Water and Drought
Impact of Irrigation on Streams
Recent droughts have illustrated the fragility of the water resources system in southwest Georgia. Increases in groundwater pumping for irrigation purposes may have been a factor on the low stream levels during dry months. UGA biological and agricultural engineers decided to qualify and quantify the actual impacts of irrigation on stream and groundwater resources in southwest Georgia. They developed numerical tools for the systematic, reproducible, statistical analysis of stream flow and climatic data. The most important result is that variation in climate cannot explain the decrease in stream flows on the Flint River at Newton. This result indicates that groundwater pumping or landscape changes may be responsible for the decreased flows in the Flint. (2006)
Sources
| Name | Department | |
| David Stooksbury | stooks@engr.uga.edu | State Climatologist |
| Pierre Gerard-Marchant | pierregm@uga.edu | Biological and Agricultural Engineering |