KEYNOTE SPEAKER: CHALLENGES AND OPPORTUNITIES IN WESTERN ALLUVIAL GROUNDWATER BASIN MANAGEMENT

We discuss three related hypotheses: First, unsustainable use of groundwater in alluvial basins is a serious threat to long-term global food security and livelihood. Second, while local in use and management, global linkages are critical to find solutions to sustainable groundwater use and protection in agriculture and large population centers overlying alluvial basins. Third, Western States, as major agricultural producers and with their large population centers overlying mostly alluvial basins, provide a microcosm that will both, contribute local solutions that have global significance, and also benefit from global technical, policy, and scientific feedback to address their challenges in managing alluvial aquifers. Irrigated agriculture produces 40 percent of the global food supply, mostly from alluvial aquifers. World population growth and increasing economic output in Latin America, India, and Asia heighten demands for food production and associated water use from alluvial basins. Groundwater overdraft, subsidence, groundwater quality degradation, and damage to ecosystem services in alluvial basins have become issues critical to economic and food security around the globe. Disciplinary scientific and legal isolation between watershed management, groundwater quality and quantity management, and pollution source management, disparateness between science, policy, and education, the geographic and socio-political isolation of stakeholders that arises from the fact that groundwater is intrinsically a local or regional, common pool resource - all these are major hurdles in working toward a global infrastructure that can efficiently support sustainable groundwater in agriculture at a global scale. These conflicts and resulting research challenges and opportunities that support policy development are illustrated using four case studies: groundwater budget and overdraft assessment in the Central Valley aquifer, animal farming impacts to alluvial groundwater quality, nonpoint source contamination in alluvial basins, and the importance of managing the groundwater-surface water interface for endangered species protection (salmon) in the Klamath Basin. Integrated regional resources (air, soil, energy, land, and water) management are key to succeeding in sustainable groundwater management.