Delta-Mendota Subbasin: Groundwater Sustainability Plan

Agriculture in the San Joaquin Valley plays a pivotal role in the regional economy, responsible for over half of California's agricultural production and produces about a quarter of the United States' food. However, this region holds most of the 21 groundwater basins designated as being critically overdrafted under California’s Sustainable Groundwater Management Act (SGMA), enacted in 2014, is key to ensuring the San Joaquin Valley’s future as an agricultural region. The law requires local water users to form groundwater sustainability agencies and develop and implement groundwater sustainability plans (GSPs) to bring use to sustainable levels by the 2040s—basically by reducing water use and/or developing new water supplies.

The Delta-Mendota Subbasin exists within the larger San Joaquin Valley Groundwater basin (747,000 acres), bracketed on both sides by mountain ranges. Long and flat, the valley’s hot, dry summers are followed by cool, foggy winters that make it one of the most productive agricultural regions in the world. Today, crops include grapes, tomatoes, hay, sugar beets, nuts, cotton and a multitude of other fruits and vegetables. All individual GSPs Delta Mendota GSPs and the common GSP were rejected by the California Department of Water Resources for inconsistencies and deficiencies.

My work includes:

Lead climate modeler in the effort to develop a robust and consistent GSP to drive aquifer sustainability in the basin.
Utilized a Central Valley wide finite difference numerical model (MODFLOW-OWHM) to quantify and analyze the different water fluxes in Delta-Mendota.
Statistically downscaled model results to inform projected regional drought management strategies.
Leveraged satellite datasets to produce model input datasets of cropping patterns, conveyance infrastructure, soil characteristics etc.
Spearheaded the efforts to understand the Farm Process Package of MODFLOW which calculates agricultural and native water demands, and movement/use of different water resources for consumption of irrigated agriculture.
Developed 50-year projected climate change based MODFLOW input datasets to simulate the impacts of climate change on the basin's water resources.
Developed a suite of codes and workflows in Python for large dataset processing, output visualization, geospatial analysis.
Co-authored different sections of the GSP (Water Budget, Basin Setting).