Blog: A Functional Flows approach to implementing Flood-MAR
As recent droughts have highlighted, groundwater overuse is a serious problem in California. Overdraft is drying shallower domestic and municipal wells, dewatering groundwater dependent ecosystems (Rohde et al. 2021), and necessitating expensive infrastructure repairs. As climate change reduces snowpack and increases risk of drought, reliance on groundwater will grow (Mount et al. 2018). To meet these challenges, the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act (SGMA) has helped focus attention on strategies to manage our groundwater use more sustainably, including efforts to replenish groundwater stores. Flood managed aquifer recharge, or Flood-MAR, is a strategy to intentionally create flooding over dormant or fallow crop fields, rangelands, recharge basins, or floodplains during high flows so that water infiltrates to recharge aquifers. By storing water underground in wet years, we can improve water availability in dry years, supporting water users and refilling aquifers.