Discipline: Ecology Environmental and Earth Sciences
Subcategory: Water
Session: 3
Room: Exhibit Hall
Joseph Saenz - Texas A&M University Kingsville
Co-Author(s): Michael Ramos, Texas A&M University Kingsville
The Winter Garden region of the Carrizo-Wilcox aquifer is historically known for its agricultural production of irrigated winter vegetable crops in southwest Texas. The groundwater supplies of the Carrizo-Wilcox aquifer are monitored by the Texas Water Development Board (TWDB) through direct measurements of water wells or predictions generated by their groundwater availability model (GAM). Over the last 20 years, well records from TWDB indicate consistent water level decline. However, the original GAM model from TWDB includes this time period as a predictive period rather than being based on recent historic data. As the GAM is based on historic pumping and precipitation data from 1975 to 1999, the GAM should be updated with recent historic data for it to be considered for near-term predictive purposes. In this study, the inputs of the groundwater availability model for well pumpage were collected from TWDB sources. This study highlights the data formulation and analysis procedures used to generate the necessary data to update the historical period.
Funder Acknowledgement(s): NSF
Faculty Advisor: Matthew Alexander, Matthew.Alexander@tamuk.edu
Role: Gathered data for past years precipitation and used it to update past model predictions as well as gathered pump age data from areas of interest to better fit model data