California water budget workbook welo how to#

Recently released governor’s draft water resilience portfolio has actions recommending the development of water budgets as an integral component of planning to advance water resilience in California.

Recent legislation, including the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act and Assembly Bill 1668, has codified water budget development to be part of groundwater sustainability plans and agricultural water management plans. Water budgets are an important tool for water agencies for things such as water supply planning and evaluating the effectiveness of management actions to ensure long-term sustainability of surface water and groundwater resources in the area. The water budget is important because it provides an understanding of historical conditions and how future changes to supply, demand, hydrology, population, land use, and climate may affect the water resources of the area. In the spring of 2020, Department staff held a webinar to introduce water managers and interested stakeholders to the content in the water budget handbook.

California water budget workbook welo how to#

To address this problem, the Department of Water Resources has developed a water budget handbook, which is intended to demystify the process of developing a water budget by distilling the process down into specific steps, providing guidance as well as specific advice on how to determine a water budget, with or without the use of models.

A water budget is an accounting of the rates of the inflows, outflows, and changes in water storage in a specific area however, as simple as that might sound, developing an accurate water budget can be a difficult and challenging endeavor. With water availability being an important concern, water managers often use water budgets to quantify and manage water resources.