The recipient shall develop a web-based interface for streamlining water rights administration

This $249,743 Project Grant award from the U.S. Department of the Interior Bureau of Reclamation under the Applied Science Grants program (CFDA 15.557) will enable the New Mexico Office of the State Engineer, doing business as the Interstate Stream Commission, to develop a web-based analytical interface for streamlining water rights administration in New Mexico.

The key activities under this grant include: 1) collecting and analyzing data on mapped aquifers, surface water networks, and existing hydrologic models; 2) integrating this data into an expanded Analytical Interface (ANI) framework to represent additional groundwater basins in the state; 3) enhancing the ANI's capabilities for user-defined inputs, spatial heterogeneity representation, depletion mapping, and drawdown evaluation; and 4) documenting the performance of the upgraded ANI system against analytical and numerical benchmarks. The grant recipient will also participate in a webinar to present the project's accomplishments and lessons learned to the Bureau of Reclamation.

The deliverable from this 2-year grant project, which runs from September 2024 to September 2026, will be a map-based web interface to support water rights administration across New Mexico by providing enhanced hydrologic data access and water management decision support tools.

Activities

1)data collection and analysis: conduct data collection and analysis pertaining to mapped aquifers and their hydrogeologic characteristics, networks of perennial and ephemeral streams that interact with groundwater, and data from existing external numerical models. The recipient will leverage the existing new mexico water data initiative data sets and improved data sets pertaining to aquifer tests and aquifer properties in a comprehensive geodatabase for use in developing ANI datasets and as a stand-alone reference for regional hydrology in the state.2 data integration into ANI framework: integrate this data into the existing ANI framework expanding its capabilities to represent most new mexico basins not having an administrative numerical model. The recipient will utilize the data collected from task 5.1 to expand the integration first, to stream-connected groundwater basins in the state and second, to remaining closed or non-stream-connected groundwater basins for additional basins incorporated into the ANI framework.3) implementation of advanced ANI capabilities: develop advanced capabilities including user-defined river shapefiles, spatially weighted aquifer properties, depletion mapping, refined drawdown integration techniques, and extending platform capabilities. To advance the capabilities of these five features, the recipient will:allow users to specify other surface and groundwater characteristics by importing shapefiles, have the option to evaluate other geographic areas, and select options for river network representation.significantly improve anis capability to represent simple heterogeneity through harmonic-mean averaging.enhance visualization of estimated impacts, depicting both the spatial distribution and magnitude of the ANI results, allowing the user insight to the predicted spatial extent of depletions by color coding river sections according to the magnitude of estimated depletion.expand ANI drawdown prediction versatility and provide better drawdown evaluations with less exceptions along meandering rivers.allow the collected data (task 5.1) to be implemented through an update process, rather than requiring a new software release.4) document of benchmark results: evaluate ANI predictions against benchmark configurations to document impacts of boundary conditions, capabilities, and limitations. The recipient will compare ANI depletion and drawdown predictions to a series of benchmarks for both analytical and numerical evaluations of hypothetical water transfers that will demonstrate proper implementation of solutions to the governing equations. 5)webinar presentation. Reclamation may request the recipient to participate in a reclamation-sponsored webinar to discuss application of deliverables to management questions. The presentation should inform reclamation about project accomplishments, the results of the identified tasks, and any lessons learned.expected deliverables or outcomes: to develop a map-base analytical interface for water rights administration in new mexicointended beneficiaries: publicsubrecipient activities (if known or specified at time of award): NA