Can we manage groundwater? A method to determine the quantitative testability of groundwater management plans

Abstract

Groundwater is the world's largest freshwater resource and due to overextraction, levels have declined in many regions causing extensive social and environmental impacts. Groundwater management seeks to balance and mitigate the detrimental impacts of development, with plans commonly used to outline management pathways. Thus, plan efficiency is crucial, but seldom are plans systematically and quantitatively assessed for effectiveness. This study frames groundwater management as a system control problem in order to develop a novel testability assessment rubric to determine if plans meet the requirements of a control loop, and subsequently, whether they can be quantitatively tested. Seven compo..