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CASE STUDY | EDUCATION
How UC Berkeley researchers used Regrid parcel data to uncover groundwater inequality in California
Discover how UC Berkeley researchers connected groundwater well records with land ownership data across California's Central Valley, revealing significant inequalities in the control of agricultural land and groundwater resources.
CHALLENGE
Incomplete groundwater well records and inconsistent property data across 19 counties made it difficult for UC Berkeley researchers to identify well owners and investigate inequalities in groundwater access.
SOLUTION
Using Regrid's standardized parcel data, researchers matched 12,000 groundwater wells to more than 10,000 cropland parcels, enabling the first quantitative analysis of land and groundwater inequality at the ownership level across California's Central Valley.
ABOUT
Exploring the relationship between natural resources, land ownership, and environmental equity
The University of California, Berkeley's Department of Environmental Science, Policy, and Management (ESPM) brings together research into environmental and social systems to inform sustainable resource management and policy.
In this project, researchers examined the distribution of agricultural land and groundwater resources across California's Central Valley, seeking to better understand inequalities in resource ownership and access.
CHALLENGE
Fragmented property and well records obscured groundwater ownership patterns
Understanding groundwater inequality requires more than knowing where wells are located. Researchers also need to establish who owns them and how that ownership relates to agricultural land.
Publicly available well records frequently omit ownership information or provide only approximate locations. Meanwhile, differences in data structures and maintenance practices across 19 county assessor offices complicated regional property analysis.
The research team needed a consistent property dataset to connect these records and investigate resource ownership across county boundaries.
SOLUTION
Connecting groundwater infrastructure to land ownership with standardized parcel data
Through Regrid's Data With Purpose program, UC Berkeley researchers accessed a standardized multi-county parcel dataset, delivered as bulk files via SFTP and analyzed in RStudio.
Assessor's Parcel Numbers (APNs), ownership details, addresses, and parcel geometry provided the essential information for connecting agricultural properties with groundwater wells.
The researchers combined attribute matching with spatial analysis to account for limitations in the available well location information.
This approach made it possible to investigate the relationship between groundwater and agricultural land ownership within a consistent analytical framework.
"This project really came about because one of our colleagues discovered the Regrid data and encouraged us to look into it. Once we saw what was possible, everything followed from there."
- Benji Reade Malagueño
RESULTS
Revealing significant inequalities in land and groundwater ownership
The research team matched 12,000 groundwater wells to more than 10,000 cropland parcels, producing a first-of-its-kind quantitative assessment of resource ownership inequality across California's Central Valley.
The analysis revealed that the top 10% of well owners control 46% of groundwater capacity, with agricultural land ownership showing even greater inequality.
These findings raise important questions about the relationship between property ownership and water governance under California's Sustainable Groundwater Management Act (SGMA).
With Regrid parcel data as the foundation, the researchers were able to examine patterns of resource ownership that fragmented public records had previously made difficult to quantify.
(888) 4RE-GRID
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