Flooding & Opportunities for Sustainable Water Management
Feb 28, 2023 8:00 AM
Graham Fogg, Prof. Emeritus,Hydrogeology, UC Davis
Flooding & Opportunities for Sustainable Water Management

It is well known that California could eliminate or drastically reduce its water deficit by diverting and storing the water from the upper 10% of high-magnitude river flows (for example, floods). Where could this water be stored? Answer: in groundwater systems, which have been sufficiently depleted in California that they could store additional water amounting to more than 3-times the storage capacity of the state’s surface reservoirs. This would require significant effort to recharge the groundwater systems with diverted floodwaters, which is known as “Flood-MAR” (managed aquifer recharge). I will discuss Flood-MAR and how California might use it to help solve its water supply problems as the climate continues to warm.

 Professor Emeritus of Hydrogeology, UC Davis, Dept. of Land, Air and Water Resources and Dept. of Earth and Planetary Sciences. I have spent the last 45 years researching and teaching about groundwater hydrology, including groundwater flow, contamination, computer modeling, and water resources management under climate change.