UC groundwater research: A survey

Whole-watershed accounting assesses all surface and groundwater flows and storage over a large area. The idea is to account for all the major sources of water at once, rather than focusing on only a portion of them, such as what’s stored in surface water reservoirs. This work can reveal how joint management of surface and groundwater flows and storage could increase the overall amount of water available on decadal time scales. Graham Fogg, professor of hydrogeology at UC Davis, leads a group conducting this type of analysis on a region that spans the American River and Cosumnes River watersheds — a project being conducted through the UC Water Security and Sustainability Research Initiative. Using data and models on historical conditions, combined with information about the available storage space in the region’s aquifers and the availability of geologically suitable groundwater recharge sites, the researchers are finding that optimizing the use of all available storage space — above as well as below ground — could have increased net water storage on the order of hundreds of thousands of acre-feet per year, on average. “Imagine all of your money is in two bank accounts, but you only manage one of them. With water, we’ve been managing the surface water bank account, but not the groundwater account,” Fogg said. “They need to be managed together. Furthermore, we also need to better track and manage the snow account.”