The Russian River Watershed (RRW) covers about 1,300 square miles (without Santa Rosa Plain) of urban, agricultural, and forested lands in northern Sonoma County and southern Mendocino County, California. Communities in the RRW depend on a combination of Russian River water and groundwater to meet their water-supply demands. Water is used primarily for agricultural irrigation, municipal and private wells supply, and commercial uses - such as for wineries and recreation. Annual rainfall in the RRW is highly variable, making it prone to droughts and flooding from atmospheric river events. In order to better understand surface-water and groundwater issues, the USGS is creating a Coupled Ground-Water and Surface-Water Flow Model (GSFLOW; Markstrom and others, 2008) of the RRW. This model will include climate, geology, surface-water, groundwater, and land-use data.
Benefits to Water Managers
The Russian River Integrated Hydrologic Model (RRIHM) helps to address water competition issues such as:
- Conjunctive water use (complimentary use of surface water and groundwater);
- Reliability of existing surface-water and groundwater supply systems, given present-day and future water- use scenarios; and
- Possible future climate and land-use change effects on the water-supply systems.
