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

LUCAS-W is a scenario-based simulation model of coupled land use change and associated water demand for California's Central Coast region from 2001-2061. The model is a verison of the LUCAS model, which uses the SyncroSim software framework (Software documentation available at http://doc.syncrosim.com/index.php?title=Reference_Guide), that contains a new coupling with statistical software R (https://www.r-project.org/) to enable dynamic feedbacks between land-use change, resulting water demand, and water availability. The model was parameterized with land-use change and water use empirically estimated from county-scale historic data, as well as results from dozens of local agencies’ groundwater modeling efforts. It was used to assess a set of five stakeholder-driven scenarios that explored alternative development pathways assuming the continuation of historic land use change rates but with different intensities of water supply and land-use management. Water management strategies were (1) water demand limits, and (2) water supply enhancement, while land use management strategies were (3) urban sprawl limits on recharge areas and prime farmland, and (4) preservation of priority habitat areas. By scaling up studies of local-scale diverse, heterogeneous aquifers and management approaches to a regional level, the model can enable a projection of spatial changes due to shifts in LULC and water management including leakage from land and water use regulated areas into unregulated areas, information that is key to future agency planning for sustainability. The resulting land-use projections provide a range of development projections under different sets of management assumptions: patterns of development that do not stabilize “business-as-usual” (WL), assume that water demand stabilizes at a range of possible sustainable water supply levels (MM, WH), and that assume a relatively unregulated (LL) or tightly compact (LH) pattern of future development. See Van Schmidt et al. (2021) Water Resources Research (doi: XXXXXXXXXXXXX) for more details.