Which farms drill during drought? The influence of farm size and crop type

Access for sale? Overlying rights, land transactions, and groundwater in California

“…Nationally, deeper wells on average draw from deeper water levels and therefore have greater pumping lift than shallower wells [57,91]; pumping from increased depths increases the energy intensity of water supplies [91,97]. New well construction may also harden water demand where it supports a switch towards permanent crops [15,98]. Although well depth is not a proxy for pumping rates, groundwater over-extraction from deep wells may contribute to aquifer compaction and land subsidence [99,100], and water extracted from deep semiconfined aquifers is more costly to recharge than that extracted from shallower aquifers [101].…”

“…We defined any parcel that at least partially overlies one of the 515 alluvial subbasins monitored by the California Department of Water Resources (CADWR) as an overlying parcel [53], and we classified basins as adjudicated, high priority, and critically overdrafted following state designations [54] (S3: Groundwater and Well Construction Data). Given the absence of groundwater withdrawal data in most groundwater basins and the salience of well depth to groundwater access [55][56][57], the depth of newly constructed agricultural wells is used as a proxy for changes in groundwater access on transacted parcels [15].…”

“…While political ecology studies underscore the bi-directional relationship between land and groundwater, e.g. [20][21][22], the combination of limited downscaled groundwater data and limited land transactions data makes empirical analyses of these relationships a challenge [15]. In this paper we ask: if groundwater influences land markets, how might land markets affect groundwater access?…”

“…Farmland sales are a key mechanism through which, over relatively short timescales, the characteristics of new buyers may change at scale, with implications for both land and water management strategies [24][25][26]. The connection between landowner characteristics and surface water management practices is well-established [27][28][29], and a limited number of studies suggest similar connections with groundwater access and management strategies [15,[30][31][32]. Despite longstanding concerns about the unevenness of regional well deepening trends [33][34][35], groundwater research has little to say on those who acquire, manage, and use it [36,37].…”

“…In general, references to overlying land acquisitions are rare in groundwater scholarship ( [15] is a notable exception), and farmland market studies usually do not distinguish between land transactions on overlying and non-overlying land, e.g. [16][17][18][19].…”