Extremes Make It...Well, Extreme

The law of statistics is the more data variability you have, the harder it is to describe.  And of course, the harder it is to describe, the harder it is to manage.

In our groundwater management district - all or parts of the 10 NW Kansas Counties (Map of KS GMDs) we seem to have quite a range of conditions to try and manage.  For example, our saturated thicknesses range from 0 feet to 210 feet of water - the average being about 75 feet.  The decline rates range from about 1.7 feet per year to rises of a few tenths of a foot per year - the average being .5 feet of decline per year.  Our Transmissivities range from about 8,000 gpd/ft to 125,000 gpd/ft - average is about 18,000 gpd/ft. 

We have areas of thick saturated thickness that are barely declining - all the way to thinner areas of saturated thickness that have higher decline rates.  Well development density is also all over the board, from Townships with one or two wells to one with 80 wells.  Bottom line is that everything we try to do we have to consider sliding scales, weighted formulas, or whatever it takes to make sure that management decisions don't under manage one area while over managing another.  The old saying that "One size doesn't fit all" is certainly true here.

Later I'll go into a bit more detail along these lines with some examples.