Lower Salinas Valley Hydrologic Models: Agricultural and Municipal Water Supply and Groundwater Data (ver. 2.0, November 2023)

This digital dataset contains the surface water operational data used for the Salinas Valley Operational Model (SVOM) including the time series data and the operational rules. While much of the input data is shared between the Salinas Valley Operational Model (SVOM) and the Salinas Valley Integrated Hydrologic Model (SVIHM), the SVOM has additional input data specific to the purpose and function of the model. This digital dataset contains the datasets related to agricultural and municipal water supply and groundwater in the Lower Salinas Valley Hydrologic Models, including the Salinas Valley Operational Model (SVOM) and the Salinas Valley Integrated Hydrologic Model (SVIHM). Groundwater inflow and outflow data include reported groundwater pumpage and groundwater elevations obtained for the period from October 1, 1967, to September 30, 2018. Groundwater pumpage in the Lower Salinas Valley Hydrologic Models is grouped into (1) pre-estimated and specified municipal and industrial (referred to as water supply) and (2) simulated pumpage from all irrigation wells used to supply water for irrigation (referred to as agricultural supply). Groundwater pumpage is provided in units of acre-feet per month for each water balance subregion (Henson and Jachens, 2022). Groundwater pumpage was defined by 353 water supply wells and 2002 agricultural supply wells. Additionally, water levels from 439 wells were used to evaluate groundwater levels in the simulation. To support the agricultural water demand and supply estimates, surface water diversions and non-routed delivery are included for the water-balance subregions (WBS) that receive surface water for irrigation. To support the evaluation of groundwater levels in the Lower Salinas Valley Hydrologic Models, this data release includes groundwater-level contour maps and groundwater level time series for wells used to define head-dependent flow boundaries in water balance subregions 5 and 6 in the northwestern coastal area in the Lower Salinas Valley Hydrologic Models. Water-level maps were provided by the Monterey County Water Resources Agency (MCWRA) for fall of 1994, 2003, and 2011 for a composite of shallow aquifers (<201 feet below land surface) and deep aquifers (>201 to 420 feet below land surface). These contours can be used for spatial comparison of the model-simulated groundwater values with observed data. Head-dependent flow boundaries were simulated using the General Head Boundary Package (GHB) of MODFLOW (Harbaugh, 2005) and are implemented to represent lateral groundwater underflow.