Abstract
Rice farmers occupy a potentially important intersection between economics and hydrology in Northern California. While drought makes water an increasingly precious commodity across California, the monetary worth of water is not uniform across different localities and uses. As a result, circumstances have given many Sacramento Valley rice farmers the option to sell their water to users elsewhere, in lieu of using it themselves. Because the sold water is typically surface water that would normally help recharge local aquifers when applied to a field; it is reasonable to suspect that transferring that water elsewhere could adversely affect local aquifers since that recharge would be reduced. This study performs numerical experiments using the United States Geological Survey’s Central Valley Hydrologic Model (CVHM) to better understand the temporal effects of a set of land idling scenarios. CVHM is capable of modeling the entire Central Valley, which encompasses the Sacramento and San Joaquin Valleys, and of representing rice field idling on a large scale. These experiments were executed using historical data to contrast recently typical amounts of rice field idling with scenarios reflecting varying degrees of hypothetical, increased idling. In doing so, this study aims to characterize the nature and potential magnitude of idling rice fields on groundwater storage in the Sacramento Valley. The impact of these scenarios on groundwater storage was quantified relative to an unaltered baseline model scenario. The results of this research show rice field idling will reduce recharge and groundwater storage levels; these results may provide useful information for future policy decisions and provide a basis for future study.
Highlights
IntroductionPrecipitation falls disproportionally in Northern California, to flow through the Sacramento Valley to the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta
The hydrology of the Sacramento Valley is worthy of study largely for its importance to natural and engineered water systems throughout most of California
The Central Valley Hydrologic Model (CVHM) is a regional hydrologic model developed by the United States Geological Survey (USGS) to describe groundwater availability in the Central Valley and was released in 2009 [3]
Summary
Precipitation falls disproportionally in Northern California, to flow through the Sacramento Valley to the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta Along the way, this water supplies a variety of riparian, wetland and aquatic habitats which support various natural communities and numerous endangered species [1]. For a variety of economic factors, the difference in the price of water between geographically distant users can be especially high when water is scarce This would seem to be a topical concern, given the predominance of drought conditions in California this decade. If this price difference of water between farmers is high enough, a farmer might choose to sell their allocation of water and idle their field, rather than utilize that water themself
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