Location: Delta Water Management Research
Project Number: 6024-13000-004-018-I
Project Type: Interagency Reimbursable Agreement
Start Date: Sep 15, 2019
End Date: Sep 14, 2024
Objective:
The agreement will employ the expertise of the Delta Water Management Research Unit for the following:
1) conduct detailed measurements of on-farm water flows in order to strengthen the agricultural community’s understanding of the function, effectiveness, and benefit of conservation irrigation practices,
2) examine the trend of Ground Water decline in a selected area and assess the possible positive impact from heretofore construction of conservation irrigation practices,
3) examine the onfarm economics of conservation irrigation practices, and
4) assist Natural Resource Conservation Service and other partners to identify and secure access to new locations for Ground Water level monitoring wells, pump flow monitoring, and stream gauges in the areas of Ground Water depression.
Approach:
Conservation irrigation practices capture and store storm runoff and irrigation tailwater, thereby providing surface water (SW) for a portion of the irrigation budget and reducing the volume of groundwater (GW) withdrawn for irrigation. The NRCS is focusing financial assistance, through EQIP and other authorities, to commodity farms located over two GW cones of depression for accelerated implementation of irrigation practices in an effort to reverse the long-term decline in GW levels caused by overdraft for irrigation. The two cones of depression are known locally as the Grand Prairie (GP) study area and the Cache River (CR) study area. NRCS seeks a collaborative effort of conservation partners to monitor the success of the focused implementation work. In particular, NRCS seeks the expertise of DWMRU in assessing the effectiveness of the conservation irrigation practices at the farm scale.
