Adaptation Planning for Climate Change Impacts using Advanced Decision Support and Remote Sensing: Irrigated Agriculture in California’s Central Valley

DESCRIPTION: The proposed research will comprehensively explore current and future water availability for irrigation at both state and regional scales in collaboration with the Stockholm Environment Institute, City College of New York, and U.S. Bureau of Reclamation. This will be done within the context of California’s Central Valley, a heavily managed, tightly constrained, and agriculturally important area.

OUTCOMES: The primary research tasks are to couple DSSAT to WEAP, and evaluate both models over California’s Central Valley; simulate current and future available water throughout the Central Valley and distributions among competing uses, including agricultural, municipal, industrial, environmental, and hydropower; assess the impacts of future water availability on crop yields in irrigated agricultural areas; and create a regional framework of water resources for the broader western United States using WBM+. Most of the detailed tasks associated with the objectives are finished. A proposal to extend this project through implementation with Yolo County Flood Control and Watershed Management District will be submitted at the end of June. Jonathan presented his analysis of climate change scenarios and future runoff projections using WBM+ at the 2012 AGU Fall Meeting.