Water Resources Research Act Program

Principal Investigators: John McCray

Abstract: It is important to understand groundwater recharge regimes within the South Platte Basin and how these regimes might change and influence the availability of groundwater resources. Aquifer systems such as the South Platte depend on variable recharge rates influenced by local climatology, vegetation, soils, geology, and consumptive water withdrawals. Adequate quantification of groundwater recharge is required for sustainable water resource management and reliable hydrological model predictions. We seek to determine average annual recharge for current conditions throughout the South Platte Basin. We will address these questions by combining groundwater flow and transport modeling and integrated analysis of existing data.