Subsidence Modeling

Subsidence in California is a pressing environmental concern, primarily driven by over-extraction of groundwater from the state's aquifers. As underground water reserves are depleted, the land above them sinks, leading to ground-level subsidence. This phenomenon poses a significant threat to infrastructure, including roads, bridges, diminishes the conveyance efficiency of vital aqueducts and canals, and can exacerbate the risk of flooding in low-lying areas. Within the framework of SGMA, agencies must develop strategies to both monitor and mitigate land subsidence. Work in this project involved developing a subsidence modeling tool for a water district with complex water conveyance infrastructure in the Central Valley.

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My work includes:

• Developed a tool to model subsidence using the Skeletal Storage, Compaction, and Subsidence (CSUB) Package of MODFLOW 6.

• Calibrated the model using field subsidence data along critical infrastructure (DWR) and Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar (InSAR) subsidence raster dataset from the Sentinel-1A satellite.

• Analyzed elastic, inelastic and subsidence recovery for different scenarios of projected district groundwater extraction operations.