Stanford University Reports on the Knight-Risser Prize for Western Environmental Journalism

Stanford University detailed Pulitzer Center grantee and 2016 Knight-Risser Prize Winner Ian James as part of its Knight-Risser Symposium, "When the Well Runs Dry: Facing a Groundwater Crisis in the West," on January 25.

Steve Elfers, with USA Today, and James's reporting project, "Pumped Dry: The Global Crisis of Vanishing Groundwater" details places across the world that are running out of groundwater.

The symposium featured four panelists, including James; Dawn E. Garcia, Director of the JSK Journalism Fellowships; Felicity Barringer, Writer in Residence at the Bill Lane Center for the American West; and Leon Szeptycki, Executive Director of Water in the West Project.

"[James] was able to expand the scope of his reporting thanks to data from NASA's twin GRACE satellites, which monitor glaciers and underground water supplies worldwide by measuring their gravitational mass. Using the GRACE data as a guide to the most critical areas, the reporting team traveled to farms in California and Kansas, and with help from a travel grant from the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting, on to Peru, India and Morocco as well," Stanford University reported. "For groundwater in some of these regions, James said, it is 'only a matter of time before it's not usable for agriculture'."

To read the full article by Stanford University, click here.