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Sustainable Groundwater Management in the Arid Southwestern US: Coachella Valley, California

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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.

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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.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA, 91109, USA

    Brian F. Thomas & James S. Famiglietti

  2. Department of Earth System Science, University of California, Irvine, CA, 92697, USA

    James S. Famiglietti

  3. Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of California, Irvine, CA, 92697, USA

    James S. Famiglietti

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  1. Brian F. Thomas
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Correspondence to Brian F. Thomas.

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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

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