Barton Thompson sees that California is running a groundwater deficit as the state uses more water than can be replenished. Lured away from his partnership at a law firm in Los Angeles, Thompson became a Stanford faculty member in 1986. He is the founding director of the law school's Environmental and Natural Resources Program and senior fellow of the Woods Institute for the Environment.

Professor Thompson is chairman of the board of the Resources Legacy Fund and the Resources Legacy Fund Foundation, a California trustee for The Nature Conservancy, and a board member of both the American Farmland Trust and the Sonoran Institute. He previously served as a member of the Science Advisory Board for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.