GMD3 iCare Project

Drought affects southwest Kansas frequently, but its onset is subtle, and its impacts develop over time. Local groundwater reservoir storage has been used to counter the effects of drought, but as reserves are mined, water supplies become less reliable, and drought resiliency is lost. This project will provide irrigators with water use information that will enable them to become more drought resilient through better water management. This project will build long-term resilience to drought and reduce the need for emergency response actions by providing water users with valuable information that will empower them to manage and conserve water, increase the usable life of the Ogallala/High Plains Aquifer, and increase farm profitability. Year 1 of the project will focus on Finney County while years 2 and beyond will include all of GMD3.

 Click here  to watch a video outlining the project goals and objectives.

I-Care Summary Reports

Regions and Sub-regions for Peer-to-Peer Well Comparisons

To identify areas that share common characteristics for peer well comparisons, Finney County was divided into regions based on natural and anthropogenic patterns. Shown by the four maps below (click on each to enlarge), these include spatial variations in the aquifer thickness, density of pumping, water-level change, and surficial geology.

The Ogallala aquifer is thicker in the southern portions of the county (especially along a paleo channel running diagonally south of the Arkansas River) and thins moving northward as the underlying bedrock elevations become closer to the land surface. Given the greater water availability, the southern portions of the county generally have higher levels of usage and resulting higher rates of water-level decline relative to other areas. Lastly, the northern portions of the county within the District boundaries are overlain by loess (wind deposited sediments) whereas areas south of the Arkansas River are generally covered by dune sand. This can have a significant influence on cropping, irrigation, and farming practices. Lastly, the Arkansas River valley is a notable feature in terms of enhanced potential natural recharge and due to groundwater mounding under the channel, also produces a natural, hydrologic boundary in the aquifer along its course, north to south.

The left side of the slider map below shows the final regions identified for Finney County and a terse description of the elements that make them unique. Using statistical clustering routines, each aquifer region was further divided into sub-regions based from which the peer well comparisons are made. The right side of the slider map shows the peer well sub-regions along with wells reporting water usage (gray dots) and sites containing a depth-to-water measurement taken each and every winter from 2012 to 2022 (blue plus symbols).

Using a water balance approach developed by the Kansas Geological Survey ( Butler et al., 2016  and  Butler et al., 2018 ), the relationship between pumping and water-level change provides a measure, termed Q-stable, of what changes in pumping are needed on average to achieve stabilized water levels for the next decade or two. Because the process is entirely data-driven and does not involve any conceptualizations, it is dependent on quality water use reporting and representative water-level measurements that are spatially distributed across the area of interest.

The graph shown above shows the total reported water use along the X axis and the average measured water-level change along the Y axis for each year from 2012 to 2021 for Finney County. There is a strong linear relationship from which 71% of the variation in water-level changes each year can be explained statistically by variations in pumping. Based on these county-wide totals and averages, it would take an approximate 16% reduction in pumping (shown by the red square) to stabilize water-levels for the near term (shown by the gray triangle). Under drought conditions of 2012, the reduction needed to achieve stabilized water-levels would be approximately 36%.

The Q-Stable method can be applied to smaller areas, so long as each area has adequate and representative measurements and water use information. The maps and graphs below show the Q-Stable results and strength of the relationship along with general water-level conditions for each region within Finney County.

We hope the I-CARE reports are informative, providing information regarding recent water usage. For more information on this report or the project goals and objectives, please contact the GMD3 office by phone at 620-275-7147.