Dr. Duane Eversoll will be presented with the 2018 Maurice Kremer Groundwater Achievement Award during the Water Seminar Series event Wednesday, Feb. 27, at Hardin Hall. The annual Kremer Memorial Lecture will be delivered by James Butler of the Kansas Geological Survey.
The Maurice Kremer Groundwater Achievement Award has been presented annually since 1986 by The Groundwater Foundation to Nebraskans who have provided exceptional groundwater-related services to the state.
Participants unable to attend can view the seminar via livestream through the Nebraska Water Center website.
After the award is delivered, Butler will present on the High Plains Aquifer in Kansas, billed as a tale of two areas. In subhumid south-central Kansas, water levels have changed relatively little since the onset of widespread irrigation pumping. However, in semi-arid western Kansas, water-level declines threaten the continued viability of irrigated agriculture.
Over the last several decades, Kansas has developed a multi-level framework for managing groundwater resources (quantity). The Division of Water Resources of the Kansas Department of Agriculture has the overall responsibility. Five groundwater management districts, which essentially overlay the Kansas HPA, allow local input into the management of their resources.
Despite the efforts of these entities, HPA decline rates have continued virtually unabated in western Kansas.
Recently, Kansas has developed a grassroots-based management framework for implementing large-scale pumping reductions, the only option for moderating decline rates in western Kansas. The key question is how much should pumping be reduced.
Data on annual water-level changes and water use can be used to demonstrate that relatively modest reductions in pumping would have a large impact on decline rates.
These results, coupled with the success of the first demonstration of large-scale pumping reductions, have renewed efforts to decrease pumping and extend the lifetime of the HPA in western Kansas.
Nebraska Water Center
More details at: https://go.unl.edu/g0sr