Study: Heavy Storms May Be Enough to Recharge California Groundwater

California’s Sustainable Groundwater Management Act, passed in 2014, requires some 250 groundwater basins throughout the state to halt the overdraft in their aquifers. The big question for everyone is: Where will the water come from to do that? It could come from “high-magnitude flows” – flooding events, essentially, that occur from just a handful of storms every winter. Tiffany Kocis, a PhD student in hydrologic sciences at University of California, Davis, is the lead author of a new study that attempts to quantify these high flows.