Undergraduate Theses & Honors Theses

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Water Conflict in the Klamath: How a River Shapes the Land and the Community
(University of Oregon, 2020) Angel, Lydia Gilbert
The Klamath River Basin (KRB) is a community located in southern Oregon and norther California that relies heavily on the water from the Klamath River to sustain a number of different lifestyles. These stakeholder groups all vie for the precious, and limited, water resources and have for a long time. In 2001 there was much publicized disagreement over who should get the water from the river during a drought, but how the community recovered from those events was quite remarkable. This paper aims to analyze how the community moved from outright aggression in 2001 to an innovative water governance agreement in 2010 to a regression to a hostile social environment in 2020. The fluctuating social environment provides an interesting lens to view important theoretical natural resource management models that can help other communities struggling with similar circumstances in the future as more and more communities are affected by a lack of water.