CAREER: A convergent and transformative approach to understanding human access to groundwater and its impact on the hydrological cycle

Groundwater is a critical resource for society, but information related to its use is limited. The goals of this research are to improve our understanding of where and how much groundwater is used. The research outcomes will be directly relevant to water managers, irrigators, and policy makers, benefiting society.

The PI will use Hydrologic Sciences Workshops and Scientist Spotlight activities to integrate research into the education of undergraduate students and into the training of a graduate student. The integrated research and education plan will enhance partnerships with state water agencies and produce data products—groundwater well classifications by the geologic formation they tap, and estimated groundwater use—that will enhance infrastructure for research.

The data products have the potential to improve existing water storage and depletion tools, models, and assessments that rely on water-use data to constrain water availability, contributing to broader policy discussions. Through this work, the PI will build upon her track record of science communication by broadly disseminating her research in general media outlets through short videos designed to engage the public and policy makers with scientific findings.

The research prioritizes scalable methodologies and dissemination of scientific methods and outputs through open access repositories, which will enable further research beyond the expected outcomes from this work.

Humans dominate critical components of the hydrosphere, but their impact is challenging to quantify. In the western United States, where direct human impacts on the terrestrial water cycle are expected to be pronounced, the extraction and integration of data from human systems is critical to characterizing hydrologic fluxes. Using the western United States as a case study, this work will integrate large datasets from human systems with more traditional information used in the hydrologic sciences to meet the following objectives: (i) characterize groundwater wells by the geologic formation they tap; (ii) quantify groundwater withdrawals for irrigated agriculture; and (iii) integrate research with planned educational activities that synergistically train undergraduate students and simultaneously produce research outputs.

The research will take a convergent approach, combining the PI’s training in hydrology, water-resources engineering, big-data analytics, and water law to improve understanding of the hydrological cycle by characterizing human access to groundwater. This research has the potential to improve existing tools, models, and assessments of storage and depletion that rely on understanding human impacts on the terrestrial water cycle and that rely on water-use data to constrain water availability.

This proposal is co-funded by the Hydrologic Sciences and Education and Human Resources programs in the Division of Earth Sciences.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.