Location: Sustainable Water Management Research
Project Number: 6066-13000-006-042-S
Project Type: Non-Assistance Cooperative Agreement
Start Date: Jul 1, 2026
End Date: Jun 30, 2029
Objective:
In order to work towards solving water quantity and quality issues in the Lower Mississippi River Basin this agreement has two objectives. Accomplishing these objectives will aid in ensuring water availability to contribute to farmer profitability and long-term health of agricultural land in keeping with the research priorities of the Secretary of Agriculture. Moreover, working towards these objectives will also inherently address important research gaps in how hydrological and agricultural-related datasets are generated, harmonized, analyzed, and reported. Addressing these research gaps will have important and transformational impacts for regional, national, and international efforts in animal, plant, and land utilization research.
Objective 1. The primary objective of this research is to test the hypothesis that groundwater withdrawals from the Mississippi River alluvial aquifer decrease in response to precipitation timing and adequate totals during commodity crop growing seasons in the Mississippi Delta.
Sub-objectives:
1a. Acquire and perform space time cube statistical analyses for precipitation totals and precipitation variability from the Parameter-elevation Regressions on Independent Slopes Model 800 meter resolution data for the Mississippi Delta region.
1b. Identify ancillary datasets, which include, but are not limited to remotely sensed and modeled datasets complimenting ground truth, on-farm collected water-use totals in the Mississippi Delta.
1c. Develop statistical analyses of high-resolution gridded precipitation datasets useful in comparing seasonal variability and seasonal totals of precipitation with on-farm groundwater use data.
1d. Identify and utilize existing ground truth datasets to corroborate groundwater use totals and, potentially, parse out discrete periods of groundwater use and groundwater abstraction volumes during said periods over growing seasons.
Objective 2. Identify and investigate related groundwater usage and effects on resource availability and water quality that affect water usability using available on-farm data, remotely sensed data, and modeled datasets. This research will focus on two locations, the first being the Lower Mississippi River Basin; and second, other alluvial and connected alluvial-bedrock systems located outside the Lower Mississippi River Basin that contain unique agrosystem datasets not found in the Lower Mississippi River Basin which can be applied and have transformative implications for managing issues agricultural water issues in the Lower Mississippi River Basin.
Approach:
To accomplish the Objective 1, water use data from on-farm sites across the Mississippi River Delta will be utilized. These data will be harmonized with available remotely sensed and modeled datasets that will enable determination and, by extension, statistical inferential testing, of those data that explain groundwater use patterns across the Mississippi Delta locations from 2014 to 2023. Ground-truth datasets will be used to refine the work and confirm results to ensure the accuracy of inferred results. These analyses will culminate in presentations to stakeholders, scientific conferences, peer-reviewed manuscripts, and webtools that can inform farmers on the status of groundwater availability in the Mississippi Delta. The results will allow a better understanding of on-farm water use which in turn can guide policy makers, future research, and on-farm decisions.
In approaching Objective 2, existing databases, which include, but are not limited to, water use, water levels, and water quality existing within the Lower Mississippi River Basin and in other alluvial-bedrock systems will be explored. These databases will include, but are not limited to, numerous datasets such as USDA ARS Agricultural Data Commons, US Geological Survey National Water Information System, the Water Quality Data Portal, and the Consortium of Universities for the Advancement of Hydrologic Science (CUAHSI) Hydroshare.
Workflows of Objective 2 will build upon harmonization techniques developed as part of Objective 1 between remotely sensed gridded geospatial datasets and point data collected at on- and off-farm locations. Additional approaches as part of efforts toward Objective 2 will include geospatial modeling development and support of research on how water use, water sustainability, and water quality issues directly affect related animal, plant, and land utilization research, e.g. spatial epidemiology, soil mapping, defining field zones for farm management, and variable nutrient applications for precision agriculture. Similar to Objective 1, analyses will culminate into presentations to stakeholders, scientific conferences, peer-reviewed manuscripts, and webtools that can inform farmers on the status of broader agrosystems in the Lower Mississippi River Basin and, potentially, larger scales.
The outcome of this work will be critical data which illustrates irrigation water use across the Lower Mississippi River Basin which can be used to inform research into water management and to demonstrate the success of various approaches to groundwater management. In turn, the results will allow farmers to continue to irrigate which is required to mitigate risk and increase farm profitability, while ensuring the long-term productivity of the land. This research supports the Secretary of Agriculture’s priority of promoting soil health to regenerate long-term productivity of land.