Water Supply Reliability Index
Problem:
California faces a multitude of water supply reliability risks, including implications from the implementation of the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act (SGMA); water resource challenges include increasing frequency and severity of drought and flooding from climate change impacts; regulatory pressures impacting supply from the Bay-Delta Water Quality Control Plan (Bay-Delta Plan) and Central Valley Salinity Alternatives for Long-term Sustainability (CV-SALTS) and challenges to water rights in California from ongoing pieces of legislation.
Land IQ developed a proprietary methodology to evaluate water supply reliability for agricultural areas in California. This evaluation uses publicly available information in agricultural water management plans (AWMPs) and groundwater sustainability plans (GSPs) to score quantitative and qualitative criteria related to surface water and groundwater factors, as follows:
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Surface water
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Deliveries
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Above ground storage
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Recycled water
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Appropriative water rights
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Groundwater
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Recharge and banking
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Change in groundwater storage
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Groundwater quality suitability for irrigation
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Allocations and pumping restrictions
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Demand reduction through fallowing
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The water supply reliability evaluation results in a spatial index delineated by unique polygon boundaries. The unique polygons are created by the intersection of water supply districts (irrigation districts, water companies, etc.) and GSP plan areas. Each polygon is unique in its representation of the presence or absence of a water supply district and a GSP plan area. For example, one polygon might represent a water supply district and part of a GSP, while another polygon might represent a different water supply district and that same GSP.
Solution:
The Land IQ Water Supply Reliability Index (WSRI) can be used with jurisdictional, political, regulatory, hydrological, and hydrogeological boundaries along with Land IQ’s spatial crop database to generate powerful data summaries that provide insight into the spatial distribution of water supply related to crop types and their specific locations. Because it is based on information from documents that require updating every 5 years, Land IQ updates the WSRI on the same schedule to ensure that accurate and relevant information informs the evaluation process.
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Water Supply Reliability Index Differentiators
Land IQ provides a spatial account of water reliability that can be overlaid with various jurisdiction boundaries and crop layers.
Land IQ takes into account the most up to date information including publicly available data from GSPs and AWMPs.
The WSRI may be customized to score criteria based upon the organization’s priorities.
