Water Resources Planning Toolkits for Climate Resiliency and Economic Sustainability

A special issue of Water (ISSN 2073-4441). This special issue belongs to the section "Water and Climate Change".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: 25 July 2025 | Viewed by 8231

Special Issue Editors


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Guest Editor
1. Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, CA, USA
2. Department of Civil Engineering, University of California, Merced, Merced, CA, USA
Interests: agricultural systems; hydro-ecology; irrigation and drainage management; sensor networks; TMDL modelling; water quality; decision support
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Guest Editor
Tetra Tech Inc., Fairfax, VA, USA
Interests: hydrodynamic modelling; nonlinear system dynamics; signal processing; TMDL analysis; decision support
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

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Guest Editor
Tetra Tech, Inc., Lafayette, CA, USA
Interests: hydrology; water quality; water resources management; hydrological modeling; water resources engineering; water quality analysis

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

The multi-sectoral environmental impacts of climate change and unsustainable global economic development on water resources management require a radical rethinking of the tools available to analysts, policy makers, and managers. In the agricultural sector, addressing environmental problems associated with irrigated agriculture (such as excessive use of fertilizers and pesticides, aquifer depletion, land subsidence, seasonal drying of rivers, waterlogging, and rootzone salinization) requires tools that are more integrated and more easily adapted to consider and assess novel strategies. Likewise, for municipal and industrial sectors, that have traditionally relied upon high-quality, potable water supplies—tools are needed to explore innovative reuse and recycling strategies that minimize treatment and pollutant disposal costs. The environmental sector is recognized as a co-equal beneficial user of water resources through accounting mechanisms, such as the concept of environmental services. However, these principles are still not fully integrated with more traditional resource planning techniques.

The advance of remote sensing platforms, increase in programmatic data collection by nodal agencies and states, and ease of access to social media have democratized data and made cross-sectoral data analysis and visualization targeted to stakeholders possible. Concurrently, rapid development of computer models and computational technology has meant that these tools have become increasingly important for tackling a wide range of water resources and environmental management issues and for supporting regulatory compliance. Model-based simulation approaches have advanced in parallel with developments in the design and application of decision-support tools and techniques for more effective communication and visualization—GIS and remote sensing being the most widespread and accessible. Statistical and machine-learning methods are being used to support (and even supplant) more traditional simulation models to improve the estimation of temporal dynamics associated with pollutant concentrations and loads and other impacting phenomena.

This Special Issue on “Water resources planning toolkits for climate resiliency and economic sustainability” seeks contributions that describe innovative approaches that can be applied by stakeholders, government entities and regulators to plan environmentally sound, sustainable, and cost-effective water resource and water management strategies to cope with present and future anticipated threats. Examples from agriculture, municipal and industrial sectors, and environmental stewards are encouraged. Papers that develop cross-cutting and integrated approaches are particularly encouraged.

Some examples of topics that submitted papers may address include:

  • Novel or successful sensing techniques for measuring and monitoring water resource availability, quantity, and quality as a basis for progressing towards future sustainable management.
  • Novel computer-based-simulation modeling and other analytical techniques that enhance understanding of environmental and/or economic threats as an aid to the formulation of coping and solution strategies.
  • Advanced sensor and remote-sensing technologies that can be integrated with more traditional modeling approaches for sustainable water and water quality resource management.
  • Innovative economic and non-economic accounting practices that can be integrated with more traditional decision-support tools to meet 21st century water, water quality, and other resource management challenges.
  • Integration of new methods and approaches to address broader ecosystem services and tackle unintended consequences of water and water-quality resource management decisions and regulations.

Dr. Nigel W.T. Quinn
Dr. Vamsi Krishna Sridharan
Dr. Paul H. Hutton
Guest Editors

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Keywords

  • model integration
  • planning toolkits
  • decision support
  • climate change
  • water quality
  • water supply
  • groundwater management
  • simulation
  • stakeholder
  • remote sensing
  • sensors
  • economic sustainability
  • regulatory framework

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Published Papers (3 papers)

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Research

29 pages, 4131 KiB  
Article
Headwater Valuation as a Tool for Economic Development, Healthy Forest Management, and Water Resilience
by David Batker, Jared Soares, Yung-Hsin Sun, Aaron Batker-Pritzker and Rebecca Guo
Water 2024, 16(15), 2121; https://doi.org/10.3390/w16152121 - 26 Jul 2024
Viewed by 1151
Abstract
The upper American River watershed (UARW) provides a myriad of valuable benefits for local communities as well as throughout the state, nation, and even globally. These environmental benefits, often called ecosystem goods and services (EGS), include food, water, power, and recreational opportunities, among [...] Read more.
The upper American River watershed (UARW) provides a myriad of valuable benefits for local communities as well as throughout the state, nation, and even globally. These environmental benefits, often called ecosystem goods and services (EGS), include food, water, power, and recreational opportunities, among many others. Current ecological economics frameworks outline over twenty distinct EGS categories. While this information is becoming more widespread, many of these benefits are still undervalued or are not easily applied to policymaking and project-level investment decisions. Conventional EGS valuation focuses narrowly on a few specific EGS categories, ignoring many to the detriment of those seeking information on the economic value of natural infrastructure. This study provides a novel approach to watershed valuation by assessing eighteen EGS categories in a comprehensive watershed valuation by supplementing locally available data with the benefit transfer method. This approach demonstrates that watershed-scale EGS valuation is possible. The resulting valuation shows the natural capital asset in the UAW has a net present value of $731 billion and $1.6 trillion with 2.5% and 0% discount rates (100 years), respectively, and provides over $14.8 billion in annual value. Valuing natural capital in economic terms provides a common metric for comparison and integration with other types of investments in built and social capitals, informing policy and investment decisions for climate adaptation and water resilience. This EGS valuation provides a case study into how benefit transfer can be used to supplement locally available information to provide watershed-scale EGS valuations. The outcome serves as a tool to promote innovation and equity in the design of funding mechanisms and resulting allocation for improving watershed health, the associated EGS productivity, and rural-agricultural community resilience. Full article
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20 pages, 8226 KiB  
Article
Combining Crop and Water Decisions to Manage Groundwater Overdraft over Decadal and Longer Timescales
by Yiqing Yao, Jay R. Lund and Josué Medellín-Azuara
Water 2024, 16(9), 1223; https://doi.org/10.3390/w16091223 - 25 Apr 2024
Viewed by 1070
Abstract
Coordinating management of groundwater, surface water, and irrigated crops is fundamental economically for many arid and semi-arid regions. This paper examines conjunctive water management for agriculture using hydro-economic optimization modeling. The analysis is integrated across two timescales: a two-stage stochastic decadal model for [...] Read more.
Coordinating management of groundwater, surface water, and irrigated crops is fundamental economically for many arid and semi-arid regions. This paper examines conjunctive water management for agriculture using hydro-economic optimization modeling. The analysis is integrated across two timescales: a two-stage stochastic decadal model for managing annual and perennial crops spanning dry and wet years and a far-horizon dynamic program embedding the decadal model into a longer groundwater policy setting. The modeling loosely represents California’s San Joaquin Valley and has insights for many irrigated arid and semi-arid regions relying on groundwater with variable annual hydrology. Results show how conjunctive water management can stabilize crop decisions and improve agricultural profitability across different water years by pumping more in dry years and increasing recharging groundwater in wetter years. Using groundwater as a buffer for droughts allows growing more higher-value perennial crops, which maximizes profit even with water-scarce conditions. Nevertheless, ending overdraft in basins with declining groundwater for profit-maximizing farming reduces annual crops to maintain more profitable perennial crops through droughts. Results are affected by economic discount rates and future climates. Operating and opportunity costs from forgone annual crops can reduce aquifer recharge early in regulatory periods. Full article
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40 pages, 9564 KiB  
Article
Groundwater Sustainability and Land Subsidence in California’s Central Valley
by Claudia C. Faunt, Jonathan A. Traum, Scott E. Boyce, Whitney A. Seymour, Elizabeth R. Jachens, Justin T. Brandt, Michelle Sneed, Sandra Bond and Marina F. Marcelli
Water 2024, 16(8), 1189; https://doi.org/10.3390/w16081189 - 22 Apr 2024
Cited by 1 | Viewed by 4773
Abstract
The Central Valley of California is one of the most prolific agricultural regions in the world. Agriculture is reliant on the conjunctive use of surface-water and groundwater. The lack of available surface-water and land-use changes have led to pumping-induced groundwater-level and storage declines, [...] Read more.
The Central Valley of California is one of the most prolific agricultural regions in the world. Agriculture is reliant on the conjunctive use of surface-water and groundwater. The lack of available surface-water and land-use changes have led to pumping-induced groundwater-level and storage declines, land subsidence, changes to streamflow and the environment, and the degradation of water quality. As a result, in part, the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act (SGMA) was developed. An examination of the components of SGMA and contextualizing regional model applications within the SGMA framework was undertaken to better understand and quantify many of the components of SGMA. Specifically, the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) updated the Central Valley Hydrologic Model (CVHM) to assess hydrologic system responses to climatic variation, surface-water availability, land-use changes, and groundwater pumping. MODFLOW-OWHM has been enhanced to simulate the timing of land subsidence and attribute its inelastic and elastic portions. In addition to extending CVHM through 2019, the new version, CVHM2, includes several enhancements as follows: managed aquifer recharge (MAR), pumping with multi-aquifer wells, inflows from ungauged watersheds, and more detailed water-balance subregions, streamflow network, diversions, tile drains, land use, aquifer properties, and groundwater level and land subsidence observations. Combined with historical approximations, CVHM2 estimates approximately 158 km3 of storage loss in the Central Valley from pre-development to 2019. About 15% of the total storage loss is permanent loss of storage from subsidence that has caused damage to infrastructure. Climate extremes will likely complicate the efforts of water managers to store more water in the ground. CVHM2 can provide data in the form of aggregated input datasets, simulate climatic variations and changes, land-use changes or water management scenarios, and resulting changes in groundwater levels, storage, and land subsidence to assist decision-makers in the conjunctive management of water supplies. Full article
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