By Molly Jacobson for Tri-State Livestock News When water is scarce, most producers just try to make the best use of what they’ve got, typically by making structural improvements like installing tanks or drilling wells. At the University of Wyoming, Ellen Yeatman wondered if there was another way – a way to prevent water scarcity from becoming a dire issue in the first place – and she won the Western Agricultural Economics Association Outstanding Master’s Thesis Award for her work. “Over the past century and a half, water infrastructure projects, such as dams, trans-basin pipelines and canal systems, have been built to capture and distribute limited water supplies. Now, infrastructure-based solutions have been exhausted,” says Yeatman. “Water managers of the 21st century are turning to more creative water management solutions to deal with the growing water demand and supply imbalance.”