Multibenefit Land Repurposing Project - Tule Subbasin
About the project
This toolkit aims to facilitate strategic land retirement, restore habitat,
and protect and enhance water resources throughout the critically
overdrafted Kaweah Subbasin in a manner that meets regional economic,
environmental, and social needs. The toolkit was developed collaboratively with
participants in California’s Multibenefit Land Repurposing Program (MLRP),
which aims to repurpose irrigated agricultural land to reduce groundwater extraction
while providing multiple benefits.
This toolkit integrates existing spatial data layers using a Web-based, open-source
package (Shiny R) to assess the suitability of land for repurposing. We created
six land repurposing suitability indices for (1) enhancing groundwater recharge,
(2) minimizing negative impacts to the agricultural economy, (3) increasing renewable
energy production, (4) increasing wildlife habitat restoration and conservation,
(5) mitigating local flood risk, and (6) reducing environmental health risks in
disadvantaged communities.These indices (or subsets) can be combined as weighted
averages to create user-specified multibenefit scenarios. The resulting output can
be inspected locally to screen prospective land parcels based on their repurposing
potential, or holistically to prioritize specific areas in the context of regional
land repurposing strategies.
Project Partners
- Eastern Tule Groundwater Sustainability Agency
- Tri-County Water Authority Groundwater Sustainability Agency
- The Nature Conservancy
- Audubon California
- The Tule Basin Land & Water Conservation Trust
- Sequoia Riverlands Trust
- Self-Help Enterprises
- UC Merced
- The Tulare Basin Watershed Partnership Network
Project Collaborators
- Public Policy Institute of California
- Allensworth Community Services District
- Milk Producers Council
- Tulare County Farm Bureau
- Tulare County
- State Parks, Great Basin District
- 4Venir
Data Sources
Listing of datasets and methods used in the Toolkit is available at https://doi.org/10.3389/frwa.2025.1539834
You can access this Toolkit dataset at https://github.com/ynunezbolano/MLRP-Mapping-Toolkit-Dataset
Created by
- Yelenka Nuñez-Bolaño - UC Merced
- Humberto Flores Landeros - UC Merced
- José M. Rodríguez Flores - UC Merced
- Angel Fernandez Bou - Union of Concerned Scientists
- Josué Medellín-Azuara - Sierra Nevada Research Institute | UC Merced
- Thomas Harmon - Sierra Nevada Research Institute | UC Merced
Contact
Yelenka Nuñez-Bolaño (ynunezbolano@ucmerced.edu) Thomas Harmon (tharmon@ucmerced.edu)
