This is a project to assess how water resources can be enhanced during managed aquifer recharge, with a focus on water supply and improvements to water quality through denitrification. This project will help to develop tools and methods that can be applied broadly, in many settings, and will address topics of primary importance to the state of California. More specifically, this project will use a network of environmental sensors to evaluate hydrologic processes in real time, and will allow university and agency researchers to evaluate how this information can be used to optimize water resource management.

2009 Update:

This project is a pilot study to bring cutting-edge environmental monitoring, data transmission, and near-real time analysis to assist in operating a managed aquifer recharge (MAR) project, in collaboration with students, collaborating faculty from multiple academic institutions, the U.S. Geological Survey, and a local water agency. The short-term goal was to demonstrate how development of these kinds of systems, and these kinds of collaborations, can improve both the quantity and quality of water resources available for agricultural and municipal use. Over the longer term (the next 10-20 years), the state of California and much of the western United States will need to develop many MAR projects to manage local resources, depend less on distant water supply systems, plan and manage increasingly variable hydrologic conditions.

CITRIS seed funding was used to design, construct, test, and field a network of thermal probes used to assess seepage rates at the base of a managed aquifer recharge pond operated by a local agency. Data were collected using networked "nodes" tethered to probes containing four thermistor sensors. Each probe was placed in a hole hand-augered into the base of the recharge pond prior to annual operation, and data were telemetered back to the lab using a cellular connection. A web interface was designed to allow users to access data in near-real time. Additional autonomous environmental sensors were deployed to monitor water content below the pond. Data are being processed using novel time-series analysis techniques and a coupled fluid-heat transport equation. System components are to be recovered in Summer 2009, and we have been given a no-cost time extension until 6/30/2010 to analyze results from the current operating year; make revisions to the electronics, software, and telemetry system; and deploy a revised system for the 2010 water year.