Can Managed Aquifer Recharge Overcome Multiple Droughts?

Abstract

Frequent droughts, seasonal precipitation, and growing agricultural water demand in the Yakima River Basin (YRB), located in Washington State, increase the challenges of optimizing water provision for agricultural producers. Increasing water storage through managed aquifer recharge (MAR) can potentially relief water stress from single and multi-year droughts. In this study, we developed an aggregated water resources management tool using a System Dynamics (SD) framework for the YRB and evaluated the MAR implementation strategy and the effectiveness of MAR in alleviating drought impacts on irrigation reliability. The SD model allocates available water resources to meet instream target flows, hydropower demands, and irrigation demand, based on system operation rules, irrigation scheduling, water rights, and MAR adoption. Our findings suggest that the adopted infiltration area for MAR is one of the main factors that determines the amount of water withdrawn and infiltrated to the groundwater system. The implementation time frame is also critical in accumulating MAR entitlements for single-year and multi-year droughts mitigation. In addition, adoption behaviors drive a positive feedback that MAR effectiveness on drought mitigation will encourage more MAR adoptions in the long run. MAR serves as a promising option for water storage management and a long-term strategy for MAR implementation can improve system resilience to unexpected droughts.

Adaptation of water resources management under climate change

“…Historical data were used to provide daily averages for variables needed in the 2020-2090 period, such as hydroelectricity demand, which is a small component of reservoir management in the YRB. Data related to requirements and features for the YRB (USBR, 2011b), including Title XII target instream flow, surface water and groundwater rights, crop land areas, soil properties, reservoir maximum capacities, were the same as in Zhao et al (2021). New data includes greenhouse crop coefficients and growth stages (Harel et al, 2014), evaporative cooling system water demand (Sabeh et al, 2006), maximum yield for apple and alfalfa crops (USDA, 2017).…”

“…A water storage management tool was developed and improved from Zhao et al (2021) using the SD modeling platform Stella (iSee Systems, Inc., Lebanon, NH, USA). The tool captures processes and interactions of water allocation in the YRB based on incoming natural flow to current water storage and water demand from agriculture and hydroelectricity generation (Figure 3).…”

“…In Europe, the history of MAR started as early as 1810 in the UK, and it has been playing an important role in water supply in many European countries for over a century (Sprenger et al, 2017). However, MAR is not yet widely implemented in agriculturally intensive regions such as the Yakima River Basin in the PNW (Zhao et al, 2021). Vano et al (2010) found that farmers have suffered from water shortfalls 14% of years, on average, from 1917 to 2006.…”

“…In this paper, the objective was to evaluate adaptation methods for improving irrigation reliability under water deficit conditions associated with projected climate change scenarios. First, we expanded the SD model in Zhao et al (2021) of aggregated water system management to answer 'what if ' questions in adaptation design. Second, we applied spatially and temporally downscaled climate change data (2020-2090) from General Circulation Model (GCM) simulations under representative carbon pathways (RCP) 4.5 and RCP 8.5 with hydrologic data from the VIC-CropSyst model (Malek et al, 2018b) as input to the SD model.…”

Hybrid Fuzzy Multi-Criteria Analysis for Selecting Discrete Preferable Groundwater Recharge Sites

“…In recent years, managed aquifer recharge (MAR) systems have been increasingly used to increase groundwater availability for later use in dry seasons [15][16][17][18][19]. A variety of MAR techniques can be used that mainly depend on local conditions [20,21].…”