Assessing water availability for food-energy-water nexus via integrative surface water-groundwater modeling in San Joaquin River Basin, USA

Water, food, and energy are closely linked in intensively managed large scale watersheds and constitute the complex Food-Energy-Water (FEW) nexus. Assessing the availability of water resources for food and energy production represents an important step to decipher feedbacks and synergies among FEW subsystems. As one of the most productive agricultural regions in the USA, San Joaquin River Basin is also installed with numerous hydropower plants, leading to intensive groundwater pumping and surface water delivery to maintain water demand for agricultural and hydropower production. We employ a newly developed integrated hydrologic model- Visual HEIFLOW to assess the spatial distribution and temporal dynamics of water resources and particularly surface water-groundwater interactions in the San Joaquin River Basin. Water partitioning among stream flow, evapotranspiration (ET) and subsurface storage affected by human activity and climate variation is also quantified. The results of this study will shed light on the sustainable strategies for managing Food-Energy-Water nexus in the study area.