Groundwater provides the vast majority of perennial flow in the Verde River and serves as a water supply for communities within the Verde Watershed. Through stakeholder meetings in preparation for the 2025 report card, depth to groundwater was identified as an indicator that was missing in the Water Quantity category. Depth to groundwater indicator methodology was developed with the goal of quantifying groundwater level throughout the watershed, ranging from undesirable to desirable. To evaluate depth to groundwater level conditions in each region, we used publicly available data from Arizona Department of Water Resources (ADWR) Groundwater Site Inventory (GWSI) to assess changes in groundwater elevation through time.
Ideally, groundwater data would be tied to individual aquifers for each region. However, due to gaps in spatial coverage and well perforation data, there is not enough information to aggregate wells by aquifer and set groundwater elevation thresholds by aquifer. Wells are graded individually and grades are aggregated by regions. With the methodology developed, we were able to calculate scores for both 2020 and 2025.