| Director: |
Babak Shabani |
| Other Researchers: |
Ginger Davis
|
| Funding: |
Indiana Finance Authority
|
| Issue: |
The primary goal of the Central Indiana Water Study is to provide a better understanding of the supply and demand of water resources in the Central Indiana region. |
| Objective: |
Water resource planning requires data related to long-term trends in watershed and aquifer water-budget parameters including precipitation, evapotranspiration (ET, combined loss of water from land surface owing to evaporation and plant transpiration), and groundwater-level fluctuations during both dry and wet periods. The IWBN quantifies these parameters to support data-driven water-resource planning that considers the range of historic hydrologic conditions and regional trends that may arise from a changing climate. |
| Approach: |
Upgrades to the Martinsville_S and Indianapolis_N sites include installing deeper groundwater-level observation wells, if needed; and including real-time groundwater-level monitoring data on the IWBN website (https://igws.indiana.edu/cgda/waterBalanceNetwork). The IWBN website will also be updated to include daily potential evapotranspiration (PET) in the downloadable daily data tables for all six IWBN sites that are part of the study. Data quality assurance (QA) work for the study sites will include four site visits per year, data QA flagging by the project director, and regular data reports provided to the funding agency. |
| Products: |
Monitored parameters related to long-term trends in watershed and aquifer water-budget parameters include: precipitation, solar radiation, air temperature, relative humidity, soil moisture, and groundwater levels. |
| Benefits: |
The monitoring is conducted to fulfill the state’s needs for water-resource trend data, agricultural sector decision support tools, and meso-scale meteorological observations. |
