Thousands of domestic and public supply wells face failure despite groundwater sustainability reform in California's Central Valley.

ABSTRACT: Across the world, declining groundwater levels cause wells to run dry, increase water and food insecurity, and often acutely impact groundwater-dependent communities. Despite the ubiquity and severity of these impacts, groundwater research has primarily focused on economic policy instruments for sustainable management or the quantification of groundwater depletion, rather than assessing the impacts of management decisions. In particular, how definitions of groundwater sustainability shape the fate of resource users remains unexplored. Here, we examine one of the world's largest-scale environmental sustainability reforms, the California Sustainable Groundwater Management Act (SGMA), and estimate the impact of sustainability definitions proposed in groundwater sustainability plans (GSPs) on

SUBMITTER: Bostic D 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC10491797 | biostudies-literature | 2023 Sep

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature