ABSTRACT

The Sacramento–San Joaquin Delta is a critical node in Cali-fornia’s water system, a node through which many complex social and environ-mental feedbacks loop. Understanding likely futures of the Delta requires a historical, complex socioecological system perspective of its dynamics. Appropriate institutional organization to promote effective science and management of the feedbacks has eluded California political and policy processes. Climate change and sea level rise increase the complexity, adding to the political and policy difficulties of finding effective institutional structures for science and management. The challenges in this Delta provide broad in-sights into the difficulties of water and ecological management in the Anthropocene.