Lower Salinas Valley Hydrologic Models: Agricultural and Municipal Water Supply and Groundwater Data (ver. 2.1, August 2024)

This digital dataset contains the datasets related to agricultural and municipal water supply and groundwater in the Lower Salinas Valley Hydrologic Models (LSVHM), including the Salinas Valley Operational Model (SVOM) and the Salinas Valley Integrated Hydrologic Model (SVIHM). Groundwater inflow and outflow data include reported groundwater pumpage and groundwater elevations obtained for the period from October 1, 1967, to September 30, 2018. Groundwater pumpage in the Lower Salinas Valley Hydrologic Models is grouped into (1) pre-estimated and specified municipal and industrial (referred to as water supply) and (2) simulated pumpage from all irrigation wells used to supply water for irrigation (referred to as agricultural supply). Groundwater pumpage is provided in units of acre-feet per month for each water balance subregion (Henson and Jachens, 2022). Groundwater pumpage was defined by water supply wells and agricultural supply wells. Additionally, water levels from wells were used to evaluate groundwater levels in the simulation. To support the agricultural water demand and supply estimates, surface water diversions and non-routed delivery are included for the water-balance subregions (WBS) that receive surface water for irrigation. To support the evaluation of groundwater levels in the Lower Salinas Valley Hydrologic Models, this data release includes groundwater-level contour maps and groundwater level time series for wells used to define head-dependent flow boundaries in water balance subregions 5 and 6 in the northwestern coastal area in the Lower Salinas Valley Hydrologic Models. Water-level maps were provided by the Monterey County Water Resources Agency (MCWRA) for fall of 1994, 2003, and 2011 for a composite of shallow aquifers (Less than 201 feet below land surface) and deep aquifers (Greater than 201 to 420 feet below land surface). These contours can be used for spatial comparison of the model-simulated groundwater values with observed data. Head-dependent flow boundaries were simulated using the General Head Boundary Package (GHB) of MODFLOW (Harbaugh, 2005) and are implemented to represent lateral groundwater underflow.

Citations:
Harbaugh, A.W., 2005. MODFLOW-2005, the U.S. Geological Survey modular ground-water model-the Ground-Water Flow Process: U.S. Geological Survey Techniques and Methods 6-A16, https://doi.org/10.3133/tm6A16.
Henson, W.R., and Jachens, E.R., 2022, Lower Salinas Valley Hydrologic Models: Discretization Data: U.S. Geological Survey data release. https://doi.org/10.5066/P9850MAK.