Abstract
In California, new groundwater legislation—the 2014 Sustainable Groundwater Management Act (SGMA)—mandates that groundwater sustainability agencies (GSAs) employ the concept of sustainable yield as their primary management goal. However, SGMA’s current definition of sustainable yield does not offer clear guidance for new agencies and lacks grounding in physics. This study presents a novel hydrologically based framework for quantifying sustainable yield under SGMA that is derived from a synthesis of scientific inquiry and analysis. We introduce a flexible three-step approach that basin managers can rely on to quantify sustainable yield values, incorporate the impact of “undesirable results”, and analyze groundwater sustainability over SGMA’s implementation horizon. Our framework is illustrated through a case study of the South San Joaquin Irrigation District, a proposed GSA in one of California’s critically overdrafted groundwater basins. We calculate sustainable yield for three different management scenarios and assess the impact of each scenario on future groundwater sustainability by performing an annual water groundwater balance through 2040. Our sustainable yield framework can be used as a basis for the development of SGMA’s groundwater management plans throughout California.
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Acknowledgements
This work was supported by grants from the NSF Graduate Research Fellowship Program (Grant no. DGE-1144087), the University of California Office of the President, Multi-campus Research Programs and Initiatives, and the NASA GRACE Science Team (Grant no. NNX12AK64G). A portion of the research was carried out at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, under a contract with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. This research was possible through the use of publicly available data sets, including in situ groundwater data in California: http://www.water.ca.gov/waterdatalibrary/ and the California Basin Characterization Model: https://cida.usgs.gov/thredds/CA-BCM-Catalog.html. Additional data used in this study can be requested from the authors (michellemiro@ucla.edu).
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Miro, M.E., Famiglietti, J.S. A framework for quantifying sustainable yield under California’s Sustainable Groundwater Management Act (SGMA). Sustain. Water Resour. Manag. 5, 1165–1177 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40899-018-0283-z
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s40899-018-0283-z