Projections of 5 scenarios of coupled land-use change and groundwater sustainability for California's Central Coast at 270-m (2001-2061) - LUCAS-W Model Output

This data release provides the resulting land-use projections for California's Central Coast from 2001-2061 at a resolution of 270-m. Data are provided as (1) annual rasters and (2) summarized as the mean annual transition probability across 10 Monte Carlo iterations. Each package contains folders for five scenarios, which have different sets of management assumptions along two axes: Water management Low/Moderate/High and Land use management Low/Moderate/High. 
- MM (Moderate/Moderate): a scenario where water demand caps reduce development in overdrafted groundwater basins based on current total water supplies, and where prime farmland and groundwater recharge areas will be protected from urban sprawl (i.e., land use projections assuming development stabilizes at a level sustainable with current water supplies, and urban sprawl limits). The other four scenarios differ from the MM scenario by altering one of these management strategies, while keeping the second strategy at the "Moderate" level. 
- WL (Water management Low): a scenario with no feedbacks between water supplies and development (i.e., land use projections assuming development is not constrained by water availability, closest to a "business-as-usual" continuation of the region's historic trajectory). 
- WH (Water management High): a scenario that assumes that water demand caps, but with increased caps due to enhanced water supplies proposed under local groundwater agencies' Groundwater Sustainability Plans (i.e., land use projections assuming development stabilizes at a higher water demand). 
- LL (Land use management Low): a scenario where prime farmland and groundwater recharge areas are not protected from urban sprawl (i.e., land use projections assuming relatively unregulated land use planning, with water sustainability based on current supplies). 
- LH (Land use management High): a scenario where almost all the state's priority habitats are preserved from urbanization or agricultural expansion (i.e., land use projections assuming a very compact pattern of development, with water sustainability based on current supplies). 
These projections were created with LUCAS-W, a scenario-based simulation model of coupled land use change and associated water demand. This model is a version of the LUCAS model, which uses the SyncroSim software framework (Software documentation available at http://doc.syncrosim.com/index.php?title=Reference_Guide), that contains a new coupling with statistical software R (https://www.r-project.org/) to enable dynamic feedbacks between land-use change, resulting water demand, and water availability. The model was parameterized with land-use change and water use empirically estimated from county-scale historic data, as well as results from dozens of local agencies’ groundwater modeling efforts. By scaling up studies of local-scale diverse, heterogeneous aquifers and management approaches to a regional level, the model can enable a projection of spatial changes due to shifts in LULC and water management including leakage from land and water use regulated areas into unregulated areas, information that is key to future agency planning for sustainability. See Van Schmidt et al. (2021) Water Resources Research (doi: XXXXXXXXXXXXX) for more details.

Tags: biota, california, california-central-coast, groundwater, land-cover, land-use, land-use-change, monterey-county, san-benito-county, san-luis-obispo-county, santa-barbara-county, santa-cruz-county, scenarios, usgs-60d3dcdcd34e12a1b00a7585, water-demand, water-supply, water-sustainability
Organization: Department of the Interior