Authors
Alvar Escriva-Bou, Rich Pauloo, Skyler Lewis
Publication date
2021/12
Journal
AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts
Volume
2021
Pages
H23F-08
Description
During the 2012-16 drought, more than 2,600 households reported losing access to water because their wells went dry in California. Most of these households were on small rural communities of color. The fast-paced drought which made farmers to pump more groundwater than ever without any regulation, and the lack of data to understand the rapid declines in groundwater levels and the impacts in drinking water wells, caused a drinking water crisis in one of the richest regions of the world. Although many things have changed since then, California is in another drought and as of August 3 2021, more than 400 wells have gone dry this year. It is clear that gaps in data remain, and California is failing again to avoid another water crisis. The goal of our study is to predict dry wells caused by overpumping using a combination of data-driven models. First, based on historical observations of groundwater elevation in …