W3190: Management and Policy Challenges in a Water-Scarce World

(Multistate Research Project)

Status: Inactive/Terminating

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SAES-422 Reports

Annual/Termination Reports:

[12/30/2015] [12/12/2016] [10/25/2017] [12/27/2018]

Date of Annual Report: 12/30/2015

Report Information

Annual Meeting Dates: 10/28/2015 - 10/30/2015
Period the Report Covers: 10/01/2014 - 09/30/2015

Participants

Colby, Bonnie (bcolby@ag.arizona.edu)- University of Arizona; Kroll, Stephan (Stephan.Kroll@colostate.edu) - Colorado State University; Suter, Jordan (Jordan.Suter@colostate.edu) - Colorado State University; Eiswerth, Mark (Mark.Eiswerth@unco.edu) - University of Northern Colorado; Huffaker, Ray (rhuffaker@ufl.edu) - University of Florida; Taylor, Garth (gtaylor@uidaho.edu) - University of Idaho; Hendricks, Nathan (nph@ksu.edu) Kansas State University; Peterson, Jeff (jpeters@umn.edu) University of Minnesota; Garnach, Chloe (garnache@msu.edu) Michigan State University; McCann, Laura (mccannL@missouri.edu) University of Missouri; Brozovic, Nick (nbrozovic@nebraska.edu) University of Nebraska; Schoengold, Karina (kschoengold2@unlnotes.unl.edu) University of Nebraska; Hurd, Brian (bhurd@nmsu.edu) New Mexico State University; Hearne, Bob (robert.hearne@ndsu.edu) North Dakota State University; Guilfoos, Todd (guilfoos@uri.edu) University of Rhode Island; Cardon, Grant (grant.cardon@usu.edu) Utah State University; Edwards, Eric (eric.edwards@usu.edu ) Utah State University; Yoder, Jonathan (yoder@wsu.edu) Washington State University; Hansen, Kristi (kristi.hansen@uwyo.edu) University of Wyoming; Schaible, Glenn (schaible@ers.usda.gov) USDA/ERS; Harrington, Michael (michael.harrington@colostate.edu) Administrative Advisor

Brief Summary of Minutes

W-3190 Meeting

October 30, 2015

Minutes of W3190 Meeting October 30, 2015 Salt Lake City, Utah; submitted by Todd Guilfoos

This is the second annual meeting of W3190

Officers for the past year: Chair: Jordan Suter, Colorado; Vice-Chair: Mark Eiswerth, Colorado; Secretary: Todd Guilfoos, Rhode Island.

Morning session

8:30 AM – Meeting begins with initial introduction by Jordan Suter. Mention of possible collaboration with other group again WERA 1020 since this year meeting went so well.

8:38 AM - Introductions of all participants.

8:44 AM – Comments on Minutes. Vote for approval of minutes Jordan Suter votes to approve, Karina seconds. The Minutes from last year are approved.

8:46 AM – Laura McCann- Discussion about the prior meeting with WERA 1020. General adulation by all members for the meeting this year. There is a suggestion to add a bullet as an impact of the meeting in the report. Talk of making materials of the meeting available, which the presentations will be made available online. Karina- mentions the special issues journal on water management, and would like the full paper by January 20th. The process will be a peer review process.

Laura McCann- case studies are things we don’t get in journal research that are valuable. Maybe a paper that compares success stories and failures to be included in the special issues is an opportunity. Jordan Suter- agrees. Try and include the case studies in future meetings. Suggestion to include a panel over a single water issue in the future meetings. Maybe include a farmer or stakeholders in the future panels.

Jeff Peterson- Is the synthesis paper going to be broadly distributed? Karina- the idea is to write a report that is too long for a paper but includes details on the sessions and panels and speakers contributions. The introduction to the special issues could include a synthesis. It would be great to reach across groups to work with WERA 1020.

Nic Brozovic- The format could change to serve this group and further our goals specifically the W3190. The bigness may take away from the networking opportunities and getting information about what others in the group are doing, including the field trips. Maybe do a big meeting once a 5 year cycle. Jordan agrees with the idea of once a cycle.

Jeff Peterson – To help generate policy relevant information, have a meeting in DC to include more policymakers in the cycle.

Glenn Schaible- Force the reporting on research next year in the second year of the cycle.

Garth Taylor- Reminder that in September IWREC has another meeting in DC.

Laura McCann- have presentations on the science and the practitioner problems to generate research ideas.

Kristi Hansen- the group is supposed to be interdisciplinary so including non-economists is good.

Glenn Schaible- Suggests selecting a person for each objective, and they can report back to the committee to help with the ideas. Who is working on each objective: to identify speakers at the meeting and research to keep track for the final report on progress. This may help establish an agenda.

Jordan Suter- state reports due earlier to synthesize the bullet points and help facilitate that.

9:10 AM – Location of next meeting. Mark Eiswerth- what are we going to do and when and where?

Kristi Hansen – Fort Collins as a location?

Mark Eiswerth– What would be included? Denver?

Grant Cardon - Large scale river modeling at GS, so look at storm events and flood control and physical modeling.

Stephan Kroll – CSU could help organize a meeting in Fort Collins. Jordan Suter agrees.

Nic Brozovic- Nebraska could host in the future and host good field trips.

Mike Harrington – comes into meeting and would like to share info with both groups.

9:16 AM – Mike Harrington addresses both W3190 and WERA 1020: Congratulate the last two days of meetings and how valuable it is bringing the two groups together. One item brought up, have a follow up survey to identify what was useful and what could be improved. Overview of where things stand. Budget deal in the works, 2 year budget deal no sequestration, experiment station benefits. 20 B in discretionary and non-discretionary 15 B next year, spread across 12 different budget bills. Seeing incremental increases in capacity funding - competitive programs in AFRI- farmer rancher program – energy –organic – specialty crops programs and are likely to see small increases in AFRI and competitive programs. Extension lost 40% of its buying power due to inflation over time. Water security initiative: 3,000 projects with water included in write-ups, but few of those projects have to do with water security. 6 million dollars in water challenge area. Don’t have an organized program that gets at goals and objectives. It needs to be a larger effort to deal with water issues beyond the water security. Water should be included in NIFA proposals going forward. President’s budget may include these water initiatives in his budget. NIFA needs to work more closely with Ag Experiment groups and would like to see the joint meetings to occur again in the future with some frequency. It is good to have the groups meet together and extend collaboration across groups. How long does it take to write an investigator proposal? Transactional costs, time costs, and evaluation are important aspects of proposal writing. It takes six weeks of effort on average to write a proposal. Success rate over a 6 year period is 270 M authorized amount 700M, lots of proposals go unfunded that would have been if the budget was larger. 3-4% to 20% success rate, or 16% over the six year period. We are gathering information on what does it take to get the proposal review done by going out with a survey to evaluate these tasks. 50% of money lost in transactional costs in this process. Costs are very large to process the proposals, and we are trying to quantify these costs.

Laura McCann: Richard Just has a paper on the competitive process and deadweight loss from these processes.

Jonathan Yoder: what is the policy take away? Tease out administrative burden vs. discovery. Find ways to reduce the burden. Active in interdisciplinary proposals, and has found there is a lot discovered in the proposal process.

Mike Harrington: agrees with the point. The discovery may occur before the proposal.

Laura McCann: What are the acceptance rates of second submissions?

Mike Harrington: funding trying to become more predictable. Reducing swings in programs so faculty can predict what the needs will be in future years.

Garth Taylor: heads of water centers at their universities. How could we work with the water centers?

Mike Harrington: Collaborations happen in these meetings. Joint activities, developing WERA projects, etc.. These meetings are very important to get people to start talking together. Policymakers don’t want to hear about policy from university people. Possible partnerships could include water councils with governors, legislators, associations of counties. Those groups can do things we cannot as individual universities.

Jeff Peterson: prominent issues in MN are more about quality. Some issues contain both quantity and quality. Separate moneys for quality vs. quantity, are we going to integrate the funding sources in the future?

Mike Harrington: Insufficient money. Cap grant for wheat but no money for water. There will be more focus on getting money for these water initiatives in the future. Congrats to both groups for this effort. Share the report with your deans that comes from this group. Western SARE Program may be a source of money.

10:00 AM – Mike Harrington and WERA 1020 members depart the meeting.

10:00 AM – Jordan Suter – Return to discussion of next year’s meeting: where, when.

Nic Brozovic – Lincoln could host. Could think about themes to organize the meeting around: link public private partnerships. Connect to field trips. Republican River Basin. Karina - Possibly the augmentation project.

Jordan Suter– We could do Colorado next year, and Nebraska the next year since Rhode Island may not be the best location.

Ray Huffaker- Wyoming should be included again, Jackson Hole.

Karina Schoengold– holding the meeting later in October tends to make it easier on D.C. attendees.

Jordan Suter- check with the Heartland to see when their meeting is.

Mark Eiswerth– October 20^th or 27^th could be two possible dates. Jordan Suter – 20-21^st. October 24-25 to hold it on Monday and Tuesday. What about Sunday and Monday? Garth Taylor– agrees with the weekend idea. Sunday – Monday.

Jordan Suter– The target date is 24-25^th in October in Colorado. Friday field trip and Saturday business meeting. Happy to have a vote, Thurs Friday, Friday Saturday, Saturday Sunday. 11 votes for Thursday and Friday. Consensus to keep it on Thursday and Friday. Check Mike Harrington’s schedule.

Jordan Suter – Could do 20-21^st in Fort Collins next year. Lincoln Nebraska for the following year. Check with Fen Hunt for the schedule.

Mark Eiswerth – Arizona in the future, someone on the ground to organize would be essential. Meet with the other group but maybe not the conference. Ginger Paige - every couple years would work, wait two years from now.

Glen Schaible– special sessions at one of the regional meetings to host the other group could be a way to keep involvement of both groups.

Nathan Hendricks– leverage other meetings like the Governors Water conference.

Brian Hurd- AWRA meetings in November could be an opportunity to meet with the other groups and have papers in a few sessions. This could be a good product for our group. AGU meetings, pre-AGU event at Davis. That meeting could be an opportunity.

Jonathan Yoder: Orlando Florida

Jeff Peterson- AGU has made efforts to include economics; special sessions.

Jordan Suter– Fort Collins next year. Grant: Figure out where other groups are meeting, maybe a sub-committee about options to meet with other groups. Glenn Schaible, Grant Cardon, and Laura McCann volunteer for the sub-committee.

Karina Schoengold– getting away for a few days isn’t hard, but extended time for teaching may conflict.

Tim- AGU is usually third week in December.

Nic Brozovic- Lincoln possibly for next year as the model for having a president that isn’t on site, as this spreads the burden on organizing and being president.

Glen Schaible– a sub-committee for the conference would be a good idea.

Karina Schoengold– Oct. 20-21^st is a home game for Nebraska. Previous or next week 27-28^th October or 13-14^th October. Check in with Michael and Fen for their schedules to attend.

Brian Hurd: Meet with growers will be difficult because it is harvest time.

Nic Brozovic- For the field trip we could do the Platte River, ag water irrigation equipment, remote sensing, Irrigation engineer and experiments. Karina and Nic will propose a few options. Consensus is to hold next year’s meeting in Lincoln on either October 13-14^th or October 27-28^th.

Chloe Garnache– how long is the field trip. Half day?

Jordan Suter – We need to do Secretary nominations at this meeting.

10:40 AM - Break:

10:55 AM – Nathan Hendricks volunteers to be nominated as secretary; nomination accepted by the group.

State Reports – each person will have a few minutes to just go over the highlights.

Garth Taylor- not much in Idaho. A lot of outreach this year and study of conjunctive use in the plains, but no water programs in Idaho at all.

Glenn Schaible- publications and ERS reports on wetlands and geographic work. Hypoxia project they are working on and nitrogen delivery in the Mississippi basin, and conservation data. Riparian buffers and wetlands in the area, focused on water quality based and climate change. ERS website updated with data about irrigation and water use. Summarized handout given to everyone. Crop irrigation and trends occurring in water use, challenges and water environments, opportunities for improvement. Website on the California drought and food impacts addresses implications of drought in California. Working on an ongoing relationship with Nic and Karina, and USGS- high plains aquifer research project to expand the crop program data. Information about normalized ag prices, input and output prices, is up on the website, also in the handout given by Glenn.

Brian Hurd- For New Mexico. Frank Ward sent updates, Ari not able to come either. Frank awarded a $5 Mil NIFA award recently. Sustainable water systems, conjunctive use in Lower Rio Grande Basin, issues in water supply and water quality and sustainability issues. Frank in workshops with stakeholders, Bonnie Colby also involved as well.

Mark Eiswerth – Colorado. On sabbatical for the Fall. Hosting Special Session at AWRA Nov. 16^th, this year in Denver and on planning committee. Special Session deals with value of ecosystem services, non-ag benefits of water, economics of water quality and clarity. Working with Kristi Hansen and Ginger Paige on synthesis of payments for ecosystem services. Recently published willingness to pay data in Ecological Economics, interested in how demand and supply shifters affect WTP and payments for services. Co-authored a chapter on cheatgrass and economic modeling in book on cheatgrass. Addresses annual grass invasions and thresholds, which are difficult to model.

Stephan Kroll – Colorado. Announcement about special issues of Strategic Behavior and the Environment. March 31^st deadline. Announcing open position in the CSU department for an energy economist, and also just finished sabbatical.

Ray Huffaker – Florida. Interested in the agricultural migration out of California. Climate change and water rights system is receptive to more irrigation. Wrote a chapter on agricultural power and fish in Columbia River Basin. Data diagnostics, hydrology data, lots of data and how to analyze these data and push this into economics engineering. Just off sabbatical. Book with colleagues in nonlinear time series analysis in R applied to climate water economic applications. Book is in contract with Oxford, coming out next year. Storm water treatment areas and assimilation and removal rates track dynamics switch removal tracks inflow- when do dynamics change and wetland policies. Wind turbines and power patterns, matching to demand and supply. Flow power in streams to generate energy. Applying techniques that improve reconstruction of data. Water trading, working with others in this group.

Jonathan Yoder- Washington State. Working on Columbia water demand forecast, service contracts, and Cost recovery in water service projects. Understand demand for water service in their programs. Studying water banking and many other projects with data on the drought in Washington trying to understand how people responded to the drought. Benefit cost analysis on plan on Columbia River sub basin, Ray H. passed on report that big water storage projects don’t satisfy benefit cost tests.

Kristi Hansen- Wyoming. Water related Natural Resources Journal issue coming from this meeting. Water rights transfers and leases, shape of the water markets. Salvage rights law and abandonment. Ariel Dinar in book about water economics and water transfers in West. Working with stakeholders in Ogallala in Wyoming to address federal money for buyouts of water rights providing economic analysis of this problem for farmers on what to do for water management in this local area. Ecosystem services project in the system water initiative in Reclamation, Colorado River to fallow acres in the basin to quantify benefits from return flows to the basin and Las Vegas funding this project. Also interested in non-ag benefits of flood irrigation to late season flows.

Eric Andrews – Utah. Ogallala paper in JARE on heterogeneity in the water management and groundwater management benefits. Data sets created in Ogallala in ag census data, parcel land level data and linking to crop scape data. Water markets, wrote book chapter on water transfers and difficulties. NIFA grant proposal, water use on Indian Lands in the Great Basin. Hiring natural resource economist at Utah State and there is interest in water candidates.

Nathan Hendricks- Kansas. Wrote a book chapter on Economics of Water, Water politics, and Policy. Projects looking at Kansas with water restrictions and how well they are working. One is on surface stream flows from 1992. Another is in 2012, a LEMA voluntary restricted water usage and looking at behavior from those restrictions. Graduate student working at payment programs for things farmers were going to do anyway, impact of the diffusion of technology. Response on non-irrigated land to water deficits, then hopes to extend this to irrigated land to understand climate change connections.

Nic Brozovic- Nebraska. Have a growing water research team at the university with post docs and students and faculty. Collaborations. Project with ERS and USGS to combine hydrologic data and USDA data at a fine scale to look at determinants of conservation practices and the impacts of hydrologic conditions. Michigan State collaboration, policy side, wet years in Nebraska and natural resource districts. Nic is the new director in DNR. Water markets side in research and continuing work on this issue. Nic has ongoing research in trading groundwater rights and smart market operating.

Karina Schoengold – Nebraska. Multistate project, evaluate institutions and how hydrological conditions affect water decisions and crop decisions. Working on creating past student thesis into publications. Former student paper looks at Mexico data, groundwater use. Cost sharing rules affect efficiency of irrigation and compare this to subsidies inefficiencies in agricultural economics. Another looking at strategic behavior of water use.

Grant Cordon- Utah. Grant provides a summary presentation on the memorial on John Hanks who was a founding member of this group. Symposium on his work on soil science and water work which everyone should be familiar with. Grant studying water aspects of project on Navajo reservations. These projects foster improvements in nutritional conditions and develop more vegetables and fruits on the reservations. Historical Navajo crops, peach varieties establish demonstration orchards. Water is an issue and dams related to diversions into reservoirs, open drain channels and difficulty with salinity.

Todd Guilfoos – Rhode Island. Published works on behavior economics and cooperation in a more general setting. Have ongoing projects that look at groundwater management, cooperation, and psychology. Also, Looking at historical value of water in manufacturing. Organized a Water Quality Workshop for NAREA over the summer and am co-editing a special issues journal from that workshop with Emi Uchida. Expanding work in experimental economics and learning in common pool resource settings. Am involved in a NSF project about Tradeoff from management of Dams, with groups from New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Maine.

Jordan Suter– Colorado. Part of C-BEAR which provides quality experimental research, funded by the USDA; announces RFP and outreach center. Three projects, Goemans, Dale Manning, and Nevada, impacts population for demand of municipal water. CGE models with Dale Manning, students are working on groundwater use in Kansas impacts of well capacity and extensive and intensive margin. Dale, Goemans, Republican River Basin looking at economic tradeoffs with policies that they are considering. Modflow model of impacts over 50 years, providing results of model to producers and gauging preferences for policies.

Cloe Garnache – Michigan. Publication in JAERE looking at water resources in the flood plains in California for salmon. Stochastic dynamic programming in habitat and crops, parcels tradeoff over time and floodplain and time tradeoffs. Finds that the way the fishery is managed determines the benefits. Managing landscape, quota system and changing habitat. California on conjunctive use in flood plain in California, recharge rates and different management. Derived demand and markets for urban centers, local policies in Sacramento area.

Jeff Peterson – formerly at Kansas, moved to Minnesota. Contributed to Book Deneil special issue published earlier this year. Co-editors on volume, water management in competing sectors and institutions across US and Europe. Minnesota, issues related to this group. Understudied linkage between water quality and quantity processes, related to forest and ag in the south with the corn belt. Interested in climate change issues and the high rate of deforestation. MN has tile drainage in the south, large intense rain events, increase in runoff and water quality problems, impacts on nitrogen and Gulf hypoxia and rate of flow in the major rivers, sediment issues in rivers. Transboundary issues with Canada, Red River climate change impacts and nutrient exports.

12:15 – The meeting is closed after brief comments by Jordan Suter. Please submit state reports.

Accomplishments

W3190 Objective 1.  Characterize bio-physical and economic factors (and interactions) that influence water-use decisions and related market or non-market outcomes.   Grismer: We are trying to determine practical salinity parameter (e.g. TDS, Na, Cl concentrations and SAR values) thresholds of persistent use of blended recycled and well waters for high-value crops.   Grismer: We have established working relationships with growers and the Recycled water agency to oversee and maintain soil and water monitoring programs on strawberry and cole crop fields.   Dinar focused on method 1.2: Laboratory economic experiments of groundwater users behaviors) to highlight some important bio-physical and economic factors associated with behavior of groundwater users in the lab.   Dinar investigated institutions promoting cooperation in resource dilemmas in the lab.   Dinar compared in the lab alternative policy interventions for modification of subsidized energy for groundwater pumping for irrigation.   Peck and colleagues are creating an Agricultural Resource Management Plan for the Wind River Reservation, with the Tribal Water Engineer’s Office and a local interdisciplinary working group.   Huffaker’s research investigated the allocation of water among competing uses in the Columbia River Basin, and recommended policies for improving public water allocation decisions.    Huffaker’s research investigated nonlinear time series analysis as a pre-modeling data diagnostics method for constructing hydro-economic models corresponding to real-world dynamic behavior.   Peterson: An AFRI grant was obtained to evaluate the role of technology and climate change on aquifer depletion in Kansas and Texas.   Hendricks presented a paper analyzing the impact of a water restriction of farmers' irrigation behavior.   Suter, Manning, and Collie at CSU completed empirical research related to the influence of well-capacity constraints on groundwater user behavior using data from Kansas.   Schoengold and coauthors had a paper accepted for publication that measures the impact of alternative groundwater cost sharing rules on irrigation use and production efficiency.   ERS: Publication items 4-6 discuss the biophysical impacts of new wetlands for eight benefit categories: duck hunting, carbon sequestration, flood protection, nitrogen removal, species protection, open space, sediment removal, and groundwater recharge, and the value of these impacts for some categories. County-level estimates of costs of restoring and preserving wetlands are presented.   ERS: Used field/farm-level survey data to evaluate the relative importance of farm, operator, economic, program participant, and environmental factors on producer farm stewardship decisions. And how the importance of these factors vary across farm program participants versus non-participants.    Objective 2: Develop or enhance methods to address emerging water management issues.   Grismer: A PhD student proposal has been prepared that is directed at developing a model for evaluating blended recycled water use for irrigation considering possible effects on soils and groundwater.   Colby: Examining economic tradeoffs in providing increased freshwater flows to Upper Gulf of California's marine ecosystems through fallowing of irrigated cropland. (Foundation funding)   Colby: Developing econometric models to investigate climate influences on the market price of water, and on water trading activity for urban and for habitat purposes. (NOAA funding)   Colby: Developing framework for analyzing economics of advanced remote sensing techniques to measure and monitor water "savings" in irrigation forbearance agreements. (Foundation funding)   Dinar focused on method 2.3: developing improved dynamic models of agricultural groundwater management.   Dinar developed a dynamic model, which compares among several alternative policy interventions for modification of subsidized energy: The Case of Groundwater Pumping for Irrigation.   Kovacs had invited presentation to the Arkansas Water Resources Center.   Kovacs had presentation to a multi-state project SERA35 and to regional (Southern Agricultural Economics Association) and national (American Agricultural Economics Association) conferences.   Garnache worked with UC Davis hydrologists to model local groundwater recharge rates in the Yolo Bypass floodplain in California.   Garnache started collecting data on developing water demand models for agriculture and urban uses in California.   Ziolkowska (U of Oklahoma) are editing a forthcoming book, "Competition for Water Resources – Experiences and Management Approaches in the US and Europe, including W3190 contributors.   Peck and Peterson edited the book, "Climate Variability and Water-Dependent Sectors: Impact and Potential Adaptations", featuring the contributions from several W3190 project members.   Seedang organized a workshop titled "The Potential for Incorporating Economics into Decision Support Tool" and produced a workshop paper. The outcomes of this project will help support the development of decision tools which emphasize the importance of economic information for managing water resources.   Seedang reviewed cases of water scarcity for a better understanding of various factors underlining the problems. Scarcity issues in Arizona and Nebraska are being summarized and compared to draw on their good practices and how they may be applicable for Michigan. In addition, one of IWR's researchers is working on an overseas project involving implementing economic incentive policies for conservation. Large water users and business enterprises can learn from these good practices and innovative policies (e.g. payment for ecosystem services, bio-carbon financial mechanism) and by working with local communities.   Hendricks presented results from an economic model that predicts how agricultural value of production declines as groundwater availability decreases.   Hurd: Progress continued in support of the NSF-support study of acequia systems (small-system community irrigation) including community meetings, development of collaborative proposals.   Hurd: Modeling of climate change impacts on water and agricultural resources extended to the development of system dynamics modeling of climate-human-land use systems.   Hurd: Developing methods to inform debates over sustainable and resilient institutions and measures to adapt to highly fluctuating water supplies.   Goemans and Manning, together with researchers at U of Nevada, estimate the differing impacts of population growth on urban, semi-urban, and rural communities.   Goemans and Costanigro organized and moderated  Water Markets in the Western United States: Supply Challenges and Frictions session at WAEA annual meeting.   Conducted analysis and provided testimony to the House Committee on Agriculture, Livestock, and Natural Resources on HB 15-1038, a bill designed to modify water transfer institutions in Co.   Developed the revised ERS Irrigation & Water Use webpage, summarizing how important irrigation is to U.S. agriculture, where crop irrigation occurs, crops produced, critical irrigation trends, challenges facing  agriculture under a changing water environment, onfarm irrigation efficiency and opportunities for improvements, and the levels of investment occurring in irrigation improvements.   ERS developed the webpage California Drought: Farm & Food Impacts. It describes the situation and potential implications of the drought for California farms, crop & livestock production, and for consumer food price impacts. Analysis included information on exposure and vulnerability to drought in CA's agriculture sector as well as variations in drought impacts on crops produced.   Guilfoos developed a model of stochastic water management over large aquifers to evaluate management issues with increasing climate variability.    Objective 3: Evaluate and compare alternative water policy and management institutions.   With a graduate student, Hansen completed a study of alternative policies to help irrigation districts store water in federal projects on the North Platte River in eastern WY and western NE.   At the request of the Wyoming Governor’s Office, Hansen is serves on a Laramie County groundwater committee tasked with exploring ways to address groundwater overdraft in SE WY.   Hansen has (with support from stakeholders) submitted a grant proposal to perform an economic analysis of alternative groundwater management strategies in SE WY.   Hansen (Wyoming) , Schoengold (Nebraska), and Suter (Colorado) co-organized a conference with WERA1020 attended by academic researchers, water managers, and policymakers.   Colby Evaluated irrigation district and grower costs and benefits associated with fallowing land to produce "saved" water for urban and environmental needs. (Reclamation and foundation funding)   Colby Examining new water banking initiatives and innovations worldwide and summarizing features most applicable for the southwestern U.S. (Reclamation and state agency funding.)   Colby: In collaboration with Reclamation, developing and evaluating pilot water leasing programs to accomplish specific federal objectives.  (Reclamation and state agency funding)   Dinar focused on method 3.1: test alternative institutions ability to provide ecosystem services.   Dinar modeled the role of groundwater-dependent ecosystems in groundwater management.   Dinar developed a model that assesses cooperative water management and ecosystem protection under scarcity and drought in arid and semiarid regions.   Taylor researched irrigation and non-market demand for water, with a goal of providing timely, accurate, and inexpensive estimates of water demand.   Taylor researched spatial partial equilibrium hydro-economic models that integrated hydrology and economics on a watershed or basin scale, with a goal to conduct benefit/cost analysis.   Taylor researched other emerging water management topics with the goal of providing innovative water management practices, and policies for critical water topics.   Hearne reviewed evolving water management. Institutions on the Missouri River Basin.   Hearne assessed community water management strategies for the Bakken Oil Producing Region.   Garnache completed project on managing water resources for habitat provision to native fish species, food provision, and flood control services.   Garnache examined how institutions affect the returns to ecosystem services management, and how institutions coordination can improve the joint provision of multiple ecosystem services.   Yoder: delivery of "Benefit-Cost Analysis of Yakima Basin Integrated Plan Projects" to the Washington State Legislature. December 2014.   Yoder, Jonathan. 2015. Yakima Basin Integrated Plan Benefit-Cost Analysis: An appeal for evidence-based discourse about the State of Washington Water Research Center study.   As a direct result of Eiswerth participation in W3190, I began water research collaboration with member of another multistate project (Western Education/Extension & Research Activity [WERA] 1020).   Eiswerth initiated a new research project (examining alternative water policy and management institutions) that was engendered directly by linkages internal to W3190 project.   As a direct result of new linkages internal to W3190, Eiswerth made new contacts with an external  stakeholder in another western state and incorporated their information in a data collection project.   Peterson and N. Hendricks  co-authored a chapter entitled “The Economics of Water,” to be published in the forthcoming Oxford Handbook on Water Politics and Policy.   McCann: An extensive literature review of the existing institutions relating to water in four Midwestern states has been conducted. A researcher at the Dept. of Natural Resources is collaborating.    McCann: A paper on adoption of drought tolerant plants in Missouri has been written and presented at the AAEA meetings.  A poster will be presented at Salt Lake City.  Edwards: Completed database linking agricultural census data (1900-1978) with physical characteristics of High Plains aquifer (all states).   Edwards: Completed dataset linking parcel level data from 23 counties overlying High Plains Aquifer in western Kansas to land sale price (1985-2009) aquifer properties, and crop choice (2007-2012).   Hendricks published a paper examining how different attributes of government contracts to improve water quality affect the cost of achieving different water quality goals.   Hurd: Collaborative presentation of state-level position summaries on Texas v New Mexico at two conferences.   Hurd: Assembling agricultural, environmental, and urban stakeholders to formulate sustainable management plans to guide future policy in the Rio Grande Basin in the US and Mexico.   In collaboration with researchers at U. Delaware and U. Rhode Island, experiments were conducted to explore performance NPS water pollution policies with real-time sensing.   Developing experiments with collaborators at U. Delaware to explore ambient-based NPS pollution policies that compare subsidy reductions to a tax-based policy.   Submitted manuscript of experimental research that implements common pool resource management policies at both extensive (entry) and intensive (quantity) margins.   Conducted and evaluated experiments to examine the policy effectiveness in a common property resource with threshold uncertainty and heterogeneous users.   Guilfoos developed a research paper that compares simple water management policies in a detail hydrologic and economic model to see where policy may falter or be most beneficial.

Publications

Hansen, K., R. Howitt, and J. Williams. 2015. “An Econometric Test of Water Market Institutions.” Natural Resources Journal 55(1): 127-152.   Hansen, K. 2015. “Water Markets from Theory to Practice.” In Handbook of Water Economics, eds. A. Dinar and K. Schwabe. Edward Elgar Publishing, pp. 355-371.   Hansen, K., C. Nicholson and G. Paige. 2015. “Wyoming’s Water: Resources and Management.” UW Extension Bulletin B-1272. Laramie, WY: University of Wyoming Extension.   Hodges, A., K. Hansen and D. McLeod. 2014. “The Economics of Bulk Water Transport in Southern California.” Resources 3(4):703-720.   Bonnie Colby, George Frisvold and Matthew Mealy, “Reallocating Climate Risks Through Water Trading”, Chapter 16 in Handbook of Water Economics, James Roumasset, editor, Springer-Verlag Co 2014.   Bonnie Colby, “Innovative Water Transactions to Meet Urban and Environmental Demands in the Face of Climate Change” Chapter 10 in Innovations in Water Markets, William Easter, editor, Springer book series on Global Issues in Water Policy, 2014.   Navigating a Pathway Toward Colorado’s Water Future A Review and Recommendations Colorado’s Draft Water Plan, Report of the Getches-Wilkinson Center Colorado Water Working Group, April 30, 2015. Principal Author Lawrence J. MacDonnell, University of Colorado [Working Group Members Reed Benson, University of New Mexico Bonnie Colby, University of Arizona Robert Glennon, University of Arizona Brad Udall, Colorado State University Charles Wilkinson, University of Colorado.]   Clarke, Andrew. Come Hell Or High Water Prices: A Household-Level Analysis Of Residential Water Demand In Tucson, Arizona, M.S. thesis, May, 2015, Department Of Agricultural And Resource Economics, Dr. Bonnie Colby, thesis director.   Duval, Dari. M.S. thesis, The Influence of Colorado River Flows on the Upper Gulf of California Fisheries Economy, May, 2015, Department Of Agricultural And Resource Economics, Dr. Bonnie Colby, thesis director.   Kahil, M. T., A Dinar, J. Albiac, Cooperative Water Management and Ecosystem Protection under Scarcity and Drought in Arid and Semiarid Regions. Water Resources & Economics (Accepted for Publication, October 5, 2015).   Esteban, E. and A. Dinar, The Role of Groundwater-dependent Ecosystems in Groundwater Management. Natural Resource Modeling (Accepted for Publication September 23, 2015).   Nigatu, G. and A. Dinar, Economic and Hydrological Impacts of the Grand Ethiopian Renais-sance Dam on the Eastern Nile River Basin. Environment and Development Economics (Ac-cepted for Publication September 16, 2015). doi:10.1017/S1355770X15000352, 24 pgs.   Dinar, A. and M. Hogarth, Game Theory and Water Resources: Critical Review of its Contribu-tions, Progress and Remaining Challenges. Foundations & Trends (Accepted for Publication March 7, 2015), 11(1–2):1–139, 2015.   Kahil, M. T., A Dinar, J. Albiac, Modeling Water Scarcity and Droughts for Policy Adaptation to Climate Change in Arid and Semiarid Regions. Journal of Hydrology (Accepted for Publi-cation December 16, 2014), 522:95–109, 2015.   Kovacs, K., M. Mattia, G. West. 2015. “Landscape irrigation management for maintaining an aquifer and economic returns.” Journal of Environmental Management, 160, 271-282.   Kovacs, K., M. Popp, K. Brye, G. West. 2015. “On-Farm Reservoir Adoption in the Presence of Spatially Explicit Groundwater Use and Recharge.” Journal of Agricultural and Resource Economics, 40(1), 23-49. 2015   Nalley, M. Anders, K. Kovacs, B. Linquist. 2015. “The Economic Viability of Alternative Wetting and Drying Irrigation in Arkansas Rice Production.” Agronomy Journal, 107(2), 579-587.   Kovacs, K., E. Wailes, G. West, J. Popp, K. Bektemirov. 2014. “Optimal Spatial-Dynamic Management of Groundwater Conservation and Surface Water Quality with On-Farm Reservoirs.” Journal of Agricultural and Applied Economics, 46(4), 409-437.   Schmidt R.D., and Garth Taylor. Evaluating Water Conservation Infrastructure.  Water Economics and Policy Forthcoming. 2015.   Taylor, R. Garth, R. D. Schmidt, B. Contor, and L. Stodick. 2014. Modeling Conjunctive Water Use as a Reciprocal Externality. American Journal of Agricultural Economics. 96(3): 753-768.   McKean, J. R. Donn Johnson, R.G. Taylor. 2014. Estimating Tournament Effects on Sportfishing Demand. Tourism Economics. 20(5): 1067-1086.   Quall, Russ, Garth Taylor, Joel Hamilton, and Ayodeji Arogundade. Climate Change Opportunities for Idaho Irrigation Supply and Deliveries. Climate Variability and Water-Dependent Sectors: Impacts and Potential Adaptations. Eds J. Peterson and D. Peck, Routledge Taylor and Francis Group. Oxford England 2014.   Huffaker, R. (2015) “Building Economic Models Corresponding to the Real World.” Applied Economic Perspectives and Policy, doi:10.1093.   Huffaker, R. (2015).  Tradeoffs: fish, farmers, and energy on the Columbia in Routledge Handbook of Water Economics and Institutions, edited by K. Burnett, R. Howitt, J. Roumasset, and C. Wada, Routledge, N.Y.   Choi, J., R.R. Hearne, K. Lee, and D.C. Roberts. 2015. “The Relation between Water Pollution and Economic Growth Using the Environmental Kuznets Curve: A Case Study in South Korea.” Water International 40(3):499-512.   Hearne, R. S. Shakya, and Q. Yin. 2015. “The value of fracking wastewater treatment and recycling technologies in North Dakota.” Journal of Water Reuse and Desalination 5(2):211-222.   Hearne, R. and T. Prato. forthcoming. "Institutional Evolution of Missouri River Management"  accepted for publication in Water Policy.   Garnache, C. (2015) “Fish, Farmers, and Floods: Coordinating Institutions to Optimize the Provision of Ecosystem Services.” Journal of the Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, 2(3):367--399.   Adam, Jennifer, J. Stephens, S. Chung, M. Brady, R. Evans, C. Kruger; B. Lamb, M. Liu, C. Stöckle, J. Vaughan, K. Rajagopalan, J. Harrison, C. Tague, A. Kalyanaraman, Y. Chen, A. Guenther, F. Leung, L. Leung, A. Perleberg, J. Yoder, E. Allen, S. Anderson, B. Chandrasekharan, K. Malek, T. Mullis, C. Miller, T. Nergui, J. Poinsatte, J. Reyes, J. Zhu, J. Choate, X. Jiang, R. Nelson, J. Yoon, G. Yorgey, K. Johnson, K. Chinnayakanahalli, A. Hamlet, B. Nijssen, & V. Walden. 2014. BioEarth: Envisioning and Developing a New Regional Earth System Model to Inform Natural and Agricultural Resource Management. Climatic Change 129(3-4). http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10584-014-1115-2   Yoder, Jonathan, Jennifer Adam, Michael Brady, Joseph Cook, Stephen Katz, Daniel Brent, Shane Johnston, Keyvan Malek, John McMillan, and Qingqing Yang. 2014. Benefit-Cost Analysis of the Yakima Basin Integrated Plan Projects. State of Washington Water Research Center. December. Available at https://swwrc.wsu.edu/2014ybip. 196.pp.   Yoder, Jonathan. 2015. Yakima Basin Integrated Plan Benefit-Cost Analysis: An appeal for evidence-based discourse about the State of Washington Water Research Center study of the Yakima Basin Integrated Plan. The Water Report 135(May): 9-17, 20. Response to Malloch and Garrity (Same issue).   Michael Brady, Tongzhe Li, & Jonathan Yoder. 2015. The Columbia River Treaty Renegotiation from the Perspective of Contract Theory. Contemporary Water Research and Education 150:53-62   Yoder, Jonathan, Adrienne Ohler, & Hayley Chouinard. 2014. What floats your boat? Preference revelation from lotteries over complex goods. Journal of Environmental Economics and Management 67:412-430. http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/ S0095069614000163. Winner of the Western Agricultural Economics Association Outstanding Published Research Award for 2014.   Ohler, Adrienne, Hayley Chouinard, & Jonathan Yoder. 2014. Interest group incentives for post-lottery trade restrictions. Journal of Regulatory Economics 45(3):281-304. DOI: http: //dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11149-014-9246-y.   Eiswerth, M.E. (with W. Breffle, D. Muralidharan, and J. Thornton). 2015. “Understanding How Income Influences Willingness to Pay for Joint Programs: A More Equitable Value Measure for the Less Wealthy.” Ecological Economics 109: 17-25.    Schoengold, K., P. Shrestha, and M. Eiswerth. 2014. The joint impact of drought conditions and media coverage on the Colorado rafting industry. In: Dannele E. Peck and Jeffrey M. Peterson (Eds.), Climate Variability and Water Dependent Sectors: Impacts and Potential Adaptations. Oxford: Routledge Publishing. 132 pp. October 2014.   Peck, D.E. and J.M. Peterson, Editors. Climate Variability and Water-Dependent Sectors: Impacts and Potential Adaptations. London: Taylor and Francis. 2015. ISBN: 978-1-13-880733-4 Quintana Ashwell, N.E. and J.M. Peterson. “The Impact of Irrigation Capital Subsidies on Common-pool Groundwater Use and Depletion: Results for Western Kansas. Water Economics and Policy. 2015: 1550004. http://dx.doi.org/10.1142/S2382624X15500046   Peterson, J.M., C.M. Smith, John C. Leatherman, Nathan P. Hendricks, and John A. Fox. “Transaction Costs in Payment for Environmental Service Contracts.” American Journal of Agricultural Economics 97(January 2015): 219-238. doi: 10.1093/ajae/aau071   Edwards, Eric C. and Gary D. Libecap. 2015. Water Institutions and the Law of One Price. Halvorsen and D.F. Layton eds. Handbook on the Economics of Natural Resources, Edward Elgar Publishing, p. 442-473.   Wolfson, Lois. 2014. Water-Climate Decision Support System. Bulletin of the Institute of Water Research, Michigan State University. 2pp.   Seedang, Saichon, Jon Bartholic, and Frank Lupi. 2015. The Potential for Incorporating Economics into Decision Support Tool. White Paper. Institute of Water Research. May 2015. 23 pages. Supported by U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) and U.S. Geological Survey (USGS)   Seedang, Saichon. 2015. Estimating the Economic Value of Ecosystems Services for Supporting the Implementation of Payment for Environmental Services and Bio-carbon Financial Mechanisms in Thailand Watershed Pilot Sites. Under Project "Integrated Community-based Forest and Catchment Management Through an Ecosystem Service Approach". Technical Report (Inception Report). June 2015. 112 pages. Supported by Global Environmental Facility (GEF), Thailand Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment (MONRE), United Nations Development Programme ( UNDP)   Seedang, Saichon. 2015. Estimating the Economic Value of Ecosystems Services for Supporting the Implementation of Payment for Environmental Services and Bio-carbon Financial Mechanisms in Four Watershed Pilot Sites. Under Project "Integrated Community-based Forest and Catchment Management Through an Ecosystem Service Approach". Technical Report (Progress Report). August 2015. 70 pages. Supported by Global Environmental Facility (GEF), Thailand Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment (MONRE), United Nations Development Programme (UNDP)   Fernald, A., Guldan, S., Boykin, K., Cibils, A., Gonzales, M., Hurd, B. H., Lopez, S., Ochoa, C. G., Ortiz, M., Rivera, J., Rodriguez, S., and Steele, C. M. (2015). Linked hydrologic and social systems that support resilience of traditional irrigation communities, Hydrol. Earth Syst. Sci. 19, 293-307, 2015. doi:10.5194/hess-19-293-2015.   Hurd, Brian. 2015. Concepts and Methods for Assessing Economic Impacts from Climate Change on Water Resources. In The Handbook of Water Economics, Ariel Dinar and Kurt Schwabe (eds.), Edward Elgar Publishers. DOI 10.4337/9781782549666. 515p.   Habteyes, B.C., H.A.E. El-Bardisy, S.A. Amer, V.R. Schneider, and F.A. Ward (2015), Mutually beneficial and sustainable management of Ethiopian and Egyptian dams in the Nile Basin, Journal of Hydrology, 529, 1235-1246.   Ward, F.A. and N. Becker (2015), Economic Cost of Water Deliveries for Peace and the Environment in Israel: An Integrated Water Resources Management Approach, Water Resources Research, 51(7), 5806-5828.   Gohar, A. A., Amer, S. A., & Ward, F. A. (2015). Irrigation infrastructure and water appropriation rules for food security. Journal of Hydrology, 520, 85-100. Li, J., H.A. Michael, J.M. Duke, K.D. Messer, and J.F. Suter. 2014.  Impact of risk information in a spatially explicit groundwater environment with contamination risk: experimental evidence. Water Resources Research. 50: 6390–6405.   Strong, Aaron and C. Goemans. 2015. “The Impact of Real-time Quantity Information on Residential Water Demand.” Water Resources and Economics, Volume 10, pages 1-13.    Maas, Alex, Andre Dozier, Dale Manning, and Christopher Goemans. 2015. The Value of Stored Water and Trading in the West: Lessons from the Colorado Big-Thompson. Colorado Water, Volume 32, Issue 1, 2015. Sun, J. Sesmero, and K. Schoengold, "The Role of Common Pool Problems in Irrigation Inefficiency: A Case Study in Groundwater Pumping in Mexico", accepted for publication in Agricultural Economics. 2015. Sun, J. Sesmero, and K. Schoengold, "The Roles of Cost Sharing Rules and Well Sharing in Irrigation Inefficiency: A Case Study in Groundwater Pumping in Mexico", Cornhusker Economics, June 2015.   Schaible, Glenn., Ashok Mishra, Dayton Lambert, and George Panterov. 2015. Factors Influencing Environmental Stewardship in U.S. Agriculture: Conservation Program Participants vs. Non-Participants, Land Use Policy, 46 (March): pp. 125-141 (http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.landusepol.2015.01.018).   Schaible, G.D. & M. Aillery. 2015. Irrigation and Water Use.  [Revised/extended ERS webpage, 11p. (9/24/15) at: http://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/farm-practices-management/irrigation-water-use.aspx .   Schaible, Glenn D.  2015.  ERS Agricultural Normalized Price Estimates for 2015.  [ERS Data Product (posted: 9/30/15), a congressionally-mandated ERS obligation. These prices are used by multiple Federal/State agencies to evaluate benefits of resource-related projects (water and/or land) affecting agriculture.]   Hansen, LeRoy. 2015. The Cost Effectiveness of Removing Nitrogen by Restoring and Protecting Wetlands Varies Geographically.  Amber Waves.  U.S. Department of Agriculture, Economic Research Service (October), at: http://ers.usda.gov/amber-waves/2015-october/the-cost-effectiveness-of-removing-nitrogen-by-restoring-and-protecting-wetlands-varies-geographically.aspx.   Hansen, LeRoy. 2015. Wetlands benefits and costs vary by location. Amber Waves. U.S. Department of Agriculture, Economic Research Service, (May), at: http://cms.usda.net/52752.aspx#.VUJC0pNRSiw .   Hansen, LeRoy, Daniel Hellerstein, Marc Ribaudo, James Williamson, David Nulph, Charles Loesch, and William Crumpton. 2015. Targeting Investments to Cost Effectively Restore and Protect Wetland Ecosystems: Some Economic Insights.  Economic Research Report (ERR 183), U.S. Department of Agriculture, Economic Research Service, (February), 56 p., at: http://www.ers.usda.gov/media/1784721/err183.pdf .   Guilfoos, Todd, and Andreas Duus Pape. "Predicting human cooperation in the Prisoner’s Dilemma using case-based decision theory." Theory and Decision (2015): 1-32.

Impact Statements

Objective 3: Evaluate and compare alternative water policy and management institutions. A student of Hansen and Paige (WERA 1020 member) completed a study on the economic value (in environmental and recreational uses) of return flows from flood irrigation in the Upper Green River Basin of WY, which is of considerable interest to local landowners and Wyoming policymakers. Colby: Innovative features in programs to reduce crop irrigation, including new water banking initiatives, should be considered in the new phase of the Colorado River Basin System Conservation Program. The role of baselines for measuring changes in consumptive use is a critical feature in structuring system conservation agreements with agricultural districts. Colby: New water banking initiatives are underway in several western states, and state legislatures and water management agencies have invited testimony and workshops focused upon on the economic implications of water banking in their state. Colby: New online water trading initiatives are underway in several western states, with access to economic information about such programs elsewhere and the effects of online trading on public agency and participant transaction costs related to water trading. Dinar showed that certain water management institutions lead to sustainable GW dependent ecosystems under extreme water scarcity situations. Was able to obtain (with colleague from Spain) a grant to extend the work to the Jucar River basin. and anther grant to host a Spanish researcher in my university for an academic quarter. Taylor: Policy makers have gained understanding of the impact of climate change on surface water irrigation resources. Taylor: Policy makers have gained insights and policy analyses tools of water prices, allocation and hydrologic externalities. Taylor: Water planners have the tools to conduct correct cost/benefit analysis of water projects that includes conjunctive use externalities. NSF grant for organizing a Food, Energy, Water workshop. “Food Energy, Water and Abundance: Improving Cross-Border Governance and Protection of the Great Waters of the World.” Richardson, R.B., Garnache, C., Lopez, M.C., Pearson, A., Zwickle, A.K. Yoder: The Yakima Basin Benefit Cost analysis has been used and referred to extensively by numerous stakeholders in the popular press, in legislative testimony, and in other venues of discussion. It has had a substantive impact on the nature of the discourse over the proposed $4 Billion integrated water resource management plan. Yoder, Jonathan, Jenny Adam, Michael Brady, Joseph Cook, Barbara Cosens, Stephen Katz. 2013-2014. Benefit-Cost Analyses of the Yakima River Basin Integrated Plan Projects. Washington State Legislature. $300,000. Brady, Michael, Jennifer Adam & Jonathan Yoder. An Integrated Engineering and Economic Analysis of the Columbia River Treaty Renegotiation using Game Theory. 2013-2014. State of Washington Water Research Center. $55,020. As a direct result of new linkages internal to W3190, Eiswerth made new contacts with an external stakeholder in another western state and incorporated their information in a data collection project. Eiswerth: As a result of multistate research begun this period by W3190 participants, stakeholders will gain a better understanding of obstacles and challenges experienced, opportunities envisioned, and lessons learned by institutions that are seeking to use various market mechanisms to improve efficiency and sustainability in water resources management. McCann: Recently, drought conditions have led to increased irrigation in the Midwest, raising concerns about the inter-sectoral allocation of water in the future. This research will focus on identifying the current institutional impediments to efficient water allocations four Midwestern States in order to inform policy-making and institutional adaptation. McCann: Adoption of drought tolerant plants can increase homeowners' ability to adapt to climate change. Understanding the decision-making of homeowners can inform educational programs to increase adoption. Hendricks published a paper that shows farmers are very sensitive to more stringent contract conditions for implementing practices to improve water quality. Our results suggest that government programs could more cost-effectively improve water quality by reducing the stringency of contract conditions. Hurd: Work is ongoing to compare the potential for mutually beneficial and sustainable benefit sharing measures from the development and management of transboundary waters. Hydroeconomic models have been found to be a sound method for comparing policies and institutions for sharing waters among competing communities. Goemans, Suter, and Manning at CSU in collaboration with the Water Preservation Partnership studying the economic impacts of policies aimed at reducing groundwater use in the Republican River Basin of Colorado. Source: Statewide Water Supply Res. Acct. and S. Platte Basin Acct. Amount: $159,882 Term: 1/15 - 12/16 Brozovic and Schoengold (Nebraska), Hendricks (Kansas) and Peterson (Minnesota) received funding from the University of Nebraska Multistate Hatch funding to evaluate the impact of alternative groundwater management policies on water and land use choices (October 2014 - September 2019). Agriculture’s water quality impact can be influenced through its adoption of conserving working-land production systems. ERS, using CEAP-ARMS data, completed research examining the relative importance of farm, operator, economic, program participation, and environmental factors influencing farm stewardship intensity in corn and wheat production, i.e., how these factors influence differences in producer adoption of alternative levels of land and pest-management practices between conservation program participants and non-participants. Program non-participants invest more heavily in land conserving and pest-management practices than do program participants. Relative prices, structural, and socio-environmental factors play significantly different roles across crops, and between program participants and non-participants, in their influence on producer adoption decisions for land and pest-management intensity. For program environmental effectiveness and cost efficiency, program implementation will need to recognize farm heterogeneity and differences in producer motivations to improve stewardship investments.

Date of Annual Report: 12/12/2016

Report Information

Annual Meeting Dates: 10/13/2016 - 10/14/2016
Period the Report Covers: 10/01/2015 - 09/30/2016

Participants

Dannele Peck (University of Wyoming), Kristi Hansen (University of Wyoming), Kent Kovacs (University of Arkansas), Laura McCann (University of Missouri), Brian Hurd (New Mexico State University), Cloe Garnache (Michigan State University), Mark Eiswerth (University of Northern Colorado), Saichon Seedang (Michigan State University), Glenn Schaible (USDA, Economic Research Service), Chris Goemans (Colorado State University), Todd Guilfoos (University of Rhode Island), Jordan Suter (Colorado State University), Stephan Kroll (Colorado State University), Eric Edwards (Utah State University), Nathan Hendricks (Kansas State University), and Greg Torell (Texas AgriLife Research), Karina Schoengold (University of Nebraska), Nicholas Brozovic (University of Nebraska), Taro Mieno (University of Nebraska)

Brief Summary of Minutes

Introduction of all participants

Todd deferred the approval of last year’s meeting minutes.

8:30 a.m. Nick gave a brief introduction and welcome to the Water for Food Institute

9:00 a.m. Taro Mieno gave a research seminar titled “Price Elasticity of Groundwater Demand: Bias due to Incomplete Information”

9:45 a.m. Presentation by Glenn Schaible on “Revised ERS Data Product: Farm-Size Characteristics of U.S. Irrigated Agriculture”

Will replace “Western Irrigation Data Product”

Expected to be available on ERS website by end of the year

311 Excel spreadsheets summarizing farm-structural characteristics for U.S. irrigated agriculture across all 50 states, with totals for the 17 western States and all 50 states

State-level data is the finest spatial resolution

Gave a brief summary of some key summary statistics from the data

10:15 a.m. Break

10:40 a.m. Overview of W3190 scope & objectives by Dannelle Peck

Project proposal is available online at http://www.nimss.org/projects/view/mrp/outline/16396

Dannelle’s presentation is available at https://prezi.com/_d7rbkjnucqg/w3190-management-and-policy-challenges-in-a-water-scarce-world/

Objective 1 is at the farm-level, Objective 2 is at the watershed-level, and objective 3 is at policy-level

Important upcoming deadlines
- October 2018: brainstorm next proposal
- January 2019: proposal due
- June 2019: respond to reviews
- End of June 2019: final due

Mark emphasized that milestones and impacts are very important to document. Especially important to document if the meeting each year provides multi-state collaborations.

Make sure any stakeholder interactions are included in the report.

It was noted that our team could benefit from more interdisciplinary perspective. Some commented that the budget only allows travel costs for one person. It was also noted that most of us work interdisciplinary already and so try and leverage those connections within the group.

Glenn mentioned that reporting in only 170 characters is very difficult.

Kristi volunteered to explore creating a website that would highlight impacts from the group. Texas A&M Agrilife information sheets provide an excellent template.

Laura suggested a Choices issue would be excellent. However, there was a recent issue on water scarcity in Choices.

Dannelle suggested that it needs to be clear in the report that several members contributed to a common output.

11:20 a.m. State reports.

Glenn ERS: Glenn distributed a longer hard copy version of his report. Every year ERS releases Agricultural Normalized Price Estimates. Mentioned book “Competition for Water Resources” that several W3190 members contributed to. Stacy Sneeringer released a report “Comparing Participation in Nutrient Trading by Livestock Operations to Crop Producers in the Chesapeake Bay Watershed” ERS-216. Marshall et al. have a report “Climate Change, Water Scarcity, and Adaptation in the U.S. Field Crop Sector” ERR-201. Ongoing projects: water scarcity, irrigation use, and USDA Conservation Programs; U.S. irrigated agriculture, a farm size analysis; and research on factors influencing adoption of irrigation production systems. ERS is working with USGS and University of Nebraska on the water scarcity component.

Eric Edwards, Utah: Some papers went from forthcoming to now published. Three working papers. 1) Role of irrigation on developing U.S. agriculture. After WWII there was a significant increase in productivity and most of this came from expansion of irrigation. Paper is available on his website. 2) Looked at conservation potential and compared with water development projects. 3) Working with Liebcap to understand where in California there are greater benefits from managing water. Where theory predicts larger common pool problems tend to have greater adjudication but some outliers that tend to have large bargaining costs. Because of last year’s meeting Eric and Kristi submitted an interdisciplinary grant proposal.

Cloe, Michigan State: Participated in a workshop on how water is managed in areas with an abundance of water. A white paper came out of the workshop. Working with hydrologist in California looking at reverse pumping (actively pumping water to increase recharge). Couple agriculture model with urban model, institutions, and hydrology. Estimating value of water in that National Forests provide to urban area in Southern California. Working with Todd and Jordan on grant proposal for groundwater. Several works in progress on markets for water pollution with empirical applications in Cheseapeke Bay and nutrient leaching in California.

Saichon, Michigan State: Interdisciplinary work on BMPs impact on water. Tools are being used by policymakers to try and enhance groundwater recharge. Experimenting in one watershed and going well and looking to expand to another watershed. Last year finished a grant that looked at climate change and hydrology models to create a tool for understanding future. Also looking at institutions in other states (in particular Nebraska) to get ideas for Michigan. Research in Thailand on ecosystem services. Michigan implemented a policy 8 years ago that limited withdrawals in order to protect streamflows.

Laura, Missouri: Missouri is hiring 15 people in sustainability with some emphasis on water. Article on drought tolerant plants is revise and resubmit. Adoption of rain barrels with another student. Land Economics article that looks at transaction costs and participation in CRP, EQIP, and CSP. Looking at comparing water institutions in Kansas, Nebraska, Missouri, Iowa, and Illinois. Might be interested in adding Michigan after hearing Saichon’s report.

12:05 p.m. Lunch

12:55 p.m. Resumed state reports

Greg, Texas A&M Agrilife: Just started his position in August.

Kent, Arkansas: There are water scarcity issues in winter and spring especially. Projects on solving timing problem. Work on recovering water and storing. Issues with conjunctive water management. A project on return on investment of on-farm reservoirs. A project on off-farm water demand curve. A project looking at the effect of lateral flows on optimal control of groundwater.

Brian, New Mexico: Frank has a project on sustainable water use in El Paso Rio Grande area. Looks at conjunctive water use. Big issue is lawsuit on water use between Texas and New Mexico. Could someone estimate an optimal settlement with Texas? Would it be possible to solve common pool resource problem in proposing the settlement to Texas rather than having court hand down the solution? Salinity management issues as a multistate project with Texas. Interested in looking at how changes in irrigation technology affect return flow and implications for optimal water pricing. Brian is organizing a session on groundwater management at UCOWR.

Kristi and Dannelle, New Mexico: Also proposed a session at UCOWR. Starting to look at groundwater management strategies in a small region in Wyoming that overlies Ogallala Aquifer. Interested in having Mike Young from Australia speak to Wyoming producers. Also working on issues at headwaters of CO River. Trying to quantify the benefits from return flows from irrigation. Dannelle is serving as associate editor for Water Resources Research. Working on a project looking at agricultural management plan on an Indian Reservation. Another project that is a multistate EPSCoR related to climate change, bioenergy, land use, and water. Dannelle is leaving her position at Wyoming and joining ARS, USDA to be a director of a climate hub. Dannelle will still be stationed out of Wyoming.

Jordan, Stephan, and Chris, Colorado: Experiments related to water quality. Some work on well capacity effect on water use in Kansas. Another paper looking at land retirement programs for water conservation. Approached by a group of water users to understand the impact of water conservation policies. Looking at how price and quantity policies affect profits. Report is available on department website. Next step is to understand how groundwater users perceive the management policies. In the survey they are providing different levels of information about the impact of different policies. Hopeful that some conservation policies will actually be implemented. Involved in large CAP project from USDA looking at water use in Ogallala—multi-institutional and multistate. Lab experiments on water use. CGE model on competition for water and land use. Working with engineer that looks at water markets. There is a symposium for John Loomis on December 1. New position is open to fill his position.

Karina and Nick, Nebraska: Multistate work with Kansas looking at how institutions and hydrological conditions affect groundwater use and cropping patterns. In Nebraska, information is all at the district level so difficult to collect information. Working with ERS on project mentioned by Glenn. Trying to understand drivers of groundwater levels across the Ogallala Aquifer. Nebraska has some stream augmentation programs—a combination of water right retirement and engineering project. NRD spending money to buy out water rights. Lots of innovation going on at the district level. Tim Foster has created a freeware version of AquaCrop. Some workshops to learn how to use the tool are being planned. Project with Environmental Defense Fund on water management. Projects on water transfers and water markets continuing. Looking to have a session on water trading in April. Will have money from USDA for students to travel to the meeting. Working with start-up companies to collect real-time data in the field. Can measure energy and water use real-time.

Nathan, Kansas: There are important policy innovations occurring in Kansas. One such innovation is a Local Enhanced Management Area in Sheridan County that restricts water use. Management plan was supported by farmers. Research looking at how farmers reduced their water use inside the management area compared to those outside the management area. Working on project joint with Nebraska to understand impact of institutions on water use. Has a grad student that just finished a dissertation using AquaCrop and understanding optimal water management under risk aversion with limited well capacity and how that optimal management varies across soils. Working with another grad student on dynamically optimal water extraction accounting for technical change and climate change. Another paper on additionality in Payment for Environmental Service contracts when the technology is diffusing.

2:15 p.m.: Mike Herrington’s report

2:45 p.m.: Break

2:55 p.m.: Continued state reports

Todd, Rhode Island: Publication in Land Economics on simple policies in a detailed economic-hydrologic model. Simple policies have poor distributional qualities. Local policies perform better. Simple groundwater markets may not perform well given hydrologic heterogeneity. Interested in dynamic groundwater markets. Looking at transboundary groundwater management. Finds that international basins are depleted faster. Interested in cognitive mechanism in natural resource use. Ran an experiment on common pool resource use under time pressure.

Mark, Colorado: Since late August has been interim Director of a program in Environment and Sustainability. Put together a session at AWRA on ecosystem valuation. Has been working on an optimization model on optimal payments for ecosystem services.

3:15 p.m. Minutes discussion

Karina: several papers were submitted. Special issue will be published in the journal Water.

Brian moved to accept the minutes

Glenn seconded

Last year’s minutes were approved

Discussion about location for next year’s meeting

Todd said Rhode Island could host

Kristi suggested Washington D.C. as a location and interact with policymakers. Glenn said ERS could host. Could invite USDA and NIFA. Glenn said that if you bring policymakers that you need to have a morning of presentations to make it worth their time or have them present. Glenn had some suggestions of people that we might want to invite.

Jordan suggested we could tie in with another conference.

Stephen suggested Sacramento area, but no host there.

Kent asked if it would be possible to have short presentations in place of state reports.

An alternative model is to pick a city without a host and just have a meeting.

Todd suggested we put D.C. as the most likely location but we need more discussion about it.

The main alternative discussed was having a meeting in Portland with the same timing as AWAR meeting.

Jordan moved for Kent Kovacs to be elected as Secretary

Karina seconded

Motion approved

Potential dates for next meeting

October 12 or 19

Eric said the incoming editor of Choices is from Utah State so talk with Eric if interested in a special issue.

Todd was selected to lead a committee to determine the best options for a location for next year’s meeting.

Meeting adjourned

Accomplishments

<h1>Objective 1</h1> Dinar (California):  <table> <tbody> <tr> <td width="507"> Lab (with students) and field (with farmers) experiments to assess policies to reduce/remove electricity subsidies to pumping groundwater. </td> </tr> </tbody> </table>  Grismer (California): <table> <tbody> <tr> <td width="363"> We assembled preliminary information from Salinas Valley field studies about acceptable levels of applied water salinity and minimum rainfall needed. </td> <td width="343"> A new PhD student has completed the literature review, passed her Qualifying Exam and is preparing the basic plant-soil-water model for use in developing guidelines. </td> <td width="453"> We have assembled basic field measurement materials and are hoping to establish and instrment the field sites this fall. </td> </tr> </tbody> </table> Michelson, Lacewell, and Ganjegunte (Texas): <table> <tbody> <tr> <td width="507"> Energy sorghum and switchgrass performed well under treated municipal wastewater irrigation with elevated salinity.  </td> </tr> </tbody> </table> Hendricks and Golden (Kansas): <table> <tbody> <tr> <td width="363"> Evaluate impacts of changes in land use and water demand due to declining enrollment caps in the Conservation Reserve Program. </td> <td width="343"> Economic and Policy Implications of Groundwater Conservation in Southwest Kansas </td> <td width="485"> Worked with graduate student to write a dissertation on optimal irrigation management with limited water availability using a daily crop simulation model. </td> </tr> </tbody> </table> Hurd (New Mexico): <table> <tbody> <tr> <td width="380"> Study of hydro-social systems of New Mexico acequias (small-system community irrigation) nearing completion. </td> </tr> </tbody> </table> Guilfoos (Rhode Island): <table> <tbody> <tr> <td width="264"> Developed a model of spatial depletion of groundwater the combines aspects of biophysical systems and economics. </td> <td width="360"> Developed a water quality transport model and laboratory experiments that test the effectiveness of asymmetric information mechanisms to reduce water pollution. </td> </tr> </tbody> </table> Peterson (Minnesota): <table> <tbody> <tr> <td width="507"> Co-authored (with N. Hendricks) the chapter "Economics of Water" for the Oxford Handbook of Water Politics and Policy </td> </tr> </tbody> </table> Peck and Hansen (Wyoming): <table> <tbody> <tr> <td width="363"> Peck et al. are creating an Agricultural Resource Management Plan for the Wind River Reservation, with the Tribal Water Eng. Office and interdisciplinary working group. </td> <td width="343"> Peck is serving as an Associate Editor at Water Resources Research. </td> <td width="485"> Hansen and Schoengold are co-guest editing a 2016 special issue of Water based on the October 2015 Salt Lake City conference co-sponsored with WSWC. </td> </tr> </tbody> </table> Paudel (Louisiana): <table> <tbody> <tr> <td width="363"> In an abundant water available situation, farmers irrigate when needed as frequently as possible. </td> <td width="343"> They use irrigation method based on capital requirement.  Low cost easy technology is preferred over expensive technology.  </td> <td width="235"> Farmers seem to prefer submersible electric power well with polypipe for irrigation than center pivot system. </td> <td width="219"> Laser leveling of field for efficient water movement across the field has been the norm in Louisiana. </td> </tr> </tbody> </table> Cobourn (Virginia): <table> <tbody> <tr> <td width="234"> Book chapter in Competition for Water Resources: Experiences and Management Approaches in the U.S. and Europe, eds. J. Ziolkowska and J. Peterson. </td> <td width="234"> Organized symposium and invited presentation, Western Agricultural Economics Association/Canadian Agricultural Economics Society Annual Meeting, June 2016 </td> <td width="156"> Manuscript in prep: "Surface water rights and land allocation decisions" </td> </tr> </tbody> </table> McCann (Missouri): <table> <tbody> <tr> <td width="306"> A graduate student, Yubing Fan, has been using the recent USDA 2013 Farm and Ranch Irrigation Survey (FRIS) to analyze water use and water use efficiency.  </td> <td width="318"> Yubing Fan and Laura McCann have resubmitted a paper on adoption of drought tolerant plants by homeowners to the J. of Agricultural and Resource Economics.  </td> </tr> </tbody> </table> Brozović and Schoengold (Nebraska): W3190 members in NE and KS are creating a database with disaggregated soil and climate data in order to estimate how these factors affect water use.   Singletary (Nevada): [NSF-WSC grant #1360506]: The long-term goal of this 4-year funded research project is, through a collaborative modeling research design, to integrate and parameterize hydrological and atmospheric models to simulate changes in water flows caused by extreme drought events that (1) reduce Sierra Nevada snow-pack and (2) have the potential to hasten the timing of peak water flows as melting snowpack water moves from the mountains through arid regions and terminates in desert lakes/reservoir/wetlands. The Truckee-Carson River System in northwestern Nevada comprises the case study area.  In addition to the hydrological and atmospheric components, human decision-making is coupled with hydrologic and operational simulation models, in as much as these decisions have the potential to alter the timing and specific locations at which water is withdrawn from the system in drought periods, relative to water years that are not characterized by drought.  Outcomes of individual water use decisions in response to intermittent periods of drought can influence downstream water availability which would in turn affect hydrological outcomes, as well as constraints on downstream users and subsequent individual (ag firms or operations existing the industry) and regional economic outcomes. [USDA-NIFA-AFRI #69007-23190]: This is a multi-state USDA competitively funded grant supported 5-year integrated research and outreach [Extension] project. Activities, outputs and short-term outcomes included: collaborating with project team members representing University of Nevada, Reno, University of Arizona, Utah State University, 1994 land grant colleges, and FALCON to establish research agenda/activities to achieve project goals; developing a research plan to support the project in partnering with tribal nations to characterize bio-physical and economic factors (and interactions) that influence water-use decisions and related market or non-market outcomes. <h1>Objective 2</h1> Dinar (California): Hydro-economic modeling to assess methods that address management of water in a drought stricken river basin with focus on ecosystem services. Grismer (California): <table> <tbody> <tr> <td width="294"> We have prepared 3 "Drought tips" for publication related to saline and treated wastewater reuse for crop production.  Two are published and the third has passed reviews. </td> <td width="330"> From the modeling studies initiated, we will develop insights into water pricing schemes that limit groundwater usage and incentivize recycled water use. </td> </tr> </tbody> </table>   Michelson, Lacewell, and Ganjegunte (Texas): Dry Year Options for meeting urban and agricultural water needs were examined for the Edwards Aquifer with five and ten year contracts.  Hendricks and Golden (Kansas): <table> <tbody> <tr> <td width="330"> The Impact of Discount Rate, and Price on Intertemporal Groundwater Models in Southwest Kansas </td> <td width="294"> Understanding how climate change and technical change impact the dynamically optimal extraction of groundwater </td> </tr> </tbody> </table> Bartholic, Garnache, and Seedang (Michigan): <table> <tbody> <tr> <td width="199"> MSU-Barthoic and collaborators developed an Integrative Decision Support System for managing water resources under increased climate variability (USDA-NIFA funded grant) </td> <td width="199"> MSU-Bartholic and collaborators continued to expand the capabilities of existing decision support tools (eg.calculate recharge from implementing various BMPs ). </td> <td width="199"> MSU-Garnache continues collaborating with a UC Davis to model local groundwater recharge rates and continues collecting data for estimation of water demand models. </td> <td width="199"> MSU-Seedang reviewed potential economic information to be included into a decision support tool (eg., BMPs cost/benefit data). </td> </tr> </tbody> </table> Hurd (New Mexico): Modeling of climate change impacts on water and agricultural resources extended to the development of system dynamics modeling of climate-human-land use systems. Gitau (Indiana): Long-term rainfall seasonality analyses revealed that dramatic changes can occur in seasonal rainfall even if no appreciable changes are discernible on an annual basis. Guilfoos (Rhode Island): <table> <tbody> <tr> <td width="477"> Developed experiments that look at loss aversion for water quality. </td> </tr> </tbody> </table>   Peterson (Minnesota): Co-edited (with J. Ziolkowska) and contributed synthesis chapter to the book Competition for Water Resources: Experiences and Management Approaches in the US and Europe Schaible (USDA/ERS) Peck and Hansen (Wyoming): <table> <tbody> <tr> <td width="330"> Hansen and Edwards are co-PIs on a USDA-NIFA proposal to examine opportunities for improved management of water resources in the Upper Colorado River Basin. </td> <td width="294"> Hansen and stakeholder colleagues established an environmental market platform (Wyoming Conservation Exchange) to trade sage-grouse habitat and water quality credits. </td> </tr> </tbody> </table> Paudel (Louisiana): Water management based on critical area well head level restriction can provide respite from excessive withdrawal of groundwater. Mullen (Georgia): <table> <tbody> <tr> <td width="199"> Developed projections of agricultural water demand in the state of Georgia from the present out to 2050. </td> <td width="199"> Projections were done at the county and watershed levels and were based on estimated crop acreage elasticities with respect to output price. </td> <td width="199"> The projections were also broken down by water source, crop, and month. Based on historic weather patterns the distribution of future withdrawals was reported. </td> <td width="199"> These projections were used by the Georgia Water Planning Councils to develop their 5-year water management plans and strategies for addressing future water scarcity. </td> </tr> </tbody> </table> Edwards (Utah): "Economic Insight from Utah’s Water Efficiency Supply Curve" submitted to W3190 themed special issue of Water edited by Kristi Hansen and Karina Schoengold Brozović and Schoengold (Nebraska): We have been working to build a dynamic groundwater model that includes well-yield and more realistic producer decision-making. These efforts, including W3190 members from California and Nebraska as well as other collaborators including hydrologists and agronomists, have resulted in multiple presentations and publications. Singletary (Nevada): Project team consensus is to utilize participatory research design to: 1) engage Great Basin region tribal communities in climate vulnerability/resiliency assessment; 2) collaboratively identify adaptation strategies viable for tribal nations and traditions that also serve to strengthen/sustain tribal economies through innovative water use; and 3) annually provide a structured participatory forum for tribal communities to share their ideas for methods to address emergent water management issues that are original to and appropriate to their individual tribal community cultural traditions and water resource management challenges and opportunities. Colby (Arizona): Economic framework developed for analyzing value of advanced remote sensing data to measure and monitor water "savings" in irrigation forbearance agreements. Tradeoffs estimated using empirical models for providing improved freshwater flows to Mexico Sea of Cortez marine ecosystems through fallowing of irrigated cropland.   <h1>Objective 3</h1> Michelson, Lacewell, and Ganjegunte (Texas): <table> <tbody> <tr> <td width="306"> The cost of State of Texas 50-year Water Planning alternatives were evaluated and ranged from $40 to $500 per acre foot. </td> <td width="318"> Rio Grande water management strategies were modeled to identify the most effective alternatives. </td> </tr> </tbody> </table> Hendricks and Golden (Kansas): <table> <tbody> <tr> <td width="222"> Monitoring the impacts of Sheridan 6 Local Enhanced Management Area </td> <td width="402"> Wrote a grant proposal to improve understanding of factors that affect the success of local water management institutions. </td> </tr> </tbody> </table> Bartholic, Garnache, and Seedang (Michigan): <table> <tbody> <tr> <td width="199"> MSU-Seedang /Bartholic synthesized lessons learned from other states that have experience dealing with water scarcity and conflicts (eg., local groundwater management). </td> <td width="199"> MSU-Garnache and Seedang continue research on various topics related to ecosystem and water resource management. </td> <td width="199"> MSU-Garnache investigated institutional aspects for providing optimum ecosystem services. </td> <td width="199"> MSU- Garnache (with collaborators) also examined institutional aspects and water assessment for sustainable community development in Tanzania. </td> </tr> </tbody> </table> Hurd (New Mexico): Interstate water policy and issues between Texas and New Mexico along the Rio Grande watershed assessed, developed joint interstate research plan and proposal. Eiswerth (Colorado): <table> <tbody> <tr> <td width="192"> As a result of participation in W3190, developed a review of the literature on payments for water-based ecosystem services (PWES). (Eiswerth) </td> <td width="222"> Due to participation in W3190, developed optimization models that maximize the payback from payments for water-based ecosystem services programs. (Eiswerth) </td> <td width="210"> Because of W3190, I collaborated on water research with a member of another multistate project (Western Education/Extension & Research Activity --WERA 1020). (Eiswerth) </td> </tr> </tbody> </table> Schaible (USDA/ERS) <table> <tbody> <tr> <td width="199"> Challenges for US Irrigated Agriculture in the Face of Emerging Demands and Climate Change. A book chapter on the competition for U.S. agricultural water resources. </td> <td width="199"> ERS Normalized Ag. Price Estimates for 2016 provides normalized prices used by Federal agencies in evaluating development/management plans affecting water/land resources. </td> <td width="199"> The ERS ERR-216 report examines Chesapeake Bay nutrient pollution and nutrient-trading participation in AFOs versus crop-only farms and by AFOs of different sizes. </td> <td width="199"> In ERR-201, ERS examines how U.S. fieldcrop ag. adapts to climate change & increased water scarcity, focusing on cropping and irrigated/dryland crop allocations. </td> </tr> </tbody> </table> Yoder (Washington): <table> <tbody> <tr> <td width="336"> Winner of the Am. Applied Econ. Assoc. Gardner Prize for Applied Econ. Analysis for Benefit-Cost analysis: See https://swwrc.wsu.edu/2014ybip. </td> <td width="288"> Multiple press coverage events for Yakima Basin Integrated Plan Benefit-cost Analysis.  See See https://swwrc.wsu.edu/2014ybip for details. </td> </tr> </tbody> </table> Hearne (North Dakota): The response of western North Dakota communities to expanded demand for industrial water, and residential water were reviewed and assessed.  Edwards (Utah): USDA AFRI proposal: “Incentives, Markets, and Management to Sustain Water for Agriculture in the Upper Colorado River Basin” $5M, Under Review, with Kristi Hansen Cobourn (Virginia): <table> <tbody> <tr> <td width="199"> Manuscript in review: "Efficient Groundwater Allocation and Binding Hydrologic Externalities" </td> <td width="199"> Manuscript in prep: "Bargaining for recharge: an analysis of cooperation and conjunctive surface water-groundwater management" </td> <td width="429"> M.S. thesis completed: "Policies to reduce land subsidence from groundwater pumping in the Southern Chesapeake Bay region of Virginia" </td> </tr> </tbody> </table> McCann (Missouri): <table> <tbody> <tr> <td width="477"> A comparison of water rights institutions in the Midwest is being conducted.  </td> </tr> </tbody> </table> Brozović and Schoengold (Nebraska): (1) During the year, W3190 members from NE provided technical support and engagement on water economics and governance as requested to State Senators for a variety of bills and resolutions in the Nebraska state legislature, as well as to the Public Policy Center of California, the Environmental Defense Fund, the Washington State Department of Ecology, one of the California Groundwater Management Agencies, and to the CSG West Legislative Council on River Governance. (2) W3190 members in NE have been working to understand the potential for formal and informal water transactions to provide risk management tools to producers in the West. Activities have included workshops to water managers and decision makers in multiple states, presentations, and publications.   (3) W3190 members in NE and KS have been collecting information on water use and water policies and local groundwater management areas. Activities have included data collection and visits with producers, policymakers, and staff.   Singletary (Nevada): This objective will be accomplished as part of the participatory research and outreach activities, including an annual tribal summit featuring tribal water resource managers, agricultural producers and community leaders. The purpose of the summit is to exchange ideas, information, and solutions among tribal members while also sharing the results of project team research. During the reporting period the project team developed and implemented the second annual tribal summit to provide a structured venue for tribal leaders to share their own research and ideas concerning alternative water policy and management institutions and arrangements. Colby (Arizona): Model and empirically estimate costs and benefits associated with fallowing land to provide water for urban and environmental needs.   Develop innovative water trading mechanisms for the southwestern U.S.   Evaluate federal and state  pilot water leasing programs to accomplish specific public objectives.

Publications

Kahil, M. T., J. Albiac, A. Dinar, E. Calvo, E. Esteban, L. Avella, M. Garcia-Molla,  The Debate on Water Policies: Evidence from Drought in Spain, Water, 8(2), 34. doi:10.3390/w8020034, 2016. Kahil, M. T., A Dinar, J. Albiac, Cooperative Water Management and Ecosystem Protection under Scarcity and Drought in Arid and Semiarid Regions. Water Resources & Economics,13:60-74, 2016. Tellez-Foster, A. Dinar, and A. Rapoport. Comparing Alternative Modifications of Energy Subsidies: The Case of Groundwater Extraction. UCR SPP Working Paper Series, July 2016, WP# 16-02.   Tellez-Foster, A. Rapoport, and A. Dinar. Groundwater and Electricity Consumption un-der Alternative Subsidies: Evidence from Laboratory Experiments. UCR SPP Working Paper Series, July 2016, WP# 16-03. Tellez-Foster, A. Rapoport, and A. Dinar. Alternative Policies to Manage Electricity Subsi-dies for Groundwater Extraction: A Field Study in Mexico. UCR SPP Working Paper Series, July 2016, WP# 16-05.   Grismer, M.E. 2015. Use of shallow groundwater for crop production. UC - ANR Drought Tip Publication 8521. June. Grismer, M.E. and K.M. Bali. 2015. Use of saline drain water for crop productions. UC - ANR Drought Tip Publication 8554. October   Jones, S., A.M. Michelsen, E. Evenson and D. Blodgett. 2015. The National Water Availability and Use Science Program.  IMPACT. American Water Resources Association. Middleburg, VA. Vol. 17(6): 18-20. Sheng, Z., A.M. Michelsen and Y. Liu. 2015. Comparing Long-term Water Resources Planning for Two Large Cities: Houston and Shanghai. IMPACT. American Water Resources Association. Middleburg, VA. 17:1. January. Invited. Sun, G., A.M. Michelsen, Z. Sheng, A.F. Fang, Y. Shang and H. Zhang. 2015.  Featured Collection Introduction: Water for Megacities - Challenges and Solutions. Journal of the American Water Resources Association. 51(3):585-588. DOI:10.1111/1752-1688.12317.     Garnache, C. (2015). “Fish, Farmers, and Floods: Coordinating Institutions to Optimize the Provision of Ecosystem Services.” Journal of the Association of Environmental and Resource Economists. 2(3):367-399. Garnache, C., Lopez, M.C., Pearson, A.L., Richardson, R.B., and Zwickle, A. (2015). “Institutional Analysis, Participatory Mapping, and Water Assessment for Sustainable Community Development in Tanzania.” Report to the Center for Advanced Study of International Development, Michigan State University. International Strategic Partnership Funding. Seedang, Saichon and Chutima Noinard. 2015. Estimating the Economic Value of Ecosystems Services for Supporting the Implementation of Payments for Environmental Services and Bio-carbon Financial Mechanisms in Thailand Watershed Pilot Sites.  Under Project "Integrated Community-based Forest and Catchment Management through an Ecosystem Service Approach ".  Technical Report (Final Report). November, 2015. 220 pages. (Supported by Global Environmental Facility (GEF), Thailand Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment (MONRE), United Nations Development Programme (UNDP)).   Kovacs, K., M. Mancini. 2017. “Conjunctive water management to sustain agricultural economic returns and a shallow aquifer at the landscape level.”  Journal of Soil and Water Conservation, forthcoming.   Hurd, Brian. 2015. Concepts and Methods for Assessing Economic Impacts from Climate Change on Water Resources. In The Handbook of Water Economics, Ariel Dinar and Kurt Schwabe (eds.), Edward Elgar Publishers. DOI Fernald, A., Guldan, S., Boykin, K., Cibils, A., Gonzales, M., Hurd, B. H., Lopez, S., Ochoa, C. G., Ortiz, M., Rivera, J., Rodriguez, S., and Steele, C. M. (2015). Linked hydrologic and social systems that support resilience of traditional irrigation communities, Hydrol. Earth Syst. Sci. 19, 293-307, 2015. doi:10.5194/hess-19-293-2015. Benjamin Turner, Vincent Tidwell, Alexander Fernald, Jose Rivera, Sylvia Rodriguez, Steven Guldan, Carlos Ochoa, Brian Hurd, Kenneth Boykin, and Andres Cibils. 2016. “Modeling acequia irrigation systems using System Dynamics: model development, evaluation, and sensitivity analyses to investigate socio-economic and biophysical feedbacks,” Sustainability, 8(10), 1019; doi:10.3390/su8101019   Eiswerth, M.E., R. Epanchin-Niell, K. Rollins, M.H. Taylor. Economic Modeling and the Management of Exotic Annual Bromus Species: Accounting for Ecosystem Dynamics, Ecological Thresholds, and Spatial Interdependencies. Chapter 15 in: Exotic Brome-Grasses in Arid and Semi-arid Ecosystems of the Western U.S.: Causes, Consequences, and Management Implications. Edited by M.J. Germino, J.C. Chambers, and C.S. Brown. New York, NY: Springer Publishing. 2016. pp. 429-456.   Gitau, M.W. 2016. Long-term seasonality of rainfall in the Southwest Florida Gulf coastal zone. Climate Research. DOI 10.3354/cr01399.   Guilfoos, T., Khanna, N., & Peterson, J. M. (2016). Efficiency of Viable Groundwater Management Policies. Land Economics, 92(4), 618-640. Miao, H., Fooks, J. R., Guilfoos, T., Messer, K. D., Pradhanang, S. M., Suter, J. F., Trandafir, S., and Uchida, E. (2016). The impact of information on behavior under an ambient-based policy for regulating nonpoint source pollution. Water Resources Research. 52(5): 3294-3308. Booth, P. L., Guilfoos, T., & Uchida, E. (2016). Endowment Effects and Drinking Water Quality. Agricultural and Resource Economics Review, 45(02), 338-366. Kim, C. S., & Guilfoos, T. (2016). The Effect of Cost-share Programs on Ground Water Exploitation and Nonpoint-source Pollution under Endogenous Technical Change. Agricultural and Resource Economics Review, 45(02), 394-417. Boslett, A., Guilfoos, T., & Lang, C. (2016). Valuation of expectations: a hedonic study of shale gas development and New York’s Moratorium. Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, 77, 14-30. Delgado M., Guilfoos T., Boslett A. (2016) The Cost of Hydraulic Fracturing: A Hedonic Analysis. Resource and Energy Economics, 46, 1-22.   Ziolkowska, J.R. and J.M. Peterson, Editors. Competition for Water Resources: Experiences and Management Approaches in the US and Europe. Elsevier. 2016. ISBN: 978-0-12-803237-4 Peterson, J.M. Water-Energy-Food Nexus: Commonalities and Differences in the US and Europe. In J. Ziolkowska and J. Peterson, eds. Competition for Water Resources: Experiences and Management Approaches in the US and Europe. Elsevier. 2016.  Peterson, J.M. and N. Hendricks. “Economics of Water.” K. Conca and E. Weinthal, eds. Oxford Handbook of Water Politics and Policy. Oxford University Press. 2016 (forthcoming). Walter, J. and J.M. Peterson. “Strategic R&D and the Innovation of Products: Understanding the Role of Time Preferences and Product Differentiation.” Economics of Innovation and New Technology. In press. Caldas, M.M., J.S. Bergtold, J.M. Peterson, and D. Earnhart. “Land-use Choices:  The Case of Conservation Reserve Program (CRP) re-enrollment in Kansas, USA.” Journal of Land Use Science. In press. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/1747423X.2016.1215563 Kulcsar, L.J., J. Aistrup, T. Bulatewicz, J.M. Peterson, S.M. Welch, and D.R. Steward. “Water and Society: Interdisciplinary Education in Natural Resources.” Journal of Contemporary Water Research and Education 158(August 2016): 120-131. http://ucowr.org/files/Journal/Issues/158/158_Kulcsar_et_al.pdf Schaible, Glenn. D., Marcel P. Aillery.  2016.  Challenges for U.S. Irrigated Agriculture in the Face of Emerging Demands and Climate Change. Chapter 2.1.1 in Competition for Water Resources: Experiences and Management Approaches in the US and Europe, eds. J. Ziolkowska and J. Peterson, Elsevier Publishing (September 30, 2016), at: http://store.elsevier.com/Competition-for-Water-Resources/isbn-9780128032374/. Schaible, Glenn D.  2016.  ERS Agricultural Normalized Price Estimates.  [ERS Data Product (posted by 9/30/16), a congressionally-mandated ERS obligation. Wallander, S., M. Aillery, and G. Schaible. Long-Term Response to Water Scarcity in California, Amber Waves Statistic: Farm Practices & Management, USDA/ERS (November 02, 2015), 6 p. Schaible, G. and M. Aillery. More Efficient Irrigation Methods are being Adopted on Farmland in the Western U.S., ERS Chart of Note, USDA/ERS (January 6, 2016).  Sneeringer, Stacy.  Comparing Participation in Nutrient Trading by Livestock Operations to Crop Producers in the Chesapeake Bay Watershed, Economic Research Report (ERR-216), Economic Research Service, USDA (September 2016): 71 p. Marshall, Elizabeth, Marcel Aillery, Scott Malcolm, and Ryan Williams.  Climate Change, Water Scarcity, and Adaptation in the U.S. Fieldcrop Sector, Economic Research Report (ERR-201), Economic Research Service, USDA (November 2015): 110 p.   Blevins, S., K. Hansen, G. Paige, and A. MacKinnon. 2016. “The True Value of Flood Irrigation: What’s Seen as Wasteful Water Use Has Hidden Benefits.” Western Confluence: Natural Resource Science and Management in the West. UW Ruckelshaus Institute publication, Laramie, WY, pp. 38-40. Hansen, K. 2016. “Meeting the Challenge of Water Scarcity in the Western U.S.” In Competition for Water Resources: Experiences and Management Approaches in the US and Europe (J. Ziolkowska. and J. Peterson, editors). Elsevier: Cambridge, MA. Kim, C.S., R.M. Adams and D. Peck. 2016. “Multiyear Discrete Stochastic Programming with a Fuzzy Semi-Markov Process.” Applied Mathematics 7:482-495.   Yoder, Jonathan, Michael Brady, and Joseph Cook. 2016.  Water markets and storage: Substitutes or complements for drought risk mitigation? Water Economics and Policy 2(2):21 pp.   Hearne, R. and F. Fernando. 2016. “Strategies for Community and Industry Water Management in the Oil Producing Region of North Dakota” Water 2016, 8, 331; doi:10.3390/w8080331 Hearne, R. and T. Prato. 2016. “Institutional Evolution of Missouri River Management.”  Water Policy.  18 (3) 619-634.   Amir Mani, Frank T-C. Tsai, Krishna Paudel.  2016. Mixed integer linear fractional programming for conjunctive use of surface water and groundwater.  Journal of Water Resources Planning and Management 142(11): 10.1061/(ASCE)WR.1943-5452.0000676 Krishna Paudel, Mahesh Pandit, and Roger Hinson. 2016. Irrigation Water Sources and Irrigation Application Methods Used by U.S. Plant Nursery Producers.  Water Resources Research DOI: 10.1002/2015WR017619    Atreya, A., W. Kriesel, and J. Mullen. "Valuing Open Space in a Marshland Environment:  Development Alternatives for Coastal Georgia"  Journal of Agricultural and Applied Economics (in press).   Edwards, E.C. 2016. “What Lies Beneath? Aquifer Heterogeneity and the Economics of Groundwater Management.” Journal of the Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 3 no. 2, pp. 453-91.   Cobourn, K.M., L. Elbakidze, and S. Ghosh. 2016. “Conjunctive Water Management in Hydraulically Connected Regions in the Western U.S.” solicited chapter for inclusion in Competition for Water Resources: Experiences and Management Approaches in the U.S. and Europe, eds. J. Ziolkowska and J. Peterson Speir, S. Pittman and D. Tomberlin. 2015. “Uncertainty, Irreversibility and the Optimal Timing of Large-Scale Ecosystem Restoration.” Frontiers in Marine Science 2: 101. doi: 10.3389/fmars.2015.00101.   Mieno, T. and Brozović, N., 2016, Price elasticity of groundwater demand: Attenuation and amplification bias due to incomplete information, American Journal of Agricultural Economics, in press.   Kuwayama, Y. and Brozović, N., 2016, Optimal management of environmental externalities with time lags and uncertainty, Environmental and Resource Economics, in press.   O’Keeffe, J., Buytaert, W., Mijic, A., Brozović, N., and Sinha, R., 2016, The use of semi-structured interviews for the characterisation of farmer irrigation practices, Hydrology and Earth System Sciences, v. 20, 1911-1924, DOI: 10.5194/hess-20-1911-2016.   Sharma, S. and Schoengold, K., 2016, Do Hypothetical Choices Indicate True Risk Preferences? A comparison of stated and revealed data on decisions over risky outcomes, Cornhusker Economics. Department of Agricultural Economics, University of Nebraska-Lincoln.   Speir, C., Han, J. and Brozović, N., 2016, Spatial dynamic optimization of groundwater use with ecological standards for instream flow, Water Economics and Policy, DOI: 10.1142/S2382624X16500132.   Young, R.K. and Brozović, N., 2016, Innovations in groundwater management: Smart markets for transferable groundwater extraction rights, Technology and Innovation, v. 17, 219-226, DOI: 10.3727/194982416X14520374943220.   Kuwayama, Y., Young. R.K., and Brozović, N., 2016, Groundwater scarcity: Management approaches and recent innovations, in J. Ziolkowska and J. Peterson (eds.), Competition for Water Resources: Experiences and Management Approaches in the U.S. and Europe, in press, Elsevier.   Wheeler, S., Schoengold, K. and Bjornlund, H., 2016, Lessons to be Learned from Groundwater Trading in Australia and the United States in A. Jakeman et al. (eds.), Integrated Groundwater Management, in press, DOI: 10.1007/978-3-319-23576-9_20.   Montginoul, M., Rinaudo, J.D., Brozović, N., and Donoso, G., 2016, Controlling groundwater exploitation through economic instruments: Current practices, challenges and innovative approaches, in A. Jakeman et al. (eds.), Integrated Groundwater Management, in press, DOI: 10.1007/978-3-319-23576-9_22.   Awada, T., Brozović, N., and Koelsch, R., 2016, Implications of Climate Change on Nebraska’s Agriculture, Food and Water, in The Implications of Climate Change for Nebraska: Summary Report of Sector-Based Roundtable Discussions, Wilhite, D., and Morrow, K., School of Natural Resources, University of Nebraska, Lincoln, Nebraska, 55p.   Sun, S., J.P. Sesmero, and K. Schoengold (2016) “The Role of Common Pool Problems in Irrigation Inefficiency: A Case Study in Groundwater Pumping in Mexico” Agricultural Economics, 47(1): 117-127, available online 7-JAN-2016, DOI: 10.1111/agec.12214.   Brozović, N., 2015, What policy instruments help to manage agricultural groundwater use sustainably? in Drying Wells, Rising Stakes: Towards Sustainable Agricultural Groundwater Use, OECD Studies on Water, OECD Publishing, Paris, <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1787/9789264238701-en">http://dx.doi.org/10.1787/9789264238701-en</a>.   Foster, T., Brozović, N., and Butler, A.P., 2015, Why well yield matters for managing agricultural drought risk, Weather and Climate Extremes, DOI: 10.1016/j.wace.2015.07.003.   Foster, T., Brozović, N., and Butler, A.P., 2015, Analysis of the impacts of well yield and groundwater depth on irrigated agriculture, Journal of Hydrology, v. 523, 86-96, DOI: 10.1016/j.jhydrol.2015.01.032.   Singletary, L., Sterle, K.a, & Simpson, K. a (2016). Assessing the Climate Resiliency and Adaptive Capacity of the Truckee-Carson River System: Results of a Survey of Local Organizations. UNCE Special Publication [SP-16-03]. Reno, NV: University of Nevada, Reno - Cooperative Extension.   Bonnie Colby, “Water Trading Innovations: Reducing Agricultural Consumptive Use to Improve Adaptation to Scarcity,” chapter in Competition for Water Resources: Experiences and Management Approaches in the US and Europe, edited by Jadwiga Ziolkowska and Jeffrey Peterson, November, 2016   Dari Duval and Bonnie Colby, “Colorado River Flows and the Fisheries Economy of the Upper Gulf of California”, Ecological Engineering, 2016   Ashley Kerna, Bonnie Colby, and Francisco Zamora, Valuing Environmental Flows in Mexico’s Colorado River Delta, Water Economics and Policy, in press.   Andrew Clarke, Bonnie Colby and Gary Thompson, Seasonal Elasticities of Household Water Demand: Application of the Stone-Geary Model Under an Increasing Block Rate Structure, Land Economics, forthcoming, 2017.   Bonnie Colby, Water Linkages beyond the Farm Gate: Implications for Agriculture, Federal Reserve Bank Economic Review, November, 2016.   Bonnie Colby, Lower Rio Grande Groundwater Banking White Paper, Report to New Mexico Interstate Stream Commission, November, 2015   Using Surveys to Inform Design and Implementation of System Conservation Programs, Dr. Bonnie G. Colby, Professor, Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics, University of Arizona January, 2016 (approx. 130 pages)  Developing System Conservation Programs: A Guide For The Bureau Of Reclamation And Partner Organizations, January, 2016 (approx. 120 pages)

Impact Statements

Online water trading initiatives are being introduced and refined in new areas, using economic information provided about the effects of online trading on public agency and participant transaction costs.

Date of Annual Report: 10/25/2017

Report Information

Annual Meeting Dates: 10/19/2017 - 10/20/2017
Period the Report Covers: 10/01/2016 - 09/30/2017

Participants

Dannele Peck (University of Wyoming), Kristi Hansen (University of Wyoming), Kent Kovacs (University of Arkansas), Brian Hurd (New Mexico State University), Glenn Schaible (USDA, Economic Research Service), Chris Goemans (Colorado State University), Todd Guilfoos (University of Rhode Island), Stephan Kroll (Colorado State University), Eric Edwards (Utah State University), Nathan Hendricks (Kansas State University), Greg Torell (Texas AgriLife Research), Karina Schoengold (University of Nebraska), Nicholas Brozovic (University of Nebraska), Taro Mieno (University of Nebraska), Jeremiah Asher (Michigan State University), Garth Taylor (University of Idaho), Jonathan Yoder (Washington State University), Jeffrey Peterson (University of Minnesota), Alex Maas (University of Idaho), Doug Parker (UC Institute for Water Resources), Krishna Paudel (Louisiana State University), Jeffrey Mullen (Georgia State University), Lucia Levers (University of Minnesota), Travis Warziniack (USDA Forest Service), Margaret Gitau (Purdue University)

Brief Summary of Minutes

Introduction of all participants

Brian, Glenn, Doug, Greg, Kristi, and Danelle offer tribute to Ari Michelson.

Garth notes this is Glenn Schaible’s last meeting. Glenn indicates the group has been productive with special sessions at conferences, contributions to books, among others. Glenn has research files for all the reports of the past projects.

8:30-10:30am State/Agency Reports

Garth Taylor, Idaho: Idaho has severe problems with recharging the snake river plain aquifer. Have problems with reservoir management. All Western state will be concerned with conjunctive use.

Jonathan Yoder, Washington: Lots of legal battles about conjunctive use. Have to show legal right to use water. Water banks have popped up. Director of state water resources center. Supply and demand analysis of the water for the state. Looking at the presence of chemical plumes.

Jeremiah Asher, Michigan: Assistant director of the institute for water research. Look at water quality related to Erie basin and algal blooms. Started a program with the great lakes initiative. Provide producers with a suite of tools to find places to put best management project to reduce phosphorous and sediment. Tool with the national weather service connect conservation districts and farmers with a pay for performance system. Southwest Michigan needs to come up with a plan to manage water resources. Have to show withdrawals do not affect fish streams. Chloe is doing work on efficiency gains from second best policies for climate and agriculture mitigation.

Todd Guilfoos, Rhode Island: Publish paper on groundwater modeling on the landscape level loss of the aquifer and uncertainty. Look at international borders and groundwater issues. Two satellites orbit earth and measure groundwater depletion with gravity. Works well in stable environments. Look at the temporal aspects of groundwater markets. Is it worth the complexity to look at the spatial and temporal aspects? Former student is at the EPA. He does optimization with MODFLOW.

Greg Torell, Texas: Remotely sensed soil data. Dispute with Mexico and US about the salinity issues. Texas has a state water plan that uses bottom-up planning. In these reports, there are demand and supply forecasts.

Kent Kovacs, Arkansas: Completed 2016 Mississippi Delta Irrigation Survey. Look at the WTP for investment in conjunctive water management. Several papers look at the impacts of groundwater decline on the changes in crop mix and the resulting changes in water quality and carbon accounting. Look at how lateral flows influence central management of groundwater resources.

Kristi Hansen, Wyoming: Co-guest edit a special issue from a conference. Look at the use of irrigation technology to use groundwater use more efficiently. Mountain valley growers’ conversion to center pivot will change the ecosystem services. How hard would it be to free up water? There are a number of ecological tradeoffs and a proposal has gone out to explore these issues.

Eric Edwards, Utah: Looked at the way people could conserve water. Compare various practices to save water. Great Salt Lake is declining and is at almost the lowest level ever. This is due to water withdrawals. Need to put more water back in the lake. Cost efficiency curve if you use alternative techniques to put water back in the stream. Get this at a low cost with trading. Journal of Economic History paper shows irrigated agriculture explains most of the yield gains. Look at the basins in CA who receive the most benefits from regulation, which are the basins who use the most water. The basins who face the largest transaction costs have the lowest benefits.

Jeff Peterson, Minnesota: Emerging program on urban storm water management, wastewater, and reuse. Use remote sensing to monitor the lakes. Water quality impact is largest in the early spring months. Winter hardy crops or perennial crops bred at the Minnesota for their potential to lower runoff. Practices that improve soil health also influence water quality. There is irrigation in the central part of the state because of the sandy soils. There is a little concern about long run depletion. There is intermittent depletion. Lots of nutrient that leach down into the aquifer. Nutrient contamination in streams from the recharge by the aquifer.

Glenn Schaible, ERS: Reformulate FRIS for 2019 and the ERS and NASS seek our input. Farm size is now to be included for all the states. Farm size is critical to level of irrigation investment since 76% of applied irrigation comes from large-scale farm. Most irrigated farms receiving technical assistance are low scale farms. More than 90% of irrigated farms finance their investments privately. Data products are on the ERS website. Definitions related to irrigated agriculture are available. Currently working on AREI of broad resource indicators, and there is a chapter on irrigation. RCPP is for both water and land. The authorizing legislation is very flexible. Helps to get away from the perspective of giving money to move into the formation of partnerships. Some partnerships are innovation, but others have the give me money perspective. Leroy Hansen and Chuck Rosch: JSWC article looks at the costs of restoring prairie pothole region. Karina and Nick have an agreement for the Oglalla reservoir. Kent and Ariel have an agreement with Steve Wallander for aquifer recharge at the southern and western regions.

Worked with NASS on the FRIS development for every version since 1979. Last version integrates horticulture with the outside crops. Encourages the group to make recommendations for new modules in the FRIS. New questions come from ERS and this group. We need more information on price structure, water management, and governance structure. Also would be good to know if farmers idle to dryland and non-irrigated land in response to drought. Karina indicates that people thinks in terms of acre-inches rather than acre-feet.

Alex Maas, Idaho: Look at allocation decision around reservoirs changes. Did experimentation to see how information in common property resources change the amount of pumping for each group. The co-benefits realized depend on the water institution. Look at hedonic valuation in terms of flooding and sustainable water supplies. Soil diversity matters but the monocultures are what increase yield. Yield declines are present around the buffer strips.

Doug parker, UC: Work with David Zilberman on the history of drip irrigation. Originally, drip came from Israel. Look at the value of drip irrigation. Buried drip in processing tomatoes was initially a fail. Changed how the drip was done and there is now a double in yield and 57% increase in water efficiency. Set up weather station to track ET across the state. There are 100 stations. The management of the stations is what makes the difference for the benefits. Get GHG reduction funds to cost-share improvement for farms. Teach people to manage an irrigation system with these funds. Want growers to have nutrient reduction plans and create the curriculum. Now they will do an evaluation of the benefits. Encourages the group to create an economics special issue for UCOWR.

Stephan Kroll and Christopher Goemans, Colorado: Build on eco-hydrology models. Groundwater management districts are working with them. North is in favor of fees and south is in favor of quota. Along the front-range, developers need to show legal availability of water. Large amount of money just to hook up to the water grid. Need mechanisms for the payment of infrastructure to supply water for agriculture and development.

Brian Hurd, New Mexico: Frank Ward and Greg Torell look at conjunctive water uses. Bureau of Reclamation funding to look at brackish water use. Water supply enhancement in southern New Mexico. Look at coupled system with hydro-economic model that Frank Ward and Booker have used to examine the response to climate change over the years. Use choice techniques to evaluate how valuable enhanced water supply is to them. Mexico is pumping groundwater at a faster rate to get it from the US side. Lawsuit between Mexico and New Mexico on groundwater.

Krishna Paudel, Louisiana: Completed soybean irrigation survey with alluvial aquifer. There are issue of salinity from underneath the aquifer. Find the WTP to convert to dry land crops. Look at consumptive water efficiency in conjunctive water use. Another study examines transboundary water issues with Arkansas and Texas. Look at BMPs in SWAT to identify if there are complementary practices.

Karina Schoengold, Nebraska: Nebraska system of NRDs mean significant heterogeneity across policies. Look at the adaption to these policies. ERS project looks at the unintended effects on aquifer. Change the land cover, and you change the aquifer conditions. There is some evidence of grasslands in CRP lead to lower recharge assuming no change in withdrawals. Find different results in Kansas versus Nebraska. Master’s student looks at well characteristics in determining contract decisions. Student did a survey in Ghana on improved water quality. Another project looks at transboundary issues in Central Asia.

Jeffrey Mullen, Georgia: Work with an agricultural engineer to put together a smart app. Tells how much farmers spend on water in their field. There is no volumetric charge, only energy cost. Series of water councils in GA do water planning. What would they be WTA to have a higher septic density. Have a student geologist doing survey in northern Africa and the Middle East. Have a NIFA proposal to look at breeders on perennials, and annuals for sorghum, wheat, and maize. A focus is on accurate data for water withdrawals with ET versus heuristics.

Nick Brozovic, Nebraska: Group exists for multi-disciplinary research. Nebraska has conflicts between groundwater and surface water irrigators. Disagreement with southern neighbors has led to large policy changes in the state. Republican River litigation, the Nebraska districts have sued the state in 2012 because of the losses in stream flow. Lawsuit thrown out.

Examine groundwater management and governance. Eight case studies looking at different parts of the country. High productivity irrigated agriculture, but current technologies and innovations lower than what we would want. Find limited adoption of soil moisture probes and drones with innovative financing. AguaCrop is released with a MatLab platform, and also plan to move to R and Python. Model shows that capacity constraints matter more than the cost of pumping.

Farmers are not interested in water conservation, but they are interested in energy costs. Real time energy cost data is not available from farmers. Water markets indicate there is a lot of informal water trading. Collaborations available with the International Water Policy Institute and Food for Water Institute.

Nathan Hendricks, Kansas: AFRI grant looks at collective action efforts to conserve groundwater. Use a Board of Directors mechanism to encourage groundwater conservation. Publish paper with a graduate student using AguaCrop to examine well capacity and water holding capacity. Publish paper with Peterson on potential productivity gains with climate change. ERL article looks at the offset of wheat yield stress from irrigation. Gabe Sampson looks at peer effects on irrigation adoption in surrounding areas. Another paper looks at how farmers respond to water restrictions with junior and senior water rights. Other project examines land values responses to water rights and saturated thickness.

10:30-10:40am Break

10:40-12:00pm State/Agency Reports

Lucia Levers, Minnesota: Hired to look at the dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico. Work with SWAT and climate models to break up monoculture techniques and evaluate what the economic side of this is. Use a survey to look at different farming techniques. Glenn suggests contacts with Roger Classen and Marc Ribaubo.

Dannele Peck, Wyoming: Complete first year with Climate Change Hub, ARS. Co-organized with Kristi a session at UCOWR. See as a journal editor the connection between what the group does and what the climate hubs do. Climate hubs help ranchers to be climate resilient and adaptive. Recommend we have our work posted on the climate hub website. Look for decision support tools to connect with extension agents and farmers. Last piece is outreach and education. Want to complement extension efforts. Climate hubs have been around for three years. Have good connection with weather and science friends with weather data. Focus on rangeland and livestock management. Want to get modules into the classroom to help producers better adapt to climate change.

Travis Warziniack, Forest Service: Look at sediment runoff associated with landscapes affected by fire. Examine the pay for performance to combat fire risk. Collect money from water utilities to improve fire management and green infrastructure for alternative land use categories. Involved in Forest Service planning efforts to examine the supply and demand for water at six-digit HUC scale. Hydrologists figure out the water yield side. Last big assessment was in 2010 using a four-digit HUC scale. Determine adaptation changes to close demand and supply gaps.

Margaret Gitau, Purdue: Analyze in-stream flows, water quality, and weather data more effectively to downscale for climate scenarios. This is to address the phosphorous flow to Lake Erie. Look beyond the weather data basics to examine the distributions of the data to understand what this does to nutrient loadings. More realizations are necessary for a good downscale analysis for the Western Erie Basin.

Taro Mieno, Nebraska: Look at the moral hazards associated with crop insurance. Previous literature ignores that crop insurance influences input use. The transition from a static to a dynamic model suggests that there is not much of a moral hazard associated with nitrogen input use. Another project measures the impact of soil moisture sensors that detect moisture deeper in the soil than with the hand.

12:00-1:30pm Lunch (at local restaurants)

1:30- 2:30pm NIFA update; Location and dates of 2018 Meeting, selection of Secretary for

2017-2018.

Michael Harrington shared this link about ways to make water management programs more engaging and effective: https://www.multistateresearchimpacts.org/single-post/2017/06/21/Improving-the-Management-of-Our-Water-Resources-NC-1190-2011-2016

Karina moved to accept the minutes

Dannele seconded

Last year’s minutes were approved.

Nick moved for Alexander Maas to be elected as Secretrary conditional on becoming an official member of the group

Karina seconded.

Motion approved.

Proposed locations for the next meeting were El Paso, Fort Collins, and Boise. Straw poll chose the destination to be Fort Collins.

Potential dates are October 25 and 26^th.

2:30-2:40pm Break

2:40-4:00pm Dannelle Peck and Todd Guilfoos. Overview of current project and planning for application process for next project.

Project proposal is available online at http://www.nimss.org/projects/view/mrp/outline/16396

Dannelle’s presentation is available at https://prezi.com/_d7rbkjnucqg/w3190-management-and-policy-challenges-in-a-water-scarce-world/

Objective 1 is at the farm-level, Objective 2 is at the watershed-level, and objective 3 is at policy-level

Important upcoming deadlines

October 2018: brainstorm next proposal

January 2019: proposal due

June 2019: respond to reviews

End of June 2019: final due

Milestones and impacts are very important to document. Especially important to document if the meeting each year provides multi-state collaborations.

Make sure any stakeholder interactions are included in the report.

Current themes are conjunctive water management, energy and water use, hydro-economic modeling.

Members of the 2018-2019 proposal team:

Margaret Gitau, Krishna Paudel, Todd Guilfoos will work on the writing. Nick Brozovic will help with the scope. Kristi Hansen and Karina Schoengold will work on the statement of issues and justification. Kent Kovacs will work on the outcomes and projected impacts.

Meeting adjourned

Accomplishments

Objective 1 McCann (Missouri) Publication: Fan, Yubing, Laura McCann and Hua Qin. “Households” Adoption of Drought Tolerant Plants: An Adaptation to Climate Change?”Journal of Agricultural and Resource Economics May 2017, 42 (2):236-254.            Conference presentation: Fan, Yubing and Laura McCann.  “Farmers” Adoption of Pressure Irrigation Systems and Scientific Irrigation Scheduling Practices: An Application of Multilevel Models? American Journal of Agricultural Economics (July 2017) Published On-line at http//:agecon.lib.umn.edu.  Poster: Fan, Y., D.W. Shin, L. McCann and S. Park. “Adoption of Solar Irrigation Pumps on U.S. Farms: A Multilevel Model Analysis.”Selected Poster Presentation at the AAEA annual meetings in Chicago, IL, July 30-August 2, 2017.   Dinar and Grismer (California) Work on adoption of water management technologies and practices by Avocado Growers In California as affected by bio-physical and economics factors.         Modeling resilience of farming sector in desert and southern California regions as affected by bio-physical and economic factors.                            Use of recycled water for agriculture is a long-term water strategy in California and use of recycled water by growers in the northern Salinas Valley since 1998 provides a unique opportunity to evaluate this strategy.  Accumulation of rootzone and groundwater salinity is a primary concern associated with regular use of reclaimed water.  We use data from a long-term field experiment (2000 to 2013) considering application of a range of blended fractions of recycled water and groundwater on different field crops using surface and pressurized irrigation systems to calibrate a rootzone salinity model to then evaluate accumulation trend and distribution of soil salinity across a 91.4 cm soil profile. The model results are used to describe the long-term salt transport and transformation in the soil accounting for meteorological daily records, crop evapotranspiration (ET), soil textural parameters, crop type, irrigation system and irrigation water quality.  As with many distributed hydrologic models, model application requires determination of several input parameters that have varying levels of uncertainty.  Two techniques were used to guide model parameter estimation, relative sensitivity and eventually validation of the salinity model.  First, the Method of Morris, or Elementary Effect test is used to identify the input factors that have negligible influence on the output.  Subsequently, a more time-consuming variance based method of Sobol was used for factor fixing. Of the 33 parameters requiring specification, the sensitivity analysis indicated that only 7 were critical to the model output results and these were used for model calibration and validation.  While model simulations successfully captured long-term trends in soil salinity, model predictions underestimated soil water electric conductivity (ECsw) for high ECsw samples. The model prediction error for the validation case ranged from 2.6% to 39%.  Model fitting is improved by accounting for chemical addition to the soil as well as plant uptake of fertilizer and solutes.  Salinity addition associated with fertilizer application add to prediction problems over time. As well, the complex spatial variability in the salinity field resulting from localized leaching in drip-irrigated fields contributes to modeling error.  Application of the global sensitivity analysis with this model indicates that this method will help with field application and adoption of this salinity model within water management planning. Calibration and validation results also suggest that this approach could be used to evaluate long-term salinity trends and reference, or benchmark salinities for fields managed with treated wastewater to preserve soil health accounting for the seasonal, annual and decadal hydrology of the region.     Beneficial use of treated, or recycled wastewater is increasing in California, especially that used in irrigated agriculture. Growers in the northern Salinas Valley have been using recycled water since 1998.  One of the main concerns regarding use of recycled water in agricultural land is soil salinity accumulation, salt loading to groundwater and surface water resources. This study is undertaken to benchmark treated wastewater irrigation practice to illustrate the dynamics in the long-term using average seasonal root zone salinity (ECeS), drainage salt load (Sd) and surface runoff salt load (Sr) as key variables. Simulation scenarios are based on cropping patterns over 13-years from 2000 to 2012 in the six experiment sites in Castroville in the Salinas Valley.  The numerical simulation of long-term field scale variably saturated subsurface flow and transport is conducted using the Isidoro & Grattan salinity model which has been calibrated and validated for the study site.  This is a one-dimensional flow and transport model which describes the long-term salt transport and transformation in the soil accounting for meteorological daily records, crop evapotranspiration (ETc), soil textural parameters, crop type, types of irrigation, irrigation water quality and capillary rise.  Model simulations included determination of benchmark scenarios for fields irrigated with a range of recycled- and ground-water blends.  Simulation results show that the seasonal root zone salinity remains below stress thresholds for all crops grown in this region including relatively salt-sensitive crops.  Rainfall and applied water EC predominantly effect the accumulation of salts in the root zone profile, however, for two sites the types of crops selected (thus ETc) had a significant effect on soil EC.  Annual salt load with runoff was ten-fold higher than drainage salt load. Cumulative salts with drainage ranged from 0 to 368 kg/ha and cumulative salts with runoff ranged from 2,834 to 8,068 kg/ha. Perennial artichoke cropping results in minimal salt loading.  This study concludes that the potential for the salinization of the Salinas River as surface runoff pick up salts that are concentrated at the soil surface at the end of the growing season especially for fields irrigated with drip and/or sprinkler systems is an important threat in fields irrigated with saline waters.                     Guilfoos (Rhode Island) I have developed a model which simplifies the spatial aspects of hydrology to investigate groundwater management with exhaustion of the aquifer and uncertainty if precipitation.   Paudel (Louisiana State) Salinity has significant economic impact in the region.     Farmers using center pivot system are more efficient than those using a furrow irrigation system.   Peck (USDA ARS) Peck (USDA) connected Bill Golden (KSU & Ogallala Water Project) with Jordan Steele (KFMA) and Shane Ruff (KFMA) to introduce them to a new graduate student working on groundwater issues in northwest Kansas. March 2017.  Peck (USDA) co-authored a Climatic Change article, "Vulnerability of grazing and confined livestock in the Northern Great Plains to projected mid and late-21st century climate" with multidisciplinary team from WY, TX, MT, ND, CO, SD.                Peck (USDA) was invited by colleagues in MT to give a presentation to 50 weather/climate/agricultural experts about the USDA Northern Plains Climate Hubs and its multi-state partnerships at the Montana Climate Mini-Summit, Missoula, MT, Sept 7, 2017.         Peck (USDA) was invited by colleagues in CO to present "USDA Climate Hubs: finding rays of hope in a cloudy forecast" to 70 bison producers at the International Bison Conference, Big Sky, MT, Jul 5, 2017   Mullen (Georgia) New projections of agricultural water withdrawals out to 2050 have been developed for the State of Georgia. These projections are used directly by the state’s Regional Water Planning Councils to complete gap analyses and identify and develop solutions to potential water shortages in the future.  These estimates were done at the county level and aggregated for each Water Planning Council.       Initiated new analysis to compare the relative accuracy of water use estimates generated by econometric methods versus crop growth simulations.   Hendricks and Sampson (Kansas) Hendricks served as major professor for dissertation completed by PhD student Rulianda Wibowo entitled "Optimal irrigation strategy with limited water availability accounting for the risk from weather uncertainty."          Hendricks served as major professor for thesis completed by Masters of Agribusiness student Frances Bretz entitled "Using Average Net Returns and Risk Measures to Compare Irrigation Management Strategies." Published an article that finds irrigation offset wheat yield reductions due to increased temperatures.     A working paper titled, “The Role of Peer Effects in Natural Resource Appropriation - The Case of Groundwater” was completed during the reporting period and submitted to a journal. The paper describes how peer-to-peer interactions have affected the adoption of groundwater for agricultural irrigation using data from Kansas for 1950-2015.     Kovacs (Arkansas) Submitted a paper that evaluates the discount rate producers’ use for making irrigation investments.   Nebraska (Schoengold) (1)          W3190 members in NE and KS are close to completing a database with disaggregated soil and climate data combined with water use information and acres/crop choice (where available) in order to estimate how these factors affect water use. (2)          W3190 members and graduate student are analyzing the impact of hydrological characteristics on a producer’s electricity contract choice using data from western Nebraska."   Schaible (Nebraksa) Completed the online ERS Data Product summarizing the farm-structural characteristics of U.S. irrigated agriculture across four farm-size classes for all 50 States based on USDA's 2013 Farm and Ranch Irrigation Survey (FRIS).  Using 311 Excel spreadsheet tables, the data product evaluates irrigation characteristics by State consistent with USDA's ERS farm typology: low-sales, moderate-sales, mid-size, and large-scale irrigated farms.  Citation: Schaible, Glenn. 2017. Irrigated Agriculture in the United States. An ERS Data Product at: https://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/irrigated-agriculture-in-the-united-states/. This data product is extensively used by federal and state agencies, ngo's, and the research community addressing irrigated agriculture and water conservation and allocation issues.            This output generates estimates of the costs of restoring and preserving prairie pothole wetlands and the value of their duck hunting benefits.  Findings of previous research are used to quantitatively link changes in duck numbers to changes in hunting quality. We then use benefits transfer to value changes in hunting quality.  Results reveal benefit-cost ratios ranging from near-zero to over nine.  Citation:  Hansen, LeRoy and Chuck Loesch. 2017. Targeting Waterfowl Habitat Restoration in the Prairie Pothole Region: A Spatial Analysis of Marginal Benefits and Costs.  Journal of Soil and Water Conservation. 72(4) 299-307 (July/August), doi: 10.2489/jswc.72.4.299  http://www.jswconline.org/content/72/4/299.abstract.    Yoder (Washington) Hall, S.A., J.C. Adam, M. Barik, J. Yoder, M.P. Brady, D. Haller, M.E. Barber, C.E. Kruger, G.G. Yorgey, M. Downes, C.O. Stockle, B. Aryal, T. Carlson, G. Damiano, S. Dhungel, C. Einberger, K. Hamel-Reiken, M. Liu, K. Malek, S. McClure, R. Nelson, M. O'Brien, J. Padowski, K. Rajagopalan, Z. Rakib, B. Rushi, W. Valdez. 2016. 2016 Washington State Legislative Report. Columbia River Basin Long-Term Water Supply and Demand Forecast. Publication No. 16-12-001. Washington Department of Ecology, Olympia, WA. 216 pp. Available online at: https://fortress.wa.gov/ecy/publications/SummaryPages/1612001.html.                 Brady, Michael, Julie Padowski, Eric Jessup, Qingqing Yang, & Jonathan Yoder. 2016. Skagit Basin Water Mitigation Feasibility Assessment. Submitted to the Washington State Department of Ecology, December. http://www.ecy.wa.gov/programs/wr/instream-flows/173503-sol.html.   Objective 2 Dinar and Grismer (California) Work on regulation of electricity subsidies for pumping groundwater using experimental economics. The objective of study is to analyze the long-term temporal distribution of sediment and salinity in the Salinas Valley over the period 1995-2014.  The relationship between agricultural production, institutions and environmental changes are still in question with respect to this area.  Ultimately, this research is about how we account for the way that human and nonhuman nature and technologies adapt and change each other to gain insight into the key processes at the human-environment interface.          Here, we look at the case of sedimentation and salinity in the Salinas Valley. There are non-linear processes and time lags and feedbacks for environmental change (Lambin et al., 2003).  The emergent relationship among agricultural technology adoption, social formation, and ecological change continues to be unclear. Irrigation takes place in the region primarily through groundwater withdrawal enabled by several developments such as the development of better pumps, increased diversity of crops produced, expansion of market for region's crops. Groundwater-based irrigated area rose from 80,981 acres in the 1920s when turbine pumps were introduced to 176,516 acres in 2014. The relationship between pumping technology and groundwater irrigated acreage is however not linear. For example, in 1996 983,432 ac-ft of groundwater was used for irrigation and only 480,160 ac-ft in 2014 on 173,158 acres and 175,767 acres respectively. While it is clear that groundwater irrigation led to increase in crop production, other variables especially in the last decade interact such as adoption of water conservation technology, inter-annual climate variability, changes in irrigation water quality, seawater intrusion, energy costs and management institutions in the extent of groundwater use.            We ask the questions: 1) What is the emergent relationship among the production technologies “ irrigation, water conservation, recycled water “ and groundwater use, the climate, agricultural economy, management institutions and environmental changes? 2) To what effect for water and soil quality or rather do technologies gage the state of agricultural water quality management?  We examine these questions using a production analysis in the Salinas Valley between 1995 and 2014.  This period embodies three periods involving key shifts in water management in the region; specifically from 1995-1998; 1999-2009 and 2010-2014.  In 1998 the Monterey County Recycling project came online and deliveries to the Castroville area started. In 2010 the Salinas River diversion facility was completed and deliveries of treated (filtered & chlorinated) water for irrigation began. As groundwater well ordinances were passed by the MCWRA regulating groundwater extraction, requiring groundwater extraction reports and water conservation reports that affect production in the area. We employ the materialist and Actor-Network approaches. Materialist assert that a mode of production is a combination of key social and material elements which include “ labor, technology and capital “ these elements are constant but their interrelationships, combination, and recombination are in constant flux, leading to differing ways of making a living from nature and changing organization of society across history and over space  (Robbins, 2012).  Latour (2005) suggest that the key to explaining the world, where objects are socialized and society is constituted by objects, is to employ symmetry. Symmetrical explanations allow people and institutions critical roles in determining outcomes, but also allow non-people to have efficacy and a crucial role in making the world. For labor, there is a tangled material assemblages of human and non-humans that make up the world.   Guilfoos (Rhode Island) I have started work on evaluating groundwater markets which incorporate spatial and temporal externalities.   Huffaker (Florida) Analysis of Hydrologic Data:  Work completed on “Nonlinear Time Series Analysis with R” (Oxford University Press), which presents how time series data can be used to reconstruct dynamics of real-world hydroclimatic, environmental and economic systems, and supplies R code to run required methods. Data Analysis in Irrigation:  This project develops an automated procedure for estimating soil water characteristics from time series data collected with soil moisture sensors (SMS).  Machine learning techniques (Density Histograms and Symbolic Aggregate Approximation-Vector Space Models) identify and characterize repeating root-water-soil-content (RSWC) sequences in the SMS data.  RSWC characteristics are used to link field capacity (a key management variable) to initial (pre-irrigation) and peak (post-irrigation) soil moisture volumes measured with SMS.   Data Analysis in Water Treatment Wetlands:  This project uses management data collected by the Southwest Florida Water Management District to assess how well water treatment wetlands remove phosphorus from water used in sugar cane production before it flows into the Everglades national park.  The data are used to reconstruct wetland dynamics, which are used to test for key drivers of wetland performance that can be manipulated by managers to better comply with water quality standards.          Gitau (Indiana) Non-parametric evaluations of seasonal and regional monotonic trends conducted for long-term and short-term precipitation, stream flow, and water quality showed linkages among precipitation patterns, historical management, and water quality in the Western Lake Erie Basin. Methodologies and approaches are applicable in other areas for detecting patterns and linkages in hydrologic data.                                           Paudel (Louisiana) A groundwater economic model was developed which indicated that continous extraction of water would increase cone of depression areas.  It is possible to reduce these areas by using a surface groundwater conjunctive model.                                                  Peck (USDA ARS) Peck (USDA) served as an Associate Editor for Water Resources Research; guiding the review process for manuscripts authored and/or reviewed by fellow W3190 members.  Peck (USDA) was invited by a colleague in SD to co-present with colleagues from IA about "USDA Climate Hubs: regional partners in drought outreach" to 46 attendees at the U.S. Drought Monitor Forum, Keystone, SD, April 4, 2017.     Peck (USDA) worked with colleagues in WY, CO, NE, TX to refine and solicit feedback about a new weather-related Grassland Productivity Forecast ("GrassCast").      Colby (Arizona) Economic framework developed for analyzing value of advanced remote sensing data to measure and monitor water "savings" in irrigation forbearance agreements.                                                                                 Hendricks (Kansas) Hendricks served as major professor for dissertation completed by PhD student Nicolas Quintana Ashwell entitled â€&oelig;Essays on optimal extraction of groundwater in western Kansas.â€                  Hansen (Wyoming) Hansen and Edwards are co-PIs on a USDA-NIFA proposal to examine opportunities for improved management of water resources in the Upper Colorado River Basin.                                            Kovacs (Arkansas) Develop a model to evaluate the ecosystem service impacts of groundwater depletion.   Use a model to examine how much lateral flows of groundwater affect the optimal management of the resource.           Jon Bartholic, Pouyan Nejadhashemi, Ehsan Ghane, Amor Ines, Cloe Garnache (Michigan) MSU-Amor grad student created a script to automate preprocessing of remotely sensed data using MODIS Reprojection Tool (MRT) package and preparing it for the Surface Energy Balance Algorithm for Land (SEBAL) program.                MSU-Amor grad student and Miller and Kelly installed sensors and collected soil moisture data along with MODIS satellite data to use in predicting evapotranspiration.      MSU-Ehsan student worked on determining hydraulic property of agriculture drain pipes from different manufactures in Midewest. Used to optimize price and performance.  MSU-Pouyan grad student developing a fully integrated crop model within an optimization platform to be used for any major crop and location world wide. System also considers climate variability and extreme events.                                                                                                                                                 Torell (Texas) Work has been done on electricity power plant cooling to determine the effect of drought on plant price and quantity bids. Initial results from Texas show that drought causes power plant price bids to rise and quantity bids to fall.   Work on hydrofracturing performed in drought is underway to determine the effect that drought has on types of wells drilled, and the effect on well production over the life of the well. Initial results show that wells drilled during drought have lower production and and shallower wells than those drilled outside of drought periods.      Willingness to pay estimates are being produced for water softness. If water softening is performed at centralized desalination plants, water water is easier to manage than diffuse homeowners using ion-exchange technologies. Initial results show a willingness to pay of $2-$3 per month for a 100 unit reduction in TDS.   Objective 3 McCann (Missouri) Published proceedings: Fan, Yubing and Laura McCann.  Comparison and evolution of water institutions in the U.S. Midwest.  XVI World Water Congress, Cancun, Mexico May 29-June 3, 2017                                          Suter (Colorado) Submitted grant application to USDA with W-3190 members Todd Guilfoos and Cloe Garnache to study dynamic groundwater markets with experimental economics.                                         Dinar (California) Understanding the policy and institutions that enhance reuse of treated wastewater for irrigation in a regional context.                                                   Hearne (North Dakota) Estimating value of Missouri River water in transportation.           Estimating the efficiencly of water use in the Missouri River basin.                                                                         Garth Taylor (Idaho)                                       Idaho research focused on parts of all three objectives. The suite of research questions and methods examines the feasibility and economic efficiency of innovative water management practices, policies, and institutions:                  Research irrigation and non-market demand for water, with a goal of providing timely, accurate, and inexpensive estimates of water demand.               Research spatial partial equilibrium hydro-economic models that integrated hydrology and economics on a watershed or basin scale, with a goal to conduct  benefit/cost analysis on issues as drought (climate change) remediation, aquifer recharge, endangered species habitat restoration, water conservation, and new storage or conveyance.  Research other emerging water management topics with the goal of providing innovative water management practices, and policies for critical water topics."                                                                                                Peck (USDA ARS) Peck (USDA) moderated, and Hansen (WY) co-organized, the selected session "Groundwater Management in a Changing Environment" at 2017 UCOWR/NIWR Annual Conference, Fort Collins, CO, Jun 13-15, 2017, at which Schoengold (NE) and a graduate student of Hendricks (KS) and Peterson (MN) presented.                                                Colby (Arizona) Model and empirically estimate costs and benefits associated with fallowing land to provide water for urban and environmental needs.   Develop innovative water trading mechanisms for the southwestern U.S.               Evaluate federal and state  pilot water leasing programs to accomplish specific public objectives.   Mullen (Georgia) When exploring environmental policy options, sometimes neither the current state of the environmental good being analyzed nor the effectiveness of the proposed policy is known with certainty. This is the case with privately-owned, residential, onsite wastewater treatment systems (septic systems) â€“ there is ample evidence that they can contribute to water quality impairment, but their contribution is generally stochastic in nature and the efficacy of technological solutions is uncertain. Furthermore, the benefits of ameliorating water quality impairments are public in nature. Septic system owners are legally responsible for maintaining their systems, but requiring them to upgrade otherwise properly functioning tanks is outside the scope of water quality regulations. An incentive structure is necessary to induce private homeowners to invest in septic upgrades that deliver both private benefits in addition to the positive externality for the wider public and environment. The question for policy makers is how these private incentives should be financed, and whether public support can be garnered. Results of a choice experiment in Gwinnett County, Georgia, accounting for both sources of uncertainty “ the current state of water quality and the efficacy of the intervention “ in the design of water quality policy were generated. We find baseline water quality conditions and policy efficacy significantly affect public support for a policy transferring public funds to private homeowners, in terms of both sentiment and willingness to pay. The manner in which costs are shared across stakeholders also affects the selection of a policy option, but not willingness to pay for it.                                 Hendricks (Kansas) Collaborate with Shoengold and Brozovic (members of W3190) on a project, "The Effects of Institutions and Hydrological Conditions on Optimal Management of a Shared Aquifer: A Case Study of the High Plains."                                     Hansen (Wyoming) Hansen and stakeholder colleagues established an environmental market platform (Wyoming Conservation Exchange) to trade sage-grouse habitat and water quality credits.   Hansen and Schoengold are guest co-editors for special issue of Water (2017 Vol. 9 Issue 3; ISSN 2073-4441). â€&oelig;Water Management Strategies for Addressing Long-Term Drought and Climate Uncertainty.â€ Special issue based on October 2015 Salt Lake City conference cosponsored by W3190, WERA 1020, and Western States Water Council. Hansen and Peck (Director, USDA Northern Plains Climate Hub) organized a special session at Universities Council on Water Resources 2017 Annual Meeting. â€&oelig;Groundwater Management in a Changing Environment.â€ Fort Collins, CO (prospective, June 2017).     Jon Bartholic, Pouyan Nejadhashemi, Ehsan Ghane, Amor Ines, Cloe Garnache (Michigan)                              MSU-Bartholic PhD student Jermalowicz studied Community Capitals Framework (CCF) to investigate what community capitals (assets) lead to better capacity and outcomes in terms of improved management of lake resources through implementation of Best Management Practices (BMPs). MSU-Bartholic graduate student Petit study sought to better understand the reasons for farmers to a) join the Farmers Advisory Committee (FAC) and b) what factors contribute to their continual participation. MSU-Bartholic graduate student Nunn enrolled producers in a voluntary tile drain monitoring study to look at nutrients leaving the tile drains.                 MSU-Garnache In collaboration with other W3190 project members (Todd Guilfoos (URI) and Jordan Suter (CSU)), Cloe Garnache has analyzed the efficiency of dynamic groundwater markets.   Schoengold (Nebraska) W3190 members evaluated the impact of groundwater allocation policies on field-level groundwater extraction in southwest Nebraska.                                       Schaible (ERS) Completed an ERS website page, providing:  a) an overview of key statistics about U.S. irrigated agriculture; b) a discussion of definitional differences between key irrigation concepts, such as withdrawal, applied and consumptive water-use estimates; c) how important irrigation is to U.S. agriculture; d) where U.S. crop irrigation occurs; e) what it produces; f) trends in irrigation water use; g) challenges facing agriculture under a future changing water environment; h) the status of onfarm irrigation efficiency in the U.S. and opportunities for continued improvement; and i) private and public investment in irrigation.  Citation: Schaible, G. and M. Aillery.  2017.  Irrigation and Water Use.  An ERS website page on U.S. irrigated agriculture at: https://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/farm-practices-management/irrigation-water-use/, (April).         Completed an ERS Amber Waves data feature which presents key statistics on: a) the status of U.S. irrigated agriculture, b) distributional differences across numbers of irrigated farms, irrigated acres, and water use between low-sales, medium, and large-scale irrigated farms; c) how use of irrigation systems have changed over time and trends in improved onfarm irrigation efficiency; and d) how irrigation efficiency varies by region.  Citation:  Schaible, Glenn D.  2017.  Understanding Irrigated Agriculture.  Data Feature, Amber Waves, Economic Research Service, USDA (June), at: https://www.ers.usda.gov/amber-waves/2017/june/understanding-irrigated-agriculture/.                         Yoder (Washington) Yoder, Jonathan, Jennifer Adam, Michael Brady, Joseph Cook, Stephen Katz, Shane Johnston, Keyvan Malek, John McMillan, and Qingqing Yang. 2017. Benefit-Cost Analysis of Integrated Water Resource Management: Accounting for interdependence in the Yakima Basin Integrated Plan.  Journal of the American Water Resources Association 1-22. DOI: 10.1111/1752-1688.12507.               Yoder, Jonathan, Michael Brady, & Joseph Cook. 2016. Water markets and storage: Substitutes or complements for drought risk mitigation?} \textit{Water Economics and Policy} 2(2):21 pp.                Yoder, Jonathan. 2017. State of Washington Water Research Center Contributes to the debates over the Yakima Basin IWRM plan.  National Institutes for Water Resources Meetings.  Washington D.C., February.                Torell (Texas) Work is being performed with University of Idaho to determine the public's understanding of the term '100-year flood', and whether misunderstandings of the term cause individuals to take on higher levels of risk than they would otherwise in other contexts. The work will begin with surveys to undergraduate students in Texas and Idaho, and the second phase of the project will involve classroom experiments.                Hydro-economic modeling of the Rio Grande River is moving forward with two USDA-NIFA funded grant projects. The first looks at water sharing under climate change and urban growth scenarios, and the second looks at sources of future water and their management, including brackish and saline water supplies. The work is being performed jointly between researchers in the W3190 group from Texas and New Mexico, along with other non-members.

Publications

Fan, Yubing and Laura McCann.  "Comparison and evolution of water institutions in the U.S. Midwest."  XVI World Water Congress, Cancun, Mexico May 29-June 3, 2017 Fan, Yubing, Laura McCann and Hua Qin. "Households' Adoption of Drought Tolerant Plants: An Adaptation to Climate Change?" Journal of Agricultural and Resource Economics May 2017, 42 (2):236-254. Monger, R., J. Suter, D. Manning, J. Schneekloth, Forthcoming, "Retiring Land to Save Water: Participation in Colorado's Republican River Conservation Reserve Enhancement Program", Land Economics Ashraf, A., A. Dinar, E. Monteiro, and T. Gaston, Adaptation in California Agriculture: What Have We Been Assessing for Two and a Half Decades? Climate Change Economics, 7(2), 2016, 1650001, DOI: 10.1142/S2010007816500019 (19 pp.).  Tellez-Foster E., A. Rapoport, and A. Dinar, Groundwater and Electricity Consumption under Alternative Subsidies: Evidence from Laboratory Experiments, Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics, 68:41-52, 2017. Ayres, A.B., Edwards, E.C. and Libecap, G.D. Do Transaction Costs Obstruct Collective Action to Limit Common-pool Losses? Evidence from California's Groundwater. NBER Working Paper No. 23382.; Edwards, E.C., Bosworth, R.C., Adams, P., Baji, V., Burrows, A., Gerdes, C., Jones, M. 2017. Economic Insight from Utah's Water Efficiency Supply Curve. Water, 9, 214. Elbakidze, L.  Brett Schiller, and R. Garth Taylor. 2017. Estimation of Short and Long Run Derived Irrigation Water Demands and Elasticities. Water Economics and Policy 03(01) p175.    Elbakidze, Levan, Fa'anunu, Benjamin, Mamula, Aaron, Taylor, R. Garth, 2017. Evaluating Economic Efficiency of a Water Buyback Program: The Klamath Irrigation Project. Journal of Energy and Resource Economics Vol. 48(2), p68-82. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.reseneeco.2017.02.001  Bryce A. Contor and R. Garth Taylor. 2016. A Framework for Assessing the Effect of Irrigation Improvements: Economic Rivalry, Irrigation Abstraction, and Partition to Fates. Water Economics and Policy. Vol. 2(2) p165.  Schmidt, R. D. and R. Garth Taylor. 2016. Evaluating a Water Conservation Response to Climate Change in the Lower Boise River Basin. Water Economics and Policy DOI: 10.1142/S2382624X16500120. 2016.  Hines, Steve, Joel Packham, Carmen Wilmore, and Garth Taylor. 2016. Contribution of Agribusiness to the Magic Valley Economy, 2013. University of Idaho Extension CIS. "Optimal Groundwater Extraction Under Uncertainty and a Spatial Stock Externality" (Merrill N., Guilfoos T.)- (Forthcoming AJAE) Guilfoos, T., & Kurtz, K. J. (2017). Evaluating the role of personality trait information in social dilemmas. Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics 68, 119-129." Rosa, L., K.F. Davis, M.C. Rulli, and P. D'Odorico, Can the extraction of shale oil and gas threaten water and food security?, in rev.;              Rosa L., M.C. Rulli, and P. D'Odorico, "Water-stranded assets in the food and energy sectors", in rev.; Rosa, L., K.F. Davis, M.C. Rulli, and P. D'Odorico, Environmental consequences of oil production from oil sands, Earth's Future, 5, doi:10.1002/2016EF000484, 2017; Davis, K.F., A. Seveso, M.C. Rulli, and P. D'Odorico, "Water savings of crop redistribution in the United States", Water, 9, 83; doi:10.3390/w9020083, 2017; " Huffaker, R., Bittellii, M., Rosa, R. (2017) Nonlinear Time Series Analysis with R. Oxford University Press. Huffaker, R., Canavari, M., Munoz-Carpena, R. (in press) Distinguishing between endogenous and exogenous price volatility in food security assessment: An empirical nonlinear dynamics approach.  Agricultural Systems doi:10.1016/j.agsy.2016.09.019. Sekaluvu, L., L. Zhang, and M.W. Gitau. 2017. Evaluation of constraints to water quality improvements in response to conservation measures in the Western Lake Erie Basin. Journal of Environmental Management. DOI:  https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jenvman.2017.09.063 Ramesh Ghimire, Gary T. Green, Krishna P. Paudel, Neelam C. Poudyal, and H. Ken Cordell. 2017. Visitor's Preferences for Freshwater Amenity Characteristics: Implications from the U.S. Household Survey. Journal of Agricultural and Resource Economics 42(1):90-113.  Krishna P. Paudel, Nirmala Devkota and Ying Tan. 2016. Best management practices adoption to mitigate nonpoint source pollution: a conditional frailty model. China Agricultural Economics Review 8 (4): 534-552.   Mahesh Pandit and Krishna Paudel. 2016. Water pollution and income relationships: a seemingly unrelated partially linear analysis. Water Resources Research 52(10): 7668-7689. " Derner, J., D. Briske, M. Reeves, T. Brown-Brandl, M. Meehan, D. Blumenthal, W. Travis, D. Augustine, H. Wilmer, D. Scasta, J. Hendrickson, J. Volesky, L. Edwards, D. Peck. 2017. Vulnerability of grazing and confined livestock in the Northern Great Plains to projected mid and late-21st century climate. Climatic Change doi 10.1007/s10584-017-2029-6. http://rdcu.be/uryL. Bonnie Colby, Water Linkages beyond the Farm Gate: Implications for Agriculture, Federal Reserve Bank Economic Review, November, 2016. https://www.kansascityfed.org/~/media/files/publicat/econrev/econrevarchive/2016/si16colby.pdf  Bonnie Colby, "Water Trading Innovations: Reducing Agricultural Consumptive Use to Improve Adaptation to Scarcity," chapter in Competition for Water Resources: Experiences and Management Approaches in the US and Europe, edited by Jadwiga Ziolkowska and Jeffrey Peterson, Elsevier Publishing, August, 2016.  https://www.elsevier.com/books/competition-for-water-resources/ziolkowska/978-0-12-803237-4  Ashley Kerna, Bonnie Colby, and Francisco Zamora, Valuing Environmental Flows in Mexico's Colorado River Delta, Water Economics and Policy, December, 2016.  http://www.worldscientific.com/doi/abs/10.1142/S2382624X16500351 Mount, J., Hanak, E., Colby, B., et al, "Improving the Federal Response to Western Drought", Public Policy Institute of California, 2016. http://www.ppic.org/content/pubs/report/R_216JMR.pdf California's Water: The Colorado River, Public Policy Institute of California Policy Briefing  Paper, Ellen Hanak, Brian Gray, Jeffrey Mount, Kurt Schwabe, Timothy Bradley, Bonnie Colby, Douglas Kenney, Jose Medellin-Azuara, and Jean-Daniel Saphores, October 2016    Dari Duval and Bonnie Colby, "Colorado River Flows and the Fisheries Economy of the Upper Gulf of California", Ecological Engineering, 2016   Andrew Clarke, Bonnie Colby and Gary Thompson, Seasonal Elasticities of Household Water Demand: Application of the Stone-Geary Model Under an Increasing Block Rate Structure, Land Economics, 2017.  Bonnie Colby, Water Linkages beyond the Farm Gate: Implications for Agriculture, Federal Reserve Bank Economic Review, November, 2016. Mullen, J.D., K. Calhoun, and G. Colson (2017). "Preferences for Policy Attributes and Willingness to Pay for Water Quality Improvements Under Uncertainty," Water Resources Research, in press.  Atreya, A., W. Kriesel, and J.D. Mullen (2016). "Valuing Open Space in a Marshland Environment: Development Alternatives for Coastal Georgia."  Journal of Agricultural and Applied Economics, 48 (4): 383-402. 2016. Tack, J., A. Barkley, and N.P. Hendricks. 2017. "Irrigation Offsets Wheat Yield Reductions from Warming Temperatures." Environmental Research Letters, in press. Available at: http://iopscience.iop.org/10.1088/1748-9326/aa8d27 Hansen, K., E. Duke, C. Bond, M. Purcell and G. Paige. 2017. "Landowner Preferences for a Payment-for-Ecosystem Services Program in Southwestern Wyoming." Ecological Economics (forthcoming). Hansen, K. 2016. Book Review of Golden Rules: The Origins of California Water Law in the Gold Rush. Water Economics and Policy 2(3): 1-4.  Carter, C., K. Hansen, W. Kelley and L. Pauley. 2017. "Irrigation Handbook for Small-Acreage Landowners in Wyoming." University of Wyoming Extension. Ed: J. Thompson. Huang, Q., Y. Xu, K. Kovacs, G. West. 2017. "Analysis of factors that influence the use of irrigation technologies and water management practices in Arkansas." Journal of Agricultural and Applied Economics.  Kovacs, K., A. Morad-Durat. 2017. "The influence of on- and off-farm surface water investment on groundwater extraction from an agricultural landscape." Journal of Agricultural and Applied Economics, 1-24.  <ol start="488"> <li>Kovacs, G. West, Y. Xu. "The use of efficiency frontiers to evaluate the optimal land cover and irrigation practices for economic returns and ecosystem services." Journal of Hydrology, 547: 474-488.</li> </ol> Kovacs, K., M. Mancini. 2017. "Conjunctive water management to sustain agricultural economic returns and a shallow aquifer at the landscape level."  Journal of Soil and Water Conservation, 72 (2): 158-167.  West, G., K. Kovacs. 2017. "Addressing groundwater declines with precision agriculture: An economic comparison of monitoring methods for variable-rate irrigation." Water 9 (1): 28.  Kovacs, K., G. West. 2016. "The influence of groundwater depletion from irrigated agriculture on the tradeoffs between ecosystem services and economic returns" PLoS One, 11(12), e0168681.   Garnache, C., Merrel, P.R., Howitt, R.E., and Lee, J. (2017) "Calibration of Shadow Values in Constrained Optimization Models of Agricultural Supply." European Review of Agricultural Economics, 44(3): 363--397. (Lead article)    Garnache, C., Merel, P.R., Lee, J., and Six, J. (2017) "The Social Costs of Second-Best Policies: Evidence from Agricultural GHG Mitigation." Journal of Environmental Economics and Management. 82:39-73. Schaible, Glenn. 2017. Irrigated Agriculture in the United States. An ERS Data Product at: https://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/irrigated-agriculture-in-the-united-states/.     Schaible, G. and M. Aillery.  2017.  Irrigation and Water Use.  An ERS website page on U.S. irrigated agriculture at: https://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/farm-practices-management/irrigation-water-use/, (April).     Schaible, Glenn D.  2017.  Understanding Irrigated Agriculture.  Data Feature, Amber Waves, Economic Research Service, USDA (June), at: https://www.ers.usda.gov/amber-waves/2017/june/understanding-irrigated-agriculture/.     Hansen, LeRoy and Chuck Loesch. 2017. Targeting Waterfowl Habitat Restoration in the Prairie Pothole Region: A Spatial Analysis of Marginal Benefits and Costs.  Journal of Soil and Water Conservation. 72(4) 299-307 (July/August), doi: 10.2489/jswc.72.4.299  http://www.jswconline.org/content/72/4/299.abstract.  Yoder, Jonathan, Jennifer Adam, Michael Brady, Joseph Cook, Stephen Katz, Shane Johnston, Keyvan Malek, John McMillan, and Qingqing Yang. 2017. Benefit-Cost Analysis of Integrated Water Resource Management: Accounting for interdependence in the Yakima Basin Integrated Plan.  Journal of the American Water Resources Association 1-22. DOI: 10.1111/1752-1688.12507.                               Yoder, Jonathan, Michael Brady, & Joseph Cook. 2016.   Water markets and storage: Substitutes or complements for drought risk mitigation? Water Economics and Policy 2(2):21

Impact Statements

1. The Missouri JARE paper published in May is being read. 2. The proceedings paper from the World Water Congress is being widely read by researchers but it will also be helpful to state governments. 3. Awarded grant from USDA to conduct a field experiment related to voluntary groundwater use reporting with Kent Messer (U. Delaware) and Paul Ferraro (Johns Hopkins U.). Research will also provide social comparisons of groundwater use in later years of the grant. 4. Conducted survey of groundwater users in Colorado's Republican River Basin along with colleagues Chris Goemans and Dale Manning. The survey sought to understand groundwater use and attitudes related to specific conservation policies. Results were presented to stakeholders and made public with a written summary. 5. Awarded grant from USDA to study the impact of tile drain systems on water quality in collaboration with Ryan Bailey in CSU's Department of Civil Engineering 6. Ongoing work funded by the USDA in collaboration with several universities (including W-3190 member Karina Schoengold and the University of Nebraska) to evaluate groundwater conservation policies in the Ogallala Aquifer. 7. Was able to reach growers and grower committees. Raised several short-term funding sources: Giannini Foundation 8. Work is being concluded and dissemination to stakeholders will initiate in 2018. Was able to get a grant (Giannini foundation 27,000) and a fellowship (Hynes foundation 22,000 for graduate student Ashraf). 9. Results were disseminated and discussed with growers and in international meetings. Funding was obtained from CBEAR (17,000 for graduate student Edgar Tellez-Foster). 10. Work just started so no yet impact to report. Funds were obtained from USDA (150,000 for 2 years of a post doc Ami Reznik). 11. Knowledge of efficiency of different water uses in the Missouri River basin. Knowledge of the value of Missouri River water in freight transportation. 12. Application of the global sensitivity analysis with this model indicates that this method will help with field application and adoption of this salinity model within water management planning. Calibration and validation results also suggest that this approach could be used to evaluate long-term salinity trends and reference, or benchmark salinities for fields managed with treated wastewater to preserve soil health accounting for the seasonal, annual and decadal hydrology of the region. 13. This study concludes that the potential for the salinization of the Salinas River as surface runoff pick up salts that are concentrated at the soil surface at the end of the growing season especially for fields irrigated with drip and/or sprinkler systems is an important threat in fields irrigated with saline waters. 14. Developed and submitted a multi-state grant proposal to USDA AFRI with Kristi Hansen (W3190 participant at University of Wyoming) and others for $5 million entitled "Water Management, Markets, and Incentives to Enhance Food Production in the Upper Colorado River Basin" 15. The advances in modeling uncertainty and spatial externalities in groundwater will lead to advances in policy prescriptions and understanding where the largest gains from groundwater management exist and how to identify them. 16. Advances to theory in groundwater markets can lead to long term improvements to design of markets and an understanding of the drivers of welfare under a temporal common pool resource. 17. This research deals water use by the oil and gas industry engaged in the extraction of shale deposits or oil sands (or unconventional fossil fuels). Water use for unconventional fossil fuel extraction is orders of magnitude greater than in the case of conventional fossil fuels and during droughts may compete with agriculture. More than three quarters of the world top energy companies indicate that uncertainty in water availability is a major source of risk for their business operations [CDP, 2016]. Shale oil and shale gas are usually extracted using hydraulic fracturing, a water intensive technology. The required water can be diverted from the agricultural sector towards the more profitable energy sector, thereby leading to the emergence of competition with agriculture. In south Texas shale oil and gas extraction using hydraulic fracturing has competed for water with agriculture through a water market, thereby increasing water prices in the region. Years of drought in the state of California, have reduced the hydropower share of total energy production from 30% to 5% [Garthwaite, 2014]. Indeed, it has been observed that, when water management relies on water markets, water is allocated to the sector that can generate higher incomes (e.g., Debaere et al., 2014), which is typically the energy sector. For example, certain arid regions in South-West Texas have introduced water markets to transfer volumes of water from the food sector towards the energy sector (Scanlon et al., 2014). The case of fossil fuel extraction in some regions of Texas is particularly instructive, as it has been observed that in case of scarcity, water is allocated to the energy sector at the expenses of agriculture because oil companies are able to pay much more than agriculture. For example, it has been estimated that during the drought that recently affected Texas, shale companies were able to pay US$5.23 per cubic meter of water (Lee, 2011), which is order of magnitude greater than the price of US$0.05 per cubic meter that farmers would pay (Yang, 2012). 18. Many shale deposits are in areas affected by water stress, in that water consumption for human activities exceeds the limit imposed by environmental flow requirements. In the USA the water needed for shale extraction, however, is a small fraction of the total water used for human activities except for some areas of Southern Texas and western USA. Some of these shale deposits are in areas affected by groundwater stress, and both surface water and groundwater stress. 19. My desired long-term impact is more informative use of the ever increasing amount of water data collected. I want to use this data to formulate management models corresponding to the hydrologic, ecosystem, and economic (ground-truth) reality faced by farmers and policymakers. My objective is for ongoing projects to produce preliminary results required for eventual grant proposals. 20. Methodologies and approaches will help guide assessments in other areas and provide information to guide constructions and validation of models for use in decision-making. 21. Results provide information that is useful for informing further assessments in the basin and elsewhere. 22. Impact of water extraction on salinity can be substantial. 23. Farmers can minimize this impact by scheduling irrigation based on the crop needs. They can also use crops that require minimum amont of water during the growing season. 24. The long term impact of my work is to understand the dynamic of salt water intrusion in aquifers around Louisiana. 25. Peck's (USDA) invited presentation at the International Bison Conference in MT raised 70 producers' (from across the US and Canada) awareness of useful weather/climate resources to inform their management decisions. It also encouraged them to join voluntary weather reporting programs, such as CoCoRaHS. 26. Peck's (USDA) invited presentation at the Montana Climate Mini-Summit raised awareness among 50 MT, WY, CO weather/climate/agricultural (MSU Extension) experts about the USDA Climate Hubs and partnership opportunities. 27. Peck's (USDA) interaction with W3190 members on the NIFA-CAP Ogallala Water Project (Golden, KS; Goemans, CO; Schoengold, NE) has resulted in greater connectivity between KSU researchers and KFMA agents. Peck also put the OWCAP team in touch with The Climate Learning Network, who is hosting 2 nationwide OWCAP webinars in Oct & Nov 2017. 28. Peck's (USDA) involvement in the Grassland Productivity Forecast ("GrassCast") project is ensuring input from University Extension educators and rangeland livestock producers in CO, WY, MT, ND, SD, NE. 29. Voluntary collaborative agreements to share water and water-supply risks between tribes, other water users and public agencies are proving to be an effective approach to address the economic damages that can accompany climate-related water supply variable. 30. New innovatively-structured water trading initiatives are being designed and implemented in various areas of the western U.S. Elected officials and water management agencies have solicited testimony and workshops focused upon on implications of water trading in their area. Public agencies, tribes and NGOs which are acquiring water for environmental needs are developing programs based on an improved understanding of how to collaborate with agricultural participants and how to monitor environmental flow water produced by their programs. 31. Innovative water trading initiatives are underway in several western states, with invited testimony and workshops provided to federal and state policymakers on implications of water banking in their state. 32. Online water trading initiatives are being introduced and refined in new areas, using economic information provided about the effects of online trading on public agency and participant transaction costs. 33. Primary impact has been provision of water use projections that directly guide water policy development in Georgia. Received $28,000 grant for this work from the Georgia Department of Natural Resources. 34. Provided guidance to Gwinnett County, GA, on the development of water quality policy. This work was part of a multi-disciplinary research grant funded by USEPA. 35. Our research shows that irrigation significantly reduces the negative impact of warming temperatures on winter wheat yields. Our results highlight the critical role of water management for future global food security. Water scarcity not only reduces crop yields through water-deficit stress, but also amplifies the negative effects of warming temperatures. 36. We find that peer-to-peer interactions have accounted for about 10% of total past statewide extraction of groundwater. 37. Received USDA, NIFA grant. "Mixed Approaches towards Effective Collective Management of Groundwater Resources." ($499,917) N.P. Hendricks (PI), D.R. Steward and J. Zhao (Co-PIs), USDA-AFRI. June 2017-May 2021. 38. Better understand the barriers to irrigation efficiency investment. 39. Track ecosystem service responses to groundwater overdraft. Identify the optimal managment of a resource will more realistic hydrology. 40. MSU-Amor produce a program package capable of running SEBAL to estimate evapotranspiration on daily timestep. 41. MSU-Amor use sensors data available for calibration satellite-based estimates crop ET and soil moisture, and improved irrigation scheduling to enhance water use efficiency. 42. MSU- Bartholic student Jermalowicz Dissertation. Evaluation of Riparian Community Capitals and Their Relationship to Adaptive Lake Management Outcomes, Water Research, Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI, pages 131. 43. MSU-Bartholic student Petit The goal of the research was to improve the FAC moving forward and increase farmer participation. 44. MSU-Bartholic student Nunn change behaviors and management practices to help improve water quality leaving farms. 45. (1) W3190 members in NE and CO, along with researchers in four other states, are continuing to work on a 4-year, $10 million grant from USDA-NIFA to study management of the Ogallala aquifer under a changing climate. 46. (2) Results from an analysis of energy contract show that hydrological factors such as well yield and soil type influence the electricity interruption risk that producers are willing to adopt. 47. (1) Results from an analysis of groundwater allocations show that some producers are constrained with the current allocation policies, but that the impacts are heterogeneous across the different management districts. 48. The data product summarizes U.S. irrigation characteristics by State by farm-size class, including the number of irrigated farms, cropland and pastureland acres, acres irrigated and water applied to acres in the open (AIO) by water source, as well as acres devoted to higher-efficiency irrigation categories, square-feet area devoted to irrigated horticulture, gallons (and acre-feet equivalent units) of water applied to horticulture under protection (HUP) by water source, farms receiving technical/financial assistance designed to encourage water and energy conservation, irrigation labor statistics, and irrigation investment participation/expenditures by major irrigation investment category. 49. For the Prairie Pothole Region duck hunting benefits study, the Prairie Pothole Region (PPR) lies in the north-central plains of the United States and produces 50% to 80% of all North American ducks. Historical farm program data are used to estimate a wetland cost function that was used to generate county-level estimates of costs. To estimate benefits, we first developed geographic information system (GIS) models ”one for each of five species”that predict the numbers of ducks produced by a new wetland (by 1 km2 (0.4 mi2) grid point) based on surrounding land uses and other spatial factors. Results reveal benefit-cost ratios ranging from near-zero to over nine. 50. The revised ERS website page provides: a) an overview of key statistics about U.S. irrigated agriculture; b) a discussion of definitional differences between key irrigation concepts, such as withdrawal, applied and consumptive water-use estimates; c) how important irrigation is to U.S. agriculture; d) where U.S. crop irrigation occurs; e) what it produces; f) trends in irrigation water use; g) challenges facing agriculture under a future changing water environment; h) the status of onfarm irrigation efficiency in the U.S. and opportunities for continued improvement; and i) private and public investment in irrigation. 51. The ERS Amber Waves data feature presents key statistics on: a) the status of U.S. irrigated agriculture, b) distributional differences across numbers of irrigated farms, irrigated acres, and water use between low-sales, medium, and large-scale irrigated farms; c) how use of irrigation systems have changed over time and trends in improved onfarm irrigation efficiency; and d) how irrigation efficiency varies by region. 52. Improve water allocative and technological efficiency across competing uses by improving water market performance. 53. Help address legal problems and water rights disputes relating to conjunctive use in Washington State. 54. Understanding how energy production and policy affects water availability for other sectors is critical to understand how to maintain social well-being. Understanding the impact that drought (and future water shortages) affect electricity cooling and oil/natural gas production will provide insight into the design of future energy policy. 55. The USDA-NIFA funded projects are hoping to achieve long-term sustainability in the Rio Grande. Information on how climate change will affect water availability, and the potential sources of future water are critical to understand in this region.

Date of Annual Report: 12/27/2018

Report Information

Annual Meeting Dates: 10/25/2018 - 10/26/2018
Period the Report Covers: 10/01/2017 - 09/30/2018

Participants

Kroll,Stephan
Nathan Hendricks
Borisova, Tatiana
Cardon, Grant
Dinar, Ariel
Edwards, Eric
Eiswerth, Mark
Gabe Sampson
Ganjegunte, Girisha
Ghane, Ehsan
Gitau, Margaret
Goemans,Chris
Guilfoos, Todd
Hansen, Kristiana
Huffaker, Ray G
Ines, Amor
Peterson, Jeff
Asher, Jaremiah
Kent Kovacs
Levers, Lucia
Maas, Alexander
Mullen, Jeffrey
Paudel, Krishna
Peck, Dannele
Schoengold, Karina
Seedang, Saichon
Suter,Jordan
Taylor, Robert
Tullos, Desiree
Warziniack, Travis

Brief Summary of Minutes

W3190 Meeting Minutes

8:00-8:15am Introduction

Stephan Kroll: Opening remarks and logistics

Roll call and Introductions

Mike H: Possibility of working together with water quality group to collaborate on a water project aimed at western water issues. (SAS AFRI?). Willing to facilitate.

8:15-8:30 Overview of W-3190 scope and objectives, current project (Kristi Hansen and Nathan Hendricks)

Nathan H: Project needs to be renewed.

Kristi H: Small group is proceeding with initial proposal. They will outline objectives with specific milestones (ask Kristi for word document, and it will be circulated by email for states to accomplish these objectives).

8:30-10:00am W4190 project proposal presentation by the ad hoc writing committee, discussion by the group as a whole, and organization of break-out groups (Ad hoc committee: Margaret Gitau, Todd Guilfoos, Kristi Hansen, Krishna Paudel, Karina Schoengold. Advisors: Nick Brozovic and Jeff Peterson)

Thoughts on W4190 proposal

Kristi H: East versus west water management, and balance of interdisciplinary researchers with economists.

Temporary 4190 with Sarah Lupis

November 15^th, upload 4190 objectives, call for participations, fill out appendices to NIMSS. January 15^th, full proposal due.

Three possible topics/objectives

Characterize water resource and human system responses to climatic and anthropogenic perturbations.
1. How do land use and mineral affect water resources? How do we quantify risk in these systems?
2. Projections for short and long term

Coordinated management of water resources and land use practices (for long-term sustainability).
1. Best Management practices for quantity and quality
2. Salinity Management for reclaimed and treated effluent in agricultural systems
3. Institutions

Quantifying water demand and economic value of competing and complementary water uses.
1. Competition between energy, ecosystems, recreation, urban, environment, etc.
2. production value
3. social value and welfare effects
4. social equity

Evaluate and compare alternative water quality and quantity management strategies and institutions.
1. Water trading
2. Collaborative and adaptive management
3. Allocation mechanism
4. Collective action
5. Developing new sources
6. Water grabbing

Mike H: Tension in competition in populations and food. Evaluating buy and dry versus food security.

A new administrator advisor will be a facilitator.

Proposal goes out for review, multi-state review committee, revision process to satisfy external reviews. This committee is similar in its operation and process as others.

Garth T: This proposal needs to include quality—how do we look and quality and quantity simultaneously?

Ariel D: Including a focus on reclaimed/recycled water

Jeff P: Should we expand to explicitly include urban/municipal/industrial in the new paradigm with water quality and quantity tradeoffs. Using a BMP approach and framing for the objectives?

Karina S: Explicitly include “behavior” in our objectives and approaches

Jeff : Repeated logic under each objective (example: farm level, city level, institution level OR quality, quantity, behavior)

Other Thoughts from the group:

Should we tailor and be more explicit about extension and pushing out the research?

Maybe use objective 1 for new project name?

10:15-10:30am Introduction of NOAA-RISA Western Water Assessment, Lisa Dilling

Lisa D: Western Water Assessment—Colorado Wyoming and Utah. CO-production of knowledge and products with stakeholders.

Current project looking at the state of science in the Colorado River.

NIDAS- drought information system—how are people using this information and responding to drought.

Drought Decision Ranching Model (http://ranching.io)

What drought indices are used insurance and how are there perverse incentives (Palmer, SPEI, USDM, EDDI) different payouts. Anecdote: People destroy or move station to trigger insurance payment

Email: ldilling@colorado.edu

10:15-12:00pm State/Agency Reports

Big Ideas and projects proposed or underway

Jeff: Soil health practices. NRCS is very interested in soil health economics.

Urban storm water management—water retention trading (farmers create retention basins for cities)

National Academy of Science: Identify water topics within the nation, report we need to investigate, and look at the questions they propose.

UCOWR will be in Saint Paul, looking for special sessions.

Public gains to agricultural research—we need public gains to other emerging technologies (perennial wheat, eco-innovation, etc.)

Lucy: Flows into the sultan see

Alternatives to row crops that reduce runoff—survey and pay for “trust”

Invasive species management value to agriculture and potential pollution reduction

Drinking water, lead risk management and CBA

Jordan: Groundwater use and management in the Ogallala Aquifer. Using a hydro-econ integrated model.

CBARE: Colorado and Georgia, monthly water withdrawals from groundwater, experimental reciprocity. Water use comparisons across like neighbors.

Colorado and Iowa, the impact of tile drain systems (tile drains) and the optimal runoff/land retirement strategies.

Chris: Using ERS inhouse insurance data to identify insurance-water use relationship.

Downscaled climate projections and timing of water looking at institutional responsiveness

Gabe: Peer effects in decisions to appropriate a water right and use an irrigation technology.

Measuring spill-over effects in Kansas

Groundwater stocks capitalized into farmland sales prices.

Paulo: Water availability at the global scale

Looking at crop portfolios to increase production and decrease water

Biofuels impact on water use

Virtual water and water trade and globalization via land investments / land grabbing

Garth & Alex: New conflicts will be between ag and ag and ag and environment.

ESPA 13% curtailment

How do we use reservoirs as they are since we will not be adding others?

Water use by cities is going down

Greg Alward, open source IMPLAN in for a new grant.

Looking at the relationship between soil enhancement practices and water

1:00-3:00 Workshop on developing effective impact statements - Rocky Mountain Research Station (across from the Hilton)

The takeaway message is we need to improve our impact statements.

8:00-9:30am State/Agency Reports

Nathan: Need to find a place for next year.

Steven: Conservation plan in California evaluating (CBA) the proposed distribution system. Examining how ratepayers may be affected by forced curtailment. Estimating urban water demand for the future. O-Power, consumption analytics and social comparisons for city of Folsom, CA. Additionally, He is looking at the issues with forecasting using different methods, machine learning versus traditional econometrics. Assessed the 2015 drought mandate in terms of welfare. Evaluated efficiency versus implementations. (Objectives 3 2 and 1)

Kristi: Ogallala aquifer economic analysis of alternative groundwater strategies, learning lessons from Kansas and Nebraska. Concerns over Colorado Compact triggers, how do upper basin states meet obligations and continue power generation, effects on eco-function and services. (Objective 4)

Travis: A national forecast of water use in the country to be out in 2020. This includes both demands and yields. Requirements for the FS to analyze ecosystem services, rolling out projects to value ecosystem services on all national forest land. (Objective 2). Bringing together a suite of ecosystem valuation tools.

Ariel: Adaptation to climate change and water scarcity in desert regions of California. (old Objective 1). Collected primary data from farmers in 4 counties to understand their response/behavior to water scarcity and supply. Ultimately estimate profitability and adaptation (retirement, crop choice, etc.) to climate and policy. (old Objective 2) Calculating distortions creating by groundwater policy and estimate damages. (old Objective 3) Water reuse and reclamation, perception and decision changes, collect data on wastewater treatment and reuse, effluent to irrigation opportunities. More data on cost needs to be done. Doing work in Spain looking at the connectivity of rivers and aquifers. New work: USDA managed aquifer recharge. (Objective 1) utilize a unique dataset to explore why water utilities transform price and conservation strategies and which ones. (Objective 2) Subsidence and economic losses associated with it; optimal policies. (Objective 3) Extend the work in Spain.

Krishna: Louisiana. Willingness to Pay/Accept for additional irrigation water. Struggling with farmer participation because they are worried about policy around water use and salinity. BMP’s impacts on water quality and quantity. LSU and Baton Rouge is suffering from salt water intrusion, capturing saline water and pumping it to the Mississippi, CBA and implications of salinity and conjunctive water use (Objective 1a 2acd 3c 4a).

Mark: Sagebrush conservation. (Objective 4) Evaluating adaptive collaborative management for watersheds and stakeholders. Investigating the link from fire to water quality. Looking at interstate compact around the Platt River. Next step getting funding for these projects.

Jeff: Flint river basin analysis around drought. Incentivizing farmers to switch to groundwater or drill to deeper aquifers. Risk around well failure drives adoption, setting up choice experiments to figure out what type of farmers and what incentives get them to change irrigation methods. Survey or graywater attitudes and receptiveness—a national sample. Row crops transform to high value crops, what are the pesticide pressures and water pressures. (Objective 4, 2)

Karina: Special issue created by 3190. Ogallala with Jordan (see above). Evaluating differential groundwater management polices across Nebraska. Energy/water use with real-time monitors on irrigation wells—grant to expand that network. How do well characteristics affect the types of contract chosen. Tying conservation programs (CRP) and land use to aquifer levels and responses.

Eric: The roll of agricultural growth and irrigation. (Objective 1c) Using historic data to evaluate adaptation to climate change. Evaluating fragmentation of management on groundwater. Water Utilities don’t believe price matters. Tribal water studies. Declining water levels in the great salt lake, water trading—inter-basin—may be an efficient way to address this issue.

Mark: ERS is moving and lots of people want to get out of USDA. Farm Bill, the SNAP program is a hang up. Should it be extension through the university? House version charges NIFA with consolidating budget lines, finding efficiencies by creating 3 buckets: research and discover, extension and engagement, and education. 25% of experiment station spending must go to multistate hatch.

Jeramiah: Upper part of Michigan working with industry (Coca-cola) and TNC to attempt to increase water replenishment practices. Quantify the physical and economic impacts of aquifer recharge. For Water Quality, southeast Michigan, what influences conservation adoption in agriculture—a farmer led project. Wetland—surface and subsurface—monitoring of phosphorous.

Grant: No need to add nitrogen when moving from alfalfa to corn. Modeling the Bear River Basin and other hydrological changes—snow pack, hydrograph, etc. $14 million annual funding for water-climate issues. Remote sensing work to determine areas of vulnerability under water yield changes. Need to be better coupled with allocation mechanisms. Improve technologies to sense salinity, variable rate inputs, and other factors that influence growth. Director of soil labs group, 160 labs participate, meeting in January.

Kent: (Objective 2) Irrigation is huge part of agriculture (rice). Rebound effects in agriculture, efficiency does not necessarily reduce consumptive use. Water banking and aquifer recharge, economic analysis (CBA) in Eastern Arkansas. How does water “situation” induce crop and irrigation choice. Does the size of rebound change based on adoption rate. (Objective 3) Social value of groundwater—choice experiment.

Laura: Special issues on institutions and water. Adoption of pressure irrigation. Adoption of solar irrigation pumps, if energy is free and able to irrigate in new places, how does this affect water use. Adoption of stormwater management practices and other household practices. Organic manure perceptions. P-free laws in the US. Adoption of cover crops.

Danelle: Climate hubs are connectors and amplifiers. Low cost energy meters for irrigation (Kristi), to improve monitoring. Hub create tools (Ag risk viewer and SMERGE).

Margaret: Water quality and quantity issues. Climate and extreme events—distributions and the impact on water quality and quantity. Downscaling and weather generators…GCM does not capture extremes. Impact of subsurface drainage (tile drains) transport of phosphorous to Lake Erie. GCM and SWAT joint modeling. Impacts of green infrastructure on storm water, hydrograph and quality. FEWS long-term, where to store and transport (Objective 2). Data driven decision making in developing countries.

Nathan: Survey for farmers preferences for allocations. How big of a cut would they support, how do they feel about seniority and trading? Understanding distributional impacts is complicated. Land values as they relate to aquifer levels, well capacities, and seniority (methods, econometrics and machine learning algorithms). Spillover of aquifer to non-ag industries (Objective 3 and 4). ERS will send out sample survey in 2019 (Steve Wilder--Aaron).

10:15-12:15 Break-out groups for W4190 project proposal planning and writing

Kristi: Putting together workshop for 4190 to bring together water stakeholders. And other multi-state groups. Potentially include a SAS grant application in the next iteration. Requesting paragraphs for 4190 a week from now.

Danelle: Lou Swanson. Initiated new group WDC42 “Climate and Ag group”

12:15-12:30pm Location and dates of 2019 Meeting, selection of Secretary for next year

Location: Minneapolis Next year (Jeff and Lucy will organize).

Date: TBD

Format: We should invite stakeholders and policy makers to connect research with the community.

Secretary next year: Travis Warziniack

Vice-chair: Alexander Maas

Chair: Kent Kovacs

Accomplishments

<h2>Objective 1: Characterize bio-physical and economic factors (and interactions) that influence water-use decisions and related market or non-market outcomes.</h2> Nebraska (Schoengold) Schoengold and colleague (Mieno) supervised an MS thesis (Riley, 2018) that evaluates the impact of changes in landcover on expected aquifer recharge. Results show that changes from cropland to grassland can reduce underlying recharge, but that impacts are heterogeneous across locations. Schoengold and colleague (Mieno) supervised an MS thesis (Hackbart, 2017) that evaluates the impact of underlying soil and aquifer conditions on an irrigator's choice of electricity contract. Results show that those with sandier soils or lower well capacity are less likely to enroll in interruptible supply contracts. Schoengold and colleagues at Colorado State University (Goemans, Manning, Suter) are working with colleagues on an interstate and interdisciplinary grant to develop a hydro-economic model that evaluates producer decisions about water use under alternative climate and policy scenarios. Schoengold and a former student (Khachaturyan) published a paper that evaluates the potential for transboundary cooperation in a portion of the Kura-Araks River basin (Azerbaijan and Georgia). Results show that an agreement is most likely to be effective when multiple issues (water quantity and quality management) are linked in the negotiation. Arkansas (Kovacs) One conference paper about how the lateral flow of groundwater affects the optimal pumping. California (Dinar and D'Odorico) Adaptation to climate change and water scarcity in desert regions of California. Modeling resilience of farming sector in desert and southern California regions as affected by bio-physical and economic factors. A PhD student (Arisha Ashraf) completed dissertation and graduated.  Papers are being reviewed in technical journals. Results were presented in national and international meetings. The presence of tradeable water rights allows for the establishment of a water market in which oil companies may acquire water that can be used for shale oil and gas extraction, thereby reducing the water available for irrigation. As unconventional oil and gas extraction is expanding globally, it is important to understand the effect that the additional water consumption from hydraulic fracturing might have on water resources and food systems. We have quantified the amount of global unconventional shale oil and gas deposits located in water scarce areas. Evidence from the U.S. indicates that oil and gas corporations are generally able to secure freshwater in water scarce areas and drought periods, by acquiring water from other users, typically farmers. Thus, during drought, shale oil and gas extraction (which requires comparably much more water than conventional oil and gas) does not remain limited by water availability. Through water markets water shifts from agricultural to energy extraction uses, where the economic productivity of water is higher. Colorado (Suter, Goemans & Kroll) Worked with colleagues in the department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at CSU to analyze the impact of tile drain systems on water quality outcomes. Submitted manuscript with colleagues Dale Manning, Chris Goemans, and Mani Rouhi Rad at CSU based on stated-preferences for increases in groundwater quantities in the Ogallala Region. Submitted manuscript with Dale Manning and Chris Goemans and Ryan Shepler related to conservation practices and preferences concerning groundwater management policies in Colorado US Forest Service (Warziniack) Representatives from USFS Research and State and Private attended and presented at the Nature Conservancy's Water Fund Science Workshop in April. Attendees were primarily from the Nature Conservancy, water utilities, and partners interested in developing water markets and building water-related collaborations, from all over the world. Kansas (Hendricks and Sampson) Advised a graduate student to develop a paper and present at academic meetings titled Impact of Climate Change on Groundwater Extraction for Corn Production in Kansas. This work analyzes how farmers change irrigation water use in response to changes in evapotranspiration and precipitation. A working paper titled, Land Market Valuation of Groundwater Availability was completed during the reporting period and submitted to a journal. The paper was also presented at two academic meetings. This paper uses parcel-level land sales in Kansas to estimate how the availability of irrigation increases the market value of land and how the market valuation depends on the saturated thickness of the aquifer.   Published an article titled Potential Benefits from Innovations to Reduce Heat and Water Stress in Agriculture. This article estimates the impact of climate change on agricultural rental rates and decomposes the total effect into the effect through heat stress and water stress. A working paper titled, The Role of Peer Effects in Natural Resource Appropriation – The Case of Groundwater was accepted at a peer reviewed economic journal. This paper investigates how social interactions among growers affect the diffusion of groundwater rights. Missouri (McCann) Yubing Fan and Laura McCann submitted a manuscript on adoption of water management practices to the J. of Agricultural and Resource Economics.  The title is: Farmers’ Adoption of Pressure Irrigation Systems and Scientific Irrigation Scheduling Practices: An Application of Multilevel Models.  We received a revise and resubmit on the paper and have resubmitted the improved article.  A poster on adoption of solar irrigation pumps was presented at the Soil and Water Conservation Society meetings in July, 2018.  The title was Adoption of Solar Irrigation Pumps on U.S. Farms: A Multilevel Model Analysis.  Minnesota (Peterson and Levers) Designing a model integrating SWAT and an agro-economic optimization to analyze drivers’ impacts on adoption of cover and perennial crops for an NSF INFEWS grant. Designing a non market valuation survey for aquatic invasive species management using water quality indicators for a MAISRC grant. Analyzing survey data (choice experiment) to estimate growers’ willingness to accept subsidy payments to grow cover and perennial crops for a Minnesota BWSR grant. North Carolina (Edwards) Grant Proposal: U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Agriculture and Food Research Initiative: Water Management, Markets, and Incentives to Enhance Food Production in the Upper Colorado River Basin, Co-PI, Requested $5,136,199, not funded. With Kristi Hansen, University of Wyoming. Grant Proposal: National Science Foundation: Coupled Natural-Human Systems Grant: CNH-S: The Coupled Dynamics of Economic and Ecosystem Production in a Water-Scarce Basin. PI, $737,502, not funded. Wyoming (Hansen) In collaboration with W3190 member Brozovic (UNL), Hansen has begun a project to examine the potential for real-time energy metering to improve on-farm decision-making regarding water management in groundwater-fed southeastern Wyoming (Ogallala Aquifer). Real-time energy meters have been installed on irrigators’ pumps in the region and one season’s worth of data has been collected. Rhode Island (Guilfoos) Tested psychological factors in natural resource usage to determine if mental scarcities affect common resource usage decisions. Louisiana (Paudel) We modeled farmers' decision to allocate farmland under different irrigation management practices. Idaho (Taylor and Maas) Characterized the relationship between residential electricity and water use.  Begun work on evaluating soil health enhancement techniques in specialty crops, which have the potential to increase water retention and decrease pests. Utah (Cardon) There were a number of accomplishments associated with the research conducted under this project.  These accomplishments resulted in one MS thesis and one PhD Dissertation at Utah State University which produced several awards for the graduate students involved, reflecting the quality of the work.  Under this project a new salinity tolerance screening technique and apparatus for greenhouse use was developed.  The apparatus produces a near-continuous gradient in irrigation water and soil salinity that can be used in highly replicated, rapid screening of crop or ornamental plants (or varieties or cultivars within a species) over a predetermined range of salinity.  The paper describing this new technique was awarded the graduate student paper of the year award by the American Pomological Society.  Three additional peer-reviewed journal papers from another graduate student's research were published on the measurement and calibration of remotely sensed soil salinity using electromagnetic induction in the Soil Science Society of America Journal, and Geoderma.  The calibration methods we developed employ a new mathematical tool for such analyses not previously applied to soil science.  The method (quantile regression) is frequently employed in medical science to determine the contribution of various groups to observed data of human characteristics such as height, weight, etc., and helps to quantify the weightings of various stata in the data to the mean observation.  The application of this technique to understanding the contribution of subsurface soil layers to the conductivity of the bulk soil at the surface, is the seminal publication on the technique and a significant contribution to the science.  The PhD student responsible for the research was awarded several individual paper awards at professional scientific meetings and was chosen as the Utah State University College of Agriculture's Graduate Researcher of the Year in 2013.  Other papers by this student demonstrate the biases that various lab measurements of soil salinity can potentially impose on the validity of ground truth, direct sampling results and the calibration of remote sensing techniques and then applies the calibration and remote sensing processes to determine the sources and loading of contaminate solutes in a sensitive wetland preserve in the Uintah Basin of Utah.  The research work under this project should prove to be important advances in plant salinity tolerance assessment and the calibration of remotely sensed, electromagnetic induction measurements of soil salinity, thereby improving the accuracy of remote areal assessments of the extent and severity of soil salinization and its potential impact on plant-soil-water interactions in salt-affected regions of the world.  In addition to the several print articles, thesis and dissertation noted previously, the students involved also offered numerous oral and poster presentations at local regional and national professional scientific meetings including the annual meetings of the Western Society of Soil Science, The Soil Science Society of America, and the American Geophysical Union.   <h2>Objective 2: Develop or enhance methods to address emerging water management issues.</h2> Indiana (Gitau) The impact of different numbers of realizations (1, 25, 50, and 100) on the suitability of weather data generated from three widely used generators was investigated. Specifically, 50 years of daily precipitation, and maximum and minimum temperatures were generated for three weather stations in the Western Lake Erie Basin (WLEB), using CLIGEN, LARSWG and WeaGETS. Generated results were compared with 50 years of observed daily data. For all three generators, the analyses showed that one realization of data was not representative enough to capture essential statistical characteristics of the climate. Performance did not improve substantially when realizations were increased above 25 suggesting that this was a suitable number to use. Increasing the number of realizations did not improve performance if the generator was not able to capture the variable at all. Results provide guidance to enable more accurate and efficient weather data simulation for use with hydrologic, agricultural, and environmental applications. Weather generator LARS-WG representation of climate extremes was evaluated with a focus on the Western Lake Erie Basin, The generator captured precipitation extremes relatively well but was generally not as effective with temperature extremes. It, however, captured fall and winter one-day maximum temperatures and seasonal values of one-day minimum temperatures fairly well. Weather generator CLIGEN’s performance in estimating precipitation using an updated database and the subsequent impact on urban runoff simulations were evaluated with a focus on the U.S. Great Lakes Region. With the updated database, CLIGEN provided suitable precipitation estimates for use with modeling urban runoff or urbanization effects. Arkansas (Kovacs) One published paper on the WTP producers have for surface water. California (Dinar) Developed a dynamic model, which compares among several alternative policy interventions for modification of subsidized energy: The Case of Groundwater Pumping for Irrigation. Conducted a field experiment with farmers in Mexico. Published 2 papers in technical journals with former PhD student (Edgar Tellez-Foster) and a colleague team member researcher (Amnon Rapoport). Presented in national and international meetings. Rosa et al. (2018) have developed a framework to quantify the amount of irrigation water that might be transferred to the energy sector to perform hydraulic fracturing and to analyze the impact of these transfers on the food security of local populations. Given the increasing global interest in unconventional oil and gas, our framework aims to provide an analysis of the hydrologic implications of shale oil and gas extraction to better inform governments, energy corporations, farmers, local communities, and other stakeholders about the water and food security risks associated with the development of shale deposits in different regions of the world. Colorado (Suter, Goemans & Kroll) Worked with researchers at the University of Delaware, Johns Hopkins and Albany State University to develop and initiate a groundwater use reporting program. US Forest Service (Warziniack) USFS Region 4 (Intermountain West) recently completed its climate adaptation plan, with publications now in print. It was a project with the US Forest Service and several universities (e.g., Utah State, Washington State, Colorado State). The project covered a wide range of climate change impacts; relevant for this group is the chapter on ecosystem services and impacts of drought. Kansas (Hendricks and Sampson) Published an article titled Optimal Groundwater Management under Climate Change and Technical Progress. This article examines how economically optimal groundwater extraction differs when accounting for climate change and technological progress over time. A working paper titled, Peer Effects in the Diffusion of Water Saving Agricultural Technologies was completed during the reporting period and is being revised for resubmission to a peer reviewed economic journal. The paper was also presented at an academic meeting. This paper estimates how peer interactions among growers affects the adoption of a certain type of water and energy saving irrigation technology. Missouri (McCann) Submitted work on hydro-economic model of the Salton Sea, which highlights a leasing scheme to transfer water from ag to environmental use. North Carolina (Edwards) Utah Agricultural Experiment Station Extension Water Initiative Grant. Conserving Utah’s Water via Markets: Alternatives for Sustaining Agriculture, Urban Growth, and the Environment. Co-PI, $33,988, July 2018-December 2019. Edwards, E.C. and Sutherland, S.A. A Guide to Municipal Water Conservation Pricing in Utah. USU Extension Factsheet. Forthcoming. Result of: Utah Agricultural Experiment Station Extension Water Initiative Grant. The Potential for Water Conservation through Rate Changes: Economic Analysis and Implementation. Co-PI, $19,451, July 2017-June 2018. Wyoming (Hansen) Under the direction of W3190 members Hansen (UW) and Peck (USDA-ARS), a graduate student completed her M.S. thesis on the farm-level economic impacts of alternative groundwater management strategies in southeastern Wyoming (Ogallala Aquifer). The student is currently presenting her results to irrigators, conservation district staff, and SEO representatives in the region. Hansen (UW) and colleagues are developing a regional hydro-economic model to examine the community-level impacts of developing alternative groundwater management strategies in southeastern Wyoming (Ogallala Aquifer). Collaborators include local irrigators, conservation district staff, and SEO representatives in the region. Rhode Island (Guilfoos) Evaluated chemical storage policies related to water pollution in West Virginia. Found significant health effects from Elk River spill in West Virginia relating to chemical storage laws, or lack thereof. Louisiana (Paudel) We identify the way to manage water and soil salinity using several different management practices.  An input-output analysis method is used to understand the impact of water and soil salinity on  crop yield, and  regional and state economic impact. Idaho (Taylor and Maas) We have recently begun collaborating with Northwest Farm Credit Service and the RMA to evaluate the relationship between insurance (multi-peril crop, total revenue, etc.), water use, and crop choice.  This is an emerging issue since the Surface-Ground water agreement in southern Idaho was signed, requiring groundwater users to curtail 13% of total use. <h2>Objective 3: Evaluate and compare alternative water policy and management institutions.</h2> Nebraska (Schoengold) Schoengold and colleague (Mieno) evaluated the impact of varying water allocations on groundwater extraction. Results show that irrigators reduce extraction as a response to an allocation policy, and that the impact depends on climate conditions. Schoengold and colleague (Brozovic) published an article in a special edition of the Western Economic Forum that evaluates policy changes and lessons learned from groundwater management in the High Plains Aquifer. Washington (Yoder) Yoder, Jonathan. 2017. Economics of Adaptation:  The role of incentives, markets, and governance in climate change adaptation.  Invited Lecture to the Washington State Academy of Sciences. Seattle, WA. September 13. Yoder, Jonathan.  2017. Economic Assessment of Integrated Water Resource Management. The Yakima Basin Integrated Plan. October 18. Invited Lecture, Oregon State University, Corvallis. Arkansas (Kovacs) Three conference papers on the influence of social learning on irrigation investments. California (Dinar) Understanding the policy and institutions that enhance reuse of treated wastewater for irrigation in a regional context. Completed a working theoretical paper (with Ami Reznik and Francesc Hernandez-Sancho now under consideration in a technical journal. Obtained a grant from Giannini Foundation for an empirical application to California. Funds a post doc (Ami Reznik) and a graduate student (Logan Purvis). Published work on political economy of water reform in the Jucar Basin in Spain (with Encarna Esteban and others). Obtained with colleagues (Encarna Esteban and Jose Albiac) funds to extend the political economy work to the Ebro Basin in Spain. Colorado (Suter, Goemans & Kroll) Worked with researchers at CSU, U. of Nebraska, Kansas State U., and West Texas A&M to develop an integrated hydro-economic model to assess alternative groundwater management. Initiated research with Dale Manning, Chris Goemans, and Mani Rouhi Rad at CSU that explores temporal and spatial spillovers from a groundwater retirement program in Kansas. Submitted manuscript with Dale Manning, Chris Goemans, and Aaron Hrozencik at CSU on information and preferences related to groundwater management in CO's Republican River Basin. Initiated UNC faculty/student research to directly serve the needs of a Colorado-based payments for water-based ecosystem services program; joined the Steering Committee for this stakeholder. Initiated UNC faculty/student research to directly address needs of a collaborative, adaptive management program serving multiple stakeholder needs in Platte River Basin of WY/CO/NE. Developed & implemented new undergraduate/graduate UNC course involving applied research in support of innovative approaches and programs for watershed management and water policy. Kansas (Hendricks and Sampson) Published an article titled Adaptation to an Irrigation Water Restriction Imposed through Local Governance. This article estimates how farmers adapted to a water restriction imposed on groundwater extraction in Kansas. Collaborated with Mieno and Shoengold to analyze how water restrictions impact water use of those who are just outside the policy boundary. Michigan (Asher, Ghane, & Nejadhashemi) Nejadhashemi: A group of students and a postdoctoral associate introduced a new measure that can be used to improve sustainability by reducing agricultural impacts on water, energy, and environment while maximizing the farm profit and productions. Ghane: Organized a drainage monitoring workshop to educate Michigan residents on how to conduct simple and high-tech monitoring. The purpose of this workshop was to help residents properly investigate ways to improve drainage water quality. A workshop and field day was hosted on July 19th, 2018. An undergraduate student, Megan Beaver, worked on setting up the edge-of-field research project to analyze the effectiveness of drainage conservation practices in reducing agricultural nonpoint-source pollution. A poster was presented at the 2018 Mid-Michigan Symposium for Undergraduate Research Experience on July 25th, 2015. Ghane used data from a drainage conservation practice called denitrification bed to help improve agricultural drainage water. An article was published titled Carbon quality of four-year-old woodchips in a denitrification bed treating agricultural drainage water, Transactions of ASABE, vol 6, pp. 995-1000. Asher: Constructed a two-stage wetland treatment cell to monitor agricultural subsurface drainage and treat nonpoint source pollution. A presentation was given by Asher, Jeremiah. January 2018. In ditch wetland to treat tile drain nutrients. Michigan Agri-Business Association Winter Conference. Lansing, MI. A graduate student, Alaina Nunn worked with farmers to take discrete grab samples from tile drainage to learn about what level of nutrients are leaving the fields and inform farmers of this loss. The following presentations were given by Nunn, Alaina. March 2, 2018. The Impact of Subsurface Water Quality Data On Farmer Attitudes, Knowledge, and Behavior Towards Conservation: A Case Study in the River Raisin Watershed. Michigan Chapter Soil and Water Conservation Society Seminar. East Lansing, MI. Nunn, Alaina. June 18-22, 2018. A Journey through Networks: An Assessment of Who Influences On-farm Conservation Decisions. International Association for Great Lakes Research. Toronto, Canada Nunn, Alaina. April 2-4, 2017. Farmer Engagement in Conservation through Tile Drain Water Quality Monitoring in Southeastern Michigan. International Conference on Environmental Sustainability, Development & Protection. Barcelona, Spain. Minnesota (Peterson and Levers) Performed a cost benefit analysis for lead in drinking water for the MN Dept. of Health to inform lead policy. Developed a dynamic framework to compare innovation to regulatory strategies as policy tools for environmental protection Analyzing scenarios to increase water quality by removing row crops from areas close to waterways and replacing them with perennial grasses and solar panels for a grant with the Science Museum of Minnesota. Wyoming (Hansen) Hansen is analyzing the ecological and economic trade-offs associated with programs encouraging voluntary water conservation practices on irrigated rangelands that would allow Wyoming to meet its obligations to downstream states under the Colorado River Compact. Collaborators include Trout Unlimited, The Nature Conservancy, conservation districts and ranchers in the area. Idaho (Taylor and Maas) Water has transformed Idaho’s economy and people. Idaho agriculture is built upon irrigation, hydropower energizes the state, and Idaho’s largest cities are in deserts.

Publications

Virgina (Cobourn) Wade, C.M., K.M. Cobourn, G.S. Amacher, and E. Hester. 2018. Groundwater pumping decisions and land subsidence in the southern Chesapeake Bay region of Virginia,Water Resources Research, doi: 10.1029/2017WR022133. Elbakidze, L., H.D. Vinson, K.M. Cobourn, G.Taylor. 2018. Efficient water allocation and binding hydrologic externalities,Resource and Energy Economics 53: 147-161. Cobourn, K.M., C.C. Carey, K.J. Boyle, C. Duffy, H.A. Dugan, K.J. Farrell, L. Fitchett, P.C. Hanson, J.A. Hart, V.R. Henson, A.L. Hetherington, A.R. Kemanian, L.G. Rudstam, L. Shu, P.A. Soranno, M.G. Sorice, J. Stachelek, N.K. Ward, K.C. Weathers, W. Weng, and Y. Zhang. 2018. From concept to practice to policy: modeling coupled natural and human systems in lake catchments,Ecosphere 9(5) Chance, E.W., K.M. Cobourn, and V.A. Thomas. 2018. Trend detection for the extent of irrigated agriculture in Idaho™s Snake River Plain, 1984-2016, Remote Sensing, 10(1): 145. Ji, X., and K.M. Cobourn. 2018. The economic benefits of irrigation districts under prior appropriation doctrine: an econometric analysis of agricultural land-allocation decisions,Canadian Journal of Agricultural Economics, doi:10.1111/cjag.12165. Chance, E.W., K.M. Cobourn, V.A. Thomas, B. Dawson, and A.N. Flores. 2017. Normalized Difference Moisture Index method for identifying irrigated areas in the Snake River Plain, Idaho, Remote Sensing, 9(7): 546. Washington (Yoder) Yoder, Jonathan. 2018. Fiscal Gridlock over the water budget in Washington State: The politics and economics of pouring exempt wells into the Prior Appropriations bucket}. Western Economics Forum 16(1):30-37. Yoder, Jonathan, Jennifer Adam, Michael Brady, Joseph Cook, Stephen Katz, Shane Johnston, Keyvan Malek, John McMillan, & Qingqing Yang. 2017. Benefit-Cost Analysis of Integrated Water Resource Management: Accounting for interdependence in the Yakima Basin Integrated Plan. Journal of the American Water Resources Association 53(2):456-477. DOI: 10.1111/1752-1688.12507.  Indiana (Gitau) Guo, T., S. Mehan, M. Gitau, Q. Wang, T. Kuczek, and D. Flanagan. 2017. Impact of number of realizations on the suitability of simulated weather data for hydrologic and environmental applications. Stochastic Environmental Research and Risk Assessment. DOI 10.1007/s00477-017-1498-5. Gitau, M.W., S. Mehan, and T. Guo. 2018. Weather Generator Effectiveness in Capturing Climate Extremes. Environmental Processes. 10.1007/s40710-018-0291-x. Chen, J., M.W. Gitau, B.A. Engel, and D.C. Flanagan. 2018. Suitability of CLIGEN precipitation estimates based on an updated database and their impacts on urban runoff. Hydrological Sciences Journal. https://doi.org/10.1080/02626667.2018.1513655. Arkansas (Kovacs) Knapp, T., K. Kovacs, Q. Huang, C. Henry, R. Nayga, J. Popp, B. Dixon. 2018. Willingness to pay for irrigation water when groundwater is scarce. Agricultural Water Management, 195: 133-141. Kovacs, K., A. Durand-Morat. 2017. The influence of on- and off-farm surface water investment on groundwater extraction from an agricultural landscape. Journal of Agricultural and Applied Economics, 49(3): 323-346. Huang, Q., Y. Xu, K. Kovacs, G. West. 2017. Analysis of factors that influence the use of irrigation technologies and water management practices in Arkansas. Journal of Agricultural and Applied Economics, 49(2): 159-185. Kovacs, K., G. West, Y. Xu. 2017. The use of efficiency frontiers to evaluate the optimal land cover and irrigation practices for economic returns and ecosystem services. Journal of Hydrology, 547: 474-488. California (Dinar) Tellez-Foster, E. A. Dinar, and A. Rapoport, Comparing Alternative Policies for Modification of Energy Subsidies: The Case of Groundwater Pumping for Irrigation, Journal of Hydrology (Accepted for Publication, August 28, 2018). Esteban, E., A. Dinar, J. Albiac, A. Calera, M. García Mollá, L. Avellá, Interest Groups Perceptions on Water Policy Reforms: Insight from a Water Stressed Basin, Water Policy (Accepted for Publication April 18, 2018), 20:794–810. Tellez-Foster E., A. Rapoport, and A. Dinar, Alternative Policies to Manage Electricity Subsidies for Groundwater Extraction: A Field Study in Mexico, Journal of Behavioral Economics for Policy (Accepted for Publication October 1, 2017). Reznik, A., A. Dinar, and F. Hernandez-Sancho, An Economic Examination of Wastewater Recycling Role in Solving the Growing Scarcity of Natural Water Resources. UCR SPP Working Paper Series, June, 2018 WP# 03-18. <a href="http://spp.ucr.edu/publications/economic_examination_wastewater.pdf">http://spp.ucr.edu/publications/economic_examination_wastewater.pdf</a>.) Rosa, L and P. D’Odorico (2019), The water-energy-food nexus of unconventional oil and gas extraction in the Vaca Muerta Play, Argentina, J. Cleaner Production, 207:743-750. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2018.10.039. D’Odorico, P. (2018), The challenges of meeting future food, energy, and water needs, Eos, 99, https://doi.org/10.1029/2018EO098891. Seekell, D.A., P. D'Odorico, and G.K. MacDonald, Food, trade, and the environment, Environm. Res. Lett., 13(10),100201. Rosa., L., M.C. Rulli, K.F. Davis, D. Chiarelli, C. Passera, P. D'Odorico, 2018. Closing the yield gap while ensuring water sustainability, Environm. Res. Lett., 13 104002. Dell'Angelo, J., P. D'Odorico, and M.C. Rulli, 2018. The neglected costs of water peace, WIREs Water, ;5:e1316. https://doi.org/10.1002/wat2.1316. D’Odorico, P., K.F. Davis, L. Rosa, J.A. Carr, D. Chiarelli, J. Dell’Angelo, J.A. Gephart, G.K. MacDonald, D.A. Seekell, S Suweis, M.C. Rulli, The global food-energy-water nexus, Reviews of Geophysics, 56, 456–531, https://doi.org/10.1029/2017RG000591 Rosa, L., K.F. Davis, M.C. Rulli, and P. D’Odorico, 2018. The water-energy nexus of hydraulic fracturing: a global hydrologic analysis for shale oil and gas extraction, Earth’s Future, 6,  https://doi.org/10.1002/2018EF000809. Chiarelli, D., L. Rosa, M.C. Rulli, and P. D’Odorico, 2018. The water-food nexus of natural rubber production, J. Clearner Production, 172, 1739-1747. Dell’Angelo, J., P. D’Odorico, and M.C. Rulli, 2018. The Global Water Grab Syndrome, Ecological Economics, 143, 276-285. Davis, K.F., M.C. Rulli, A. Seveso, and P. D’Odorico, 2017. Increase in food production and reduction in water use through optimized crop distribution, Nature Geosciences, doi.org/10.1038/s41561-017-0004-5. Colorado(Suter, Goemans & Kroll) Palm-Forster, L.H., J.F. Suter, K.D. Messer. Forthcoming. Experimental evidence on policy approaches that link agricultural subsidies to water quality outcomes. American Journal of Agricultural Economics. Lauer M., M. Sanderson, D.T. Manning, J.F. Suter, A. Hrozencik, B. Guerrero, B. Golden. 2018. Values and groundwater management in the Ogallala Aquifer region. Journal of Soil and Water Conservation 73(5): 593-600. Monger, R., J.F. Suter, D.T. Manning, J.P. Schneekloth. 2018. Retiring Land to Save Water: Participation in Colorado’s Republican River Conservation Reserve Enhancement Program. Land Economics 94(1): 36-51. Guerrero, B., B. Golden, K. Schoengold, J.F. Suter, A. Stoecker, C. Goemans, and D. Manning. 2017. Groundwater Laws Across the Ogallala Aquifer Region. Colorado Water, Nov/Dec: 12-15. Ronayne, M., T. Sale, J.F. Suter, and D. Shugert. 2017. Evaluating the Energy Cost of Groundwater Production in the Denver Basin Aquifers. Colorado Water, Sep/Oct: 12-15. Stone, Janine, Marco Costanigro, and Christopher Goemans. Public Opinion on Colorado Water Rights Transfers: Are Policy Preferences Consistent with Concerns over Impacts?. Journal of Agricultural and Resource Economics 43.3 (2018): 403-422. Hrozencik, R. A., et al. 2018. The heterogeneous impacts of groundwater management policies in the Republican River Basin of Colorado. Water Resources Research 53.12: 10757-10778. Burkhardt, J., M. Flyr, C. Goemans, L. Hans, A. Neel., A. Maas. Forthcoming. Modelling Commercial Demand for Water: Exploring alternative prices, instrumental variables, and heterogeneity. Land Economics Kroll, Stephan and Aric Shafran. 2018. Spatial Externalities in Interdependent Security Games, Journal of Risk and Uncertainty 56/3, 237-257. Eiswerth, M.E., C. Lawley, and M.H. Taylor. 2018. Economics of Invasive Species. In: Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Environmental Economics. Edited by J.R. Kahn, D. Biller, and J. Whitehead. New York, NY: Oxford University Press. Eiswerth, M.E., and G.C van Kooten. 2017. Maximizing Returns from Payments for Ecosystem Services: Incorporating Externality Effects of Land Management. Resource Economics and Policy Analysis Research Group Working Paper 2017-06, Department of Economics, University of Victoria. US Forest Service (Warziniack) Implications for US Trade and Nonindigenous Species Risk Resulting from Increased Economic Integration of the Asia-Pacific Region. AM Countryman, T Warziniack, E Grey - Society & Natural Resources, 2018 Binder, Seth, Robert G. Haight, Stephen Polasky, Travis Warziniack, Miranda H. Mockrin, Robert L. Deal, and Greg Arthaud. Assessment and valuation of forest ecosystem services: State of the science review. Gen. Tech. Rep. NRS-170. Newtown Square, PA: US Department of Agriculture, Forest Service, Northern Research Station. 47 p. 170 (2017): 1-47. Warziniack, Travis, Megan Lawson, and S. Karen Dante-Wood. Effects of climate change on ecosystem services in the Northern Rockies. In Climate Change and Rocky Mountain Ecosystems, pp. 189-208. Springer, Cham, 2018. Holmes, Thomas P., James Vose, Travis Warziniack, and Bill Holman. Forest Ecosystem services: Water resources. General Technical Report SRS-226. Asheville, NC: US Department of Agriculture Forest Service, Southern Research Station. 226 (2017): 31-48. Warziniack, Travis, Chi Ho Sham, Robert Morgan, and Yasha Feferholtz. Effect of forest cover on water treatment costs. Water Economics and Policy 3, no. 04 (2017): 1750006. Halofsky, Jessica E., Travis W. Warziniack, David L. Peterson, and Joanne J. Ho. Understanding and managing the effects of climate change on ecosystem services in the Rocky Mountains. Mountain Research and Development 37, no. 3 (2017): 340-352. Kansas (Hendricks and Sampson) Drysdale, K.M. and N.P. Hendricks. 2018. Adaptation to an Irrigation Water Restriction Imposed through Local Governance. Journal of Environmental Economics and Management 91: 150-165. Hendricks, N.P. 2018. Potential Benefits from Innovations to Reduce Heat and Water Stress in Agriculture. Journal of the Association of Environmental and Resource Economists 5(3): 545-576. Quintana-Ashwell, N.E., J.M. Peterson, and N.P. Hendricks. 2018. Optimal Groundwater Management under Climate Change and Technical Progress. Resource and Energy Economics 51: 67-83. Michigan (Asher, Ghane, & Nejadhashemi) Rojas-Downing, M.M., A. P. Nejadhashemi, K. A. Cassida, Daneshvar, J.S. Hernandez-Suarez, M. Abouali, S.A. Al Masraf, M. R. Herman, T. Harrigan, Food Footprint as a Measure of Sustainability for Grazing Dairy Farms, Environmental Management, DOI: 10.1007/s00267-018-1101-y. Ghane, Ehsan. Carbon quality of four-year-old woodchips in a denitrification bed treating agricultural drainage water, Transactions of ASABE, vol 6, pp. 995-1000. Minnesota (Peterson and Levers) Levers, L., Skaggs, T., & Schwabe, K. (2018) Buying Water for the Environment: A Hydro-Economic Analysis of Salton Sea Inflows. Agricultural Water Management.  Accepted with revisions. Peterson, J.M. and A.E. Saak. (2018) Spatial Externalities In Aquifers With Varying Thickness: Theory And Numerical Results For The Ogallala Aquifer. Journal of Natural Resources Policy Research. In press. Quintana Ashwell, N.E., J.M. Peterson, and N. P. Hendricks. (2018) Optimal Groundwater Management under Climate Change and Technical Progress. Resource and Energy Economics 51 (February 2018): 67-83. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.reseneeco.2017.10.005. Symonik, D., Levers, L., & Calow, P. (2018) Lead and Minnesota’s Drinking Water: Assessment of Eliminating Lead in Minnesota Drinking Water. Submitted.  North Carolina (Edwards) Edwards, E.C. and Null, S.E. The Cost of Addressing Saline Lake Decline and the Potential for Water Conservation Markets. Forthcoming February 2019 in Science of the Total Environment. Edwards, E., Cristi, O., Edwards, G., & Libecap, G. 2018. An illiquid market in the desert: Estimating the cost of water trade restrictions in northern Chile. Forthcoming February, 2019 in Environment and Development Economics. doi:10.1017/S1355770X18000220 Edwards, E.C. and Smith, S.M. The Role of Irrigation in the Development of Agriculture in the United States. Forthcoming December 2018 in Journal of Economic History. Ayres, A.B., Edwards, E.C. and Libecap, G.D. 2018. How Transaction Costs Obstruct Collective Action: Evidence from California's Groundwater. Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, vol. 91, Pages 46-65. Wyoming (Hansen) Khadem, M, C. Rougé, J.J. Harou, K.M. Hansen, J. Medellin-Azuara and J.R. Lund (forthcoming). Estimating the economic value of inter-annual reservoir storage in water resource systems. Water Resources Research. 10.1029/2017WR022336 Hansen, K., E. Duke, C. Bond, M. Purcell and G. Paige. 2018. Landowner Preferences for a Payment-for-Ecosystem Services Program in Southwestern Wyoming. Ecological Economics 146: 240-9. Rhode Island (Guilfoos) Brozyna, C., Guilfoos, T., & Atlas, S. (2018). Slow and deliberate cooperation in the commons. Nature Sustainability, 1(4), 184. Guilfoos, T., Kell, D., Boslett, A., & Hill, E. L. (2017). The Economic and Health Effects of the 2014 Chemical Spill in the Elk River, West Virginia. American Journal of Agricultural Economics, 100(2), 609-624. Louisiana (Paudel) Bijay Pokhrel, Krishna P. Paudel, and Eduardo Segarra. 2018. Factors affecting the choice, intensity, and allocation of irrigation technologies by U.S. cotton farmers. Water, 10(6), 706; https://doi.org/10.3390/w10060706 (MDPI journal impact factor 1.832) Idaho (Taylor and Maas) Burkhardt, J., M. Flyr, C. Goemans, L. Hans, A. Neel., A. Maas. Forthcoming. Modelling Commercial Demand for Water: Exploring alternative prices, instrumental variables, and heterogeneity. Land Economics. Grigg, Neil. Theresa Connor, Alexander Maas. 2018. Financing Integration of Urban Water Systems: From Service Provision to Resource Management. Public Works Management & Policy, 2: 186-98. Johnson, D. M., John R. McKean, and R. Garth Taylor. Comparing a Hierarchical-Decision Travel Cost Recreation Demand Model to the Traditional Model and Implications for Survey Design. Journal of Leisure Science Forthcoming. Levan Elbakidze; Hannah Vinson; Kelly Cobourn; R. Garth Taylor. 2018 Efficient Groundwater Allocation and Binding Hydrologic Externalities Environmental and Resource Economics 53(1) 147-161. Elbakidze, L.  Brett Schiller, and R. Garth Taylor. 2017. Estimation of Short and Long Run Derived Irrigation Water Demands and Elasticities. Water Economics and Policy 03(01) p175.  Elbakidze, Levan, Fa’anunu, Benjamin, Mamula, Aaron, Taylor, R. Garth, 2017. Evaluating Economic Efficiency of a Water Buyback Program: The Klamath Irrigation Project. Journal of Energy and Resource Economics Vol. 48(2), p68–82. <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.reseneeco.2017.02.001">http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.reseneeco.2017.02.001</a> Utah (Cardon) Because Grant Cardon has not been the official representative to this committee for the past 4 years, his activities on the project have not been those reported for the state of Utah, therefore, the following publications are being included here so they can be entered into the record of work for this committee: Amakor, Xystus N., Astrid R. Jacobson and Grant E. Cardon.  2013. Improving Estimates of Soil Salinity from Saturation Paste Extracts in Calcareous Soils.  Soil Science Society of America Journal 77(3): 792-799 doi:10.2136/sssaj2012.0235 Amakor, Xystus N., Grant E. Cardon, Jargen Symanzik and Astrid R. Jacobson.  2013. A New Electromagnetic Induction Calibration Model for Estimating Low Range Salinity in Calcareous Soils.  Soil Science Society of America Journal 77(3):985-1000 doi:10.2136/sssaj2012.0320 Amakor, Xystus N., Astrid R. Jacobson, Grant E. Cardon, and Austin Hawks. 2014. A Comparison of Salinity Measurement Methods based on Soil Saturated Pastes. Geoderma. Volumes 219220, May 2014, Pages 32-39, ISSN 0016-7061 Cardon, Grant, Brent Black and Sean Rowley.  2013.  Year-To-Year Integration Of Yield Response To Fertilizer Application In Tree Fruits.  Nutrient Digest: Nutrient Management Newsletter for the Western US.  5(4):1-3. Rowley, S., G.E. Cardon and B. Black.  2013. Macronutrient management for Utah Orchards. USU Extension Publication Horticulture/Fruit/2013-02pr. Black, Brent, Grant Cardon, and Robert Hill.  2016.  Orchard Irrigation.  Chapter 10 In: Intermountain Tree Fruit Production Guide. Marion Murray, Harold Larsen and Tony McCammon (eds). Joint publication of Utah State University, Colorado State University and University of Idaho.

Impact Statements

Objective 3: Evaluate and compare alternative water policy and management institutions. Nebraska (Schoengold) Schoengold and Mieno find that irrigators reduce extraction as a response to an allocation policy, and that the impact depends on climate conditions. Results provide support to policymakers who want to use allocations to manage groundwater in areas where aquifers are overused. Historically, much of the information on local and state-level programs to manage water has not been widely available across state borders. Schoengold and other collaborators (e.g., Schoengold and Brozovic, 2018) wrote articles for a special edition of the Western Economic Forum, published in June 2018. Authors include W3190 members from six states, and cover a range of issues relevant to water management in the western United States such as water trading, salinity management, and cooperative management of communal water resources. The open access issue was distributed to over 1000 members of professional associations. Bridget Guerrero, Bill Golden, Karina Schoengold, Jordan Suter, Art Stoecker, Chris Goemans, and Dale Manning, Groundwater Laws Across the Ogallala Aquifer Region Colorado Water, (November/December 2017). Washington (Yoder) USDA NIFA Water for Agricultural Production Systems grant, 2018-2023. Technology for Trade: New Tools and New Rules for Water Use Efficiency in Agriculture and Beyond Jonathan Yoder, lead PI. $5 Million. Arkansas (Kovacs) Will examine the economic prospects of managed aquifer recharge in the Arkansas Delta. This is work for a cooperative agreement with the Economic Research Service. California (Dinar) Executes a study with avocado growers and the city of Escondido on the use of treated wastewater for irrigated agriculture with special consideration on equity, efficiency, and environmental protection. Colorado (Suter, Goemans & Kroll) AFRI. Crop Insurance and Groundwater Consumption in the Ogallala Aquifer Region. PIs: Dale Manning, Chris Goemans $496,805. Stakeholders, including programs implementing payments for water-based ecosystem services, will be better able to determine more efficient and effective patterns of payments to various land managers in a water basin. As a result of UNC student/faculty research in collaboration with stakeholders in CO and NE, various federal/state/local/private stakeholders will have a better understanding of the economic benefits yielded by innovative water policy and management institutions that employ payments for ecosystem services and collaborative, adaptive, multi-state management. Kansas (Hendricks and Sampson) We provide estimates of how much water use decreased compared to what would have happened in the absence of a policy to reduce water use. We also show that most of the decrease occurred through reductions in the intensity of water use on the same crops and same irrigated acres. Therefore, our results indicate the loss in farm profits due to the policy were smaller than would have occurred through reductions in irrigated acres. Serve as advisor on new NSF funded grant titled NRT-INFEWS: Preparing future leaders: Rural resource resiliency (R3). ($2,998,366) with Melanie Derby, Prathap Parameswaran, Matthew Sanderson, Jonathan Aguilar, David Steward, Gaea Hock, Stacy Hutchinson, and Ryan Hansen. September 2018-August 2023. Michigan (Asher, Ghane, & Nejadhashemi) Nejadhashemi developed an NSF grant as a result of this support. The grant is still in review. Nejadhashemi, A.P., A. Srivastava, K. Deb, S. Joshi, C. Saffron, M. Zayernouri, T. Surbrook, A. Go, 2018. INFEWS/T1: Nutrition and Food Security under the Lens of Food-Energy-Water Nexus, National Science Foundation, in review. Project amount requested: $2,470,376. Ghane is looking to find long-term solutions to reduce agricultural pollution runoff from farmland. He was awarded an Edge-of-field Research Project, Michigan Department of Agriculture and Rural Development, $1,522,114, awarded in 2017 Minnesota (Peterson and Levers) Developing a risk assessment framework for drinking water management for the MN Dept. of Health to inform policy. Wyoming (Hansen) A long-term potential outcome from analyzing the ecological and economic trade-offs associated with programs encouraging voluntary water conservation practices on irrigated rangelands is a more targeted fallowing program that could reduce economic and ecological harm in the region.