Demonstration of simulating agricultural water demands using the MODFLOW-OWHM2 Farm Process with an example from Paso Robles Basin

Publication Date

2024-07-24

Start Date

2015-01-01

End Date

2016-09-30

Culling, D.P., and Henson, W.R., 2024, Demonstration of simulating agricultural water demands using the MODFLOW-OWHM2 Farm Process with an example from Paso Robles Basin: U.S. Geological Survey data release, https://doi.org/10.5066/P14OPFD9.

This data release provides a demonstration of how to: (1) convert the MODFLOW-2005 (Harbaugh, 2005) PRBM to MODFLOW-One Water Hydrologic Model version 2.1 (MF-OWHM2; Boyce and others, 2020), (2) parameterize and set up representation of agriculture demands using the MODFLOW Farm Process (Boyce and others, 2020) to replace the externally calculated pre-processing steps employed by the PRBM, and (3) leverage input file structures, which centralizes many of the model's processes (e.g., agricultural water demands and associated groundwater pumpage, groundwater recharge, and riparian evapotranspiration). Demonstration data was used as input files for the Paso Robles demonstration (PRDS) described in this data release. Each step in the "Data Quality" section of this .xml file provides an explanation of the updated format or input packages, data conversion, and the rationale behind the modifications. The objective of this data release is to demonstrate how MODFLOW-OWHM2 can be used to more efficiently simulate irrigated agriculture in Paso Robles region than the existing simulation utilizing MODFLOW-2005 with pre-processors. To do this, the period from January 2015 through September 2016 of the PRBM is converted to MF-OWHM2. The converted years highlight the implementation and capability of the FMP to internally simulate agricultural demands and processes and utilizes MF-OWHM2 file structures to separate temporal and spatial information. The PRDS is not a recalibrated decision model and the parameters used should be examined and evaluated before these modifications are utilized to update and calibrate the PRBM.

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