{"id":11766,"date":"2020-07-10T12:18:55","date_gmt":"2020-07-10T16:18:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.edf.org\/growingreturns\/?p=11766"},"modified":"2020-07-10T12:50:06","modified_gmt":"2020-07-10T16:50:06","slug":"new-tool-california-groundwater-recharge-maximize-benefits","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.edf.org\/growingreturns\/2020\/07\/10\/new-tool-california-groundwater-recharge-maximize-benefits\/","title":{"rendered":"Location, location, location: New tool shows where groundwater recharge will maximize benefits"},"content":{"rendered":"

Recharging groundwater with rain and snowmelt is one strategy water managers are embracing to help balance groundwater supply and demand and comply with the California Sustainable Groundwater Management Act<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Depending on the location, recharge can also deliver other valuable benefits, such as additional habitat for wildlife and a more resilient water supply for people.<\/p>\n

With support from EDF, four UC Santa Barbara graduate students have developed a new mapping tool for California\u2019s Central Valley to identify the best locations for groundwater recharge to secure these bonus benefits. The tool, called Recharge for Resilience, is available online<\/a> and also can be downloaded<\/a> by users with more technical expertise.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
The Recharge for Resilience team (left to right): Anna Perez Welter, Claire Madden, Jenny Balmagia, Bridget Gibbons and faculty adviser Scott Jasechko.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

A one-of-its-kind tool for water managers<\/strong><\/p>\n

While at least two other tools exist to help choose locations for groundwater recharge, the UCSB students’ mapping platform is unique in that it allows users to consider more factors to identify locations and leverages open-source data, making it less expensive. Users can customize the weighting of those factors, which include groundwater-dependent ecosystems, permeability of soils, water quality considerations and proximity to water conveyance.<\/p>\n

In addition to EDF experts, the students consulted recharge experts like Kamyar Guivetchi, a manager with the California Department of Water Resources, who praised their work.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Recharge for Resilience team has developed a flexible, publicly available and easy-to-use spatial analysis tool to assist water and resource managers design groundwater recharge projects that can provide an array of benefits \u2014 aquifer replenishment, local water resilience, flood risk reduction and ecosystem enhancement,\u201d Guivetchi said.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

More data to deliver multiple benefits<\/strong><\/p>\n

The students compiled public data from a variety of sources to build the tool. The ArcMap based model is available for download here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe considered recharge suitability based on soil and subsurface conditions as well as historic agricultural inputs that could adversely affect groundwater quality,\u201d explained Jenny Balmagia, who worked on the project as a summer intern at EDF. \u201cWe also wanted to highlight areas that could provide multiple benefits with recharge \u2014 such as areas near existing wildlife habitat that depend on groundwater and nearby domestic wells that have run dry in past droughts.\u201c<\/p>\n

While recent analysis has underscored that groundwater recharge is not a silver bullet<\/a> to balance groundwater supply and demand, it is still an important strategy, especially because of the additional community and environmental co-benefits.<\/p>\n

Learn more and explore the mapping tool.<\/span><\/a><\/div>\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This new mapping tool identifies opportunities for multibenefit groundwater recharge in California\u2019s Central Valley.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":139396,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[71922],"tags":[691,102673,120029,120238,113403],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-11766","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-water","tag-groundwater","tag-groundwater-recharge","tag-groundwater-tool","tag-recharge-for-resilience","tag-santa-barbara"],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.edf.org\/growingreturns\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11766","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.edf.org\/growingreturns\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.edf.org\/growingreturns\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.edf.org\/growingreturns\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/139396"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.edf.org\/growingreturns\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11766"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.edf.org\/growingreturns\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11766\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.edf.org\/growingreturns\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11766"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.edf.org\/growingreturns\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11766"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.edf.org\/growingreturns\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11766"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.edf.org\/growingreturns\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=11766"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}