Ag Alert March 13, 2024

State finishes aquifer survey using high-tech monitoring

projects to get water into the underground and help the agency in Fresno County reach its sustainability goals required un- der California’s Sustainable Groundwater Management Act. “The state continues to make invest- ments in the latest technology, like AEM, to ensure we are prepared for the weather extremes that are playing out in the new climate reality,” Paul Gosselin, DWR dep- uty director of sustainable groundwater management, said in a statement. “Data from these initial statewide

AEM surveys are already being used by local groundwater agencies,” he add- ed, “and we are excited to move into the next phase, expanding data collection efforts and providing new tools for un- derstanding and managing California’s groundwater on a local, regional and statewide level.” In May, DWR is due to release its groundwater conditions update, including statewide groundwater and annual report data submitted by local groundwater sus- tainability agencies.

California Farm Water Coalition elects officers The California Farm Water Coalition, a nonprofit group that works to increase awareness of agriculture’s efficient use of water, has elected Greg Johnson as its new president. Johnson, owner of Far West Rice, a Butte County rice milling and marketing compa- ny, succeeds Bill Diedrich, who served as president for the past eight years. “I look forward to working with our members and stakeholders to ensure that California agriculture has access to the wa- ter resources it needs to thrive,” Johnson said in a statement. Imperial Valley farmer Gina Dockstader was elected vice president. Wayne Western, of Hammonds Ranch in Fresno County, was elected secretary/treasurer. New board members include Brett Lauppe, a CoBank regional vice pres- ident for agribusiness, and Jeff Sutton, general manager of the Tehama Colusa Canal Authority. The California Department of Water Resources has completed a ground- water mapping project that the agency said provides critical information about California’s underground water supply. DWR announced the completion of the statewide Airborne Electromagnetic, or AEM, survey project last week as part of its commemoration of National Groundwater Awareness Week. In 2022, the agency held public demon- strations of the new technology, which in- volved a helicopter pulling a 100-foot-long hexagonal device that sent electromagnet- ic signals 1,000 feet into the Earth’s subsur- face to determine water levels in aquifers. The technology offered a boost to pre- vious work by scientists, who for decades had drilled deep holes across the California landscape to gauge the characteristics of the state’s 515 groundwater basins. DWR has dubbed its AEM new tech- nology an “MRI of the Earth.” Between December 2021 and November 2023, the agency collected nearly 16,000 miles of AEM data within 95 groundwater basins across California. DWR said in the data “is invaluable for identifying the most suitable locations to implement groundwater recharge projects that can capture water from winter rain.” The data is accessible online through the California Natural Resources Agency Open Data link. Kassy Chauhan, executive officer for the North Kings Groundwater Sustainability Agency, said the AEM aquifer data will help local groundwater agencies “move more expediently towards development of projects in areas previously deemed as

nonsuitable for groundwater recharge.” In a statement, Chauhan said the tech- nology has “helped to navigate below- ground to find the small pockets where the soil conditions are prime for groundwater recharge to occur.” She said the technology will assist the North Kings GSA in identifying feasible

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March 13, 2024 Ag Alert 15