater, especially in terms of profit and risk. Although I am a natural scientist, I value the wisdom of farmers, managers, and social scientists in making decisions about our natural resources. The groundwater I study is mostly used for irrigation. It serves as a safety net to ensure good crop yields, and therefore good profits. What happens when the safety net is also the primary resource? What happens when that safety net is finite? How do people really adapt, and how can that be represented in physical and statistical models? How do risk and variability interact at different time scales? These are the types of questions that interest me as an applied scientist.