UC Santa Barbara

Ground-water management is posed as the maximization of the expected value of net revenue accruing from the sale of ground water, subject to hydrogeologic, climatic, and environmental conditions. The market price of ground water, the cost of ground-water extraction, and the discount rate are economic factors included in the development of long-term aquifer management policies. Closed-forms solutions were derived for the optimization problem, and the sensitivity of solutions to the market price of ground water, the cost of ground-water extraction, climate conditions (wet or dry), and the initial hydraulic heads was determined. The optimization method was applied to a coastal aquifer and long-term management policies were obtained under a variety of climatic, economic, and hydraulic scenarios.