Speaker:  Gil Barth,  principal and Boulder office manager,  S.S. Papadopulos & Associates, Inc.

Title: Groundwater-Use Impacts and Methods/Tools for Communicating Predicted Future Conditions

Abstract
Groundwater is an integral part of the hydrologic cycle, yet historically we have tended to treat it as an isolated entity. Some current efforts are working to integrate groundwater. These efforts must however overcome two major obstacles. First is the inertia of historical perspective: many people have spent their entire lives considering groundwater a separate entity. Challenge number two involves costs/impacts. Groundwater depletion often externalizes costs, impacting unquantified (or limited quantification) hydrologic-cycle elements such as riparian or wetland consumption. Overcoming these two obstacles requires both education and quantification. While quantification inherently suggests accuracy, reasonable prediction of trending and tendency alone, especially when using the best readily available data, can provide tremendous insight to the timing and impacts of groundwater resource depletions. Quantification examples demonstrate how a combination of data, governing equations, analytical solutions, numerical methods, parameter estimation and sensitivity analyses can be applied to develop tools that identify significant impacts of consuming groundwater resources.