Abstract
Sustainable groundwater management requires approaches to assess the influence of climate and management actions on the evolution of groundwater systems. Traditional approaches that apply continuity to assess groundwater sustainability fail to capture the spatial variability of aquifer responses. To address this gap, our study evaluates groundwater elevation data from the Coachella Valley, California, within a groundwater sustainability framework given the adoption of integrative management strategies in the valley. Our study details an innovative approach employing traditional statistical methods to improve understanding of aquifer responses. In this analysis, we evaluate trends at individual groundwater observation wells and regional groundwater behaviors using field significance. Regional elevation trends identified no significant trends during periods of intense groundwater replenishment, active since 1973, despite spatial variability in individual well trends. Our results illustrate the spatially limited effects of groundwater replenishment occur against a setting of long-term groundwater depletion, raising concerns over the definition of sustainable groundwater management in aquifer systems employing integrative management strategies.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Alley WM, Leake SA (2004) The journey from safe yield to sustainability. Ground Water 42(1):12–16
Alley WM, Taylor CJ (2001) The value of long-term ground water level monitoring. Ground Water 39(6):801–801
Alley WM, Healy RW, LaBaugh JW, Reilly TE (2002) Hydrology - flow and storage in groundwater systems. Science 296(5575):1985–1990
Barnett TP, Pierce DW (2009) Sustainable water deliveries from the Colorado river in a changing climate. Proc Natl Acad Sci 106(18):7334–7338
Bayazit M, Önöz B (2007) To prewhiten or not to prewhiten in trend analysis? Hydrol Sci J 52(4):611–624
Birsan M-V, Zaharia L, Chendes V, Branescu E (2013) Seasonal trends in Romanian streamflow. Hydrol Process. doi:10.1002/hyp.9961
Bredehoeft J (1997) Safe yield and the water budget myth. Ground Water 35(6):929–929
Bredehoeft JD (2002) The water budget myth revisited: why hydrogeologists model. Ground Water 40(4):340–345
Broers HP, Grift B (2004) Regional monitoring of temporal changes in groundwater quality. J Hydrol 296:192–220
Bui DD, Kawamura A, Tong TN, Amaguchi H, Trinh TM (2012) Aquifer system for potential groundwater resources in Hanoi, Vietnam. Hydrol Process 26(6):932–946
Burn DH, Mansour R, Zhang K, Whitfield PH (2011) Trends and variability in extreme rainfall events in British Columbia. Can Water Resour J 36(1):67–82
California Department of Water Resources (1964) Coachella valley investigation: bulletin 108, 145 p
Castle SL, Thomas BF, Reager JT, Rodell M, Swenson SC, Famiglietti JS (2014) Groundwater depletion during drought threatens future water security of the Colorado river basin. Geophys Res Lett 41(16):5904–5911
Cayan DR, Das T, Pierce DW, Barnett TP, Tyree M, Gershunov A (2010) Future dryness in the southwest US and the hydrology of the early 21st century drought. Proc Natl Acad Sci 107(50):21271–21276
Cressie N (1990) The origins of kriging. Math Geol 22(3):239–252
Cunnane C (1978) Unbiased plotting positions - review. J Hydrol 37(3–4):205–222
Deni SM, Suhaila J, Zin WZW, Jemain AA (2010) Spatial trends of dry spells over Peninsular Malaysia during monsoon seasons. Theor Appl Climatol 99(3–4):357–371
Douglas EM, Vogel RM, Kroll CN (2000) Trends in floods and low flows in the United States: impact of spatial correlation. J Hydrol 240(1–2):90–105
Dudley RW, Hodgkins GA (2013) Historical groundwater trends in northern new england and relations with streamflow and climatic variables. J Am Water Resour Assoc 49(5):1198–1212
Efron B (1979) 1977 Rietz lecture - bootstrap methods - another look at the jackknife. Ann Stat 7(1):1–26
Famiglietti JS (2014). The global groundwater crisis. Nat Clim Chang 4(11):945–948
Famiglietti JS, Rodell M (2013) Water in the balance. Science 340(6138):1300–1301
Famiglietti JS, Lo M, Ho SL, Bethune J, Anderson KJ, Syed TH, Swenson SC, de Linage CR, and Rodell M (2011) Satellites measure recent rates of groundwater depletion in California's Central Valley, Geophys Res Lett 38
Faunt CC (ed) (2009) Groundwater availability of the central valley aquifer, california: U.S. geological survey professional paper 1766, 225 p
Gee GW, Hillel D (1988) Groundwater recharge in arid regions-review and critique of estimation methods. Hydrol Process 2(3):255–266
Ghanbari RN, Bravo HR (2011) Evaluation of correlations between precipitation, groundwater fluctuations, and lake level fluctuations using spectral methods (Wisconsin, USA). Hydrogeol J 19(4):801–810
Gleeson T, Alley WM, Allen DM, Sophocleous MA, Zhou Y, Taniguchi M, VanderSteen J (2012) Towards sustainable groundwater use: setting long-term goals, backcasting, and managing adaptively. Ground Water 50(1):19–26
Helsel DR, Hirsch RM (2002) Statistical methods in water resources techniques of water resources investigations, book 4, chapter A3. U.S. Geological Survey. 522 p
IPCC (2007) Climate change 2007-the physical science basis: working group I contribution to the fourth assessment report of the IPCC (Vol. 4) Solomon (ed). Cambridge University Press
Johnston J, DiNardo J (1997) Econometric methods. McGraw-Hill, New York, pp 348–358
Kendall MG (1962) Rank correlation methods, 3rd edn. Charles Griffin, London
Khaliq MN, Ouarda T, Gachon P, Sushama L, St-Hilaire A (2009) Identification of hydrological trends in the presence of serial and cross correlations: a review of selected methods and their application to annual flow regimes of Canadian rivers. J Hydrol 368(1–4):117–130
Konikow L (2013) Groundwater depletion in the United States (1900–2008). USGS Scientific Investigations Report 2013–5079
Koundouri P (2004) Current issues in the economics of groundwater resource management. J Econ Surv 18(5):703–740
Kustu MD, Fan Y, Rodell M (2011) Possible link between irrigation in the US high plains and increased summer streamflow in the Midwest. Water Resour Res 47
Lee CH (1915) The determination of safe yields of underground reservoirs of the closedbasin type. Trans Am Soc Civ Eng 79(1):148–218
Lettenmaier DP, Wood EF, Wallis JR (1994) Hydro-climatological trends in the continental united-states, 1948–88. J Clim 7(4):586–607
Li D, Xie H, Xiong L (2014) Temporal change analysis based on data characteristics and nonparametric test. Water Resour Manag 28(1):227–240
Machiwal D, Jha MK (2014) Characterizing rainfall–groundwater dynamics in a hard rock aquifer system using time series, geographic information system and geostatistical modelling. Hydrol Process 28(5):2824–2843
Mann HB (1945) Nonparametric tests against trend. Econometrica J Econom Soc 245–259
McKibben MA (1993) The salton sea trough rift. In: Reynolds RE, Reynolds J (eds) Ashes, faults and basins: San Bernardino county museum association special publications, vol 93–1, p. 76–80
Mendenhall WC (1909) Ground waters of the Indio region, California, with a sketch of the Colorado desert. US Government Printing Office
MWH (2012) Coachella valley water management plan 2010 update, 286 p
Panda DK, Mishra A, Jena SK, James BK, Kumar A (2007) The influence of drought and anthropogenic effects on groundwater levels in Orissa, India. J Hydrol 343(3):140–153
Pandey VP, Shrestha S, Chapagain SK, Kazama F (2011) A framework for measuring groundwater sustainability. Environ Sci Pol 14(4):396–407
Poland JF, Lofgren BE, Riley FS (1972) Glossary of selected terms useful in studies of the mechanics of aquifer systems and land subsidence due to fluid withdrawal, USGS Water Supply Paper 2025, 9 p
Reichard EG, Meadows JK (1992) Evaluation of a ground-water flow and transport model of the Upper Coachella Valley, California, U.S.G.S. Water-Resources Investigations Report 91–4142, 101 p.
Renard B et al (2008) Regional methods for trend detection: assessing field significance and regional consistency. Water Resourc Res 44(8)
Rivard C, Vigneault H, Piggott AR, Larocque M, Anctil F (2009) Groundwater recharge trends in Canada. Can J Earth Sci 46:841–854
Riverside County Agricultural Crop Report (1960) http://www.rivcoag.org/Portals/0/Publications/Crop%20Reports-EntireCounty/1960_Crop_Report.pdf
Riverside County Agricultural Crop Report (1970) http://www.rivcoag.org/Portals/0/Publications/Crop%20Reports-EntireCounty/1970_Crop_Report.pdf
Riverside County Agricultural Crop Report (1980) http://www.rivcoag.org/Portals/0/Publications/Crop%20Reports-EntireCounty/1980_Crop_Report.pdf
Shadmani M, Marofi S, Roknian M (2012) Trend analysis in reference evapotranspiration using Mann-Kendall and Spearman’s Rho tests in arid regions of Iran. Water Resour Manag 26(1):211--224
Sneed M, Brandt JT (2013) Detection and measurement of land subsidence using global positioning system surveying and interferometric synthetic aperture radar, Coachella Valley, California, 1996–2005, USGS Scientific Investigations Report 2007–5251, 30 p
Sneed M, Stork SV, Ikehara ME (2002) Detection and measurement of land subsidence using global positioning system and interferometric synthetic aperture radar, Coachella Valley, California, 1998–2000. USGS Water-Resources Investigations Report 02–4239, 29 p
Sneed M, Brandt JT, Solt M (2013) Land subsidence along the Delta-Mendota canal in the northern part of the San Joaquin Valley, California, 2003–10, USGS Scientific Investigations Report 2013–5142, 86 p
Sophocleous M (2000) From safe yield to sustainable development of water resources-the Kansas experience. J Hydrol 235(1–2):27–43
Stoll S, Franssen HJH, Barthel R, Kinzelbach W (2011) What can we learn from long-term groundwater data to improve climate change impact studies? Hydrol Earth Syst Sci 15(12):3861–3875
Swain LA (1978) Predicted water-level and water-quality effects of artificial recharge in the upper Coachella valley, California, using a finite-element digital model., USGS Water-Resources Investigations 77–29
Tyley SJ (1974) Analog model study of the ground-water basin of the upper Coachella Valley, California, U.S.G.S. Water-Supply Paper 2027, 77 p
Von Storch H (1995) Misuses of statistical analysis in climate research. In: von Storch H, Navarra A (eds) Analysis of climate variability: applications of statistical techniques. Springer, Berlin
Wada Y, van Beek LPH, van Kempen CM, Reckman J, Vasak S, Bierkens MFP (2010) Global depletion of groundwater resources. Geophys Res Lett 37
Wahlin K, Grimvall A (2010) Roadmap for assessing regional trends in groundwater quality. Environ Monit Assess 165(1–4):217–231
Weber KA, Perry RG (2006) Groundwater abstraction impacts on spring flow and base flow in the Hillsborough River Basin, Florida, USA. Hydrogeol J 14(7):1252–1264
Wu H, Soh LK, Samal A, Chen XH (2008) Trend analysis of streamflow drought events in Nebraska. Water Resour Manag 22(2):145–164
Yue S, Wang C (2004) The Mann-Kendall test modified by effective sample size to detect trend in serially correlated hydrological series. Water Resour Manag 18(3):201–218
Yue S, Pilon P, Phinney B (2003) Canadian streamflow trend detection: impacts of serial and cross-correlation. Hydrol Sci J 48(1):51–63
Zhao G, Hörmann G, Fohrer N, Zhang Z, Zhai J (2010) Streamflow trends and climate variability impacts in Poyang Lake Basin, China. Water Resour Manag 24(4):689–706
Zhou YX (2009) A critical review of groundwater budget myth, safe yield and sustainability. J Hydrol 370(1–4):207–213
Acknowledgments
The authors would like to thank Ian James of the Desert Sun for alerting us about the growing concern over groundwater overdraft in the valley and the Coachella Valley Water District and the Desert Water Agency for supplying groundwater elevation data used in this study. Project support was provided by the University of California Office of the President Multicampus Research and Programs Initiative. The research was carried out at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, under a contract with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. We wish to thank two anonymous reviewers and Editor-in-Chief Tsakiris for comments that improved our manuscript.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Thomas, B.F., Famiglietti, J.S. Sustainable Groundwater Management in the Arid Southwestern US: Coachella Valley, California. Water Resour Manage 29, 4411–4426 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11269-015-1067-y
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11269-015-1067-y