Generating policies for sustainable water use in complex scenarios: an integrated land-use and water-use model of Monroe County, Michigan

Rapidly declining groundwater levels since the early 1990s have raised serious concern in Monroe County, Michigan. Hydrological studies suggest that land-use changes have caused this decline. The mechanisms linking land-use and groundwater dynamics are not clear, however. In this paper I present WULUM, the Water-Use and Land-Use Model, an agent-based model that serves as an analytical framework to understand how these processes interact to create the observed patterns of resource depletion, and to suggest policies to reverse the process. The land-use component includes the main groundwater extractors in the county—stone quarries, golf courses, farms, and households. The groundwater component includes the glacial deposits and the underlying bedrock acquifer. The behavior of water users is defined by simple rules that determine their location and consumption. The dynamics of groundwater are represented through infiltration and diffusion rules between each cell and its immediate neighbors. Initial explorations with the model showed that land-use patterns contributed significantly to groundwater declines, while eliminating quarry dewatering did not entirely solve the problem. Both low-density and high-density zoning restrictions improved aquifer conditions over medium-density development, suggesting a nonlinear relationship between intensity of residential use and groundwater levels. Moreover, of all the natural and policy variables, zoning had the greatest influence on urban settlement and therefore on resource consumption.