Diverse Perspectives on Water

This NSF-funded project focuses on water that flows into Los Angeles, including historical springs and wetlands as well as water flowing in from Payahuunad, or the Owens Valley, via the Los Angeles Aqueduct.

Through this project, CDLS fellows Irvin Matamoros and Jory Lerback worked with the leadership of the Gabrielino-Tongva Springs Foundation to support ongoing Indigenous-led efforts to restore Kuruvungna, an urban spring wetland, and use geochemical methods to understand the water sustainability.

Lerback and Kimberly Morales Johnson (member of the San Gabriel Band of Mission Indians and grant technical advisor) co-presented their research at the Annual Congress of the International Association of Hydrogeologists in September 2024 in Davos, Switzerland. Lerback also worked with the Big Pine Paiute Environmental Department and PI Cattelino in Payahuunad to design Indigenous-led retellings of the history of Payahuunad using methods drawing from both anthropological interviews and paleoecological methods. They acquired permits for collecting pollen and sediment record samples from the Bureau of Land Management to reconstruct and co-interpret past environments from these lands.