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California Groundwater Ambient Monitoring and Assessment (GAMA) Program Shallow Aquifer Assessment Study Unit Boundaries for Assessment of Groundwater Resources

Metadata Updated: November 26, 2025

The California Groundwater Ambient Monitoring and Assessment Program (GAMA) is a statewide assessment of groundwater quality designed to help better understand and identify risks to groundwater resources. GAMA is implemented by the California State Water Resources Control Board. The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) is the technical lead for the Priority Basin Project (PBP), one of the components of the GAMA Program. Starting in 2012, GAMA began an assessment of water resources in shallow aquifers in California. These shallow aquifers provide water for domestic and small community-supply wells, which are often drilled to shallower depths in the groundwater system than public-supply wells. Shallow aquifers are of interest because shallow groundwater may respond more quickly and be more susceptible to contamination from human activities at the land surface, than the deeper aquifers (USGS, 2018). To prioritize shallow aquifers, California was divided into 938 groundwater units consisting of California Department of Water Resources (DWR) groundwater basins and highland areas outside of the basins defined by California Groundwater Units (Johnson and Belitz, 2014) or Hydrologic Units (HUC8) from the Watershed Boundary Dataset (USGS and USDA, 2013). The groundwater units were prioritized for sampling based on the number and density of households relying on domestic wells, water-use, and well-location information compiled from well-completion reports submitted to the DWR. The groundwater units were grouped into study units designed to facilitate comparison of groundwater quality between the shallow aquifer systems and the deep aquifer systems assessed by GAMA from 2004 to 2012 (Bennett, 2018). The study units (and study areas when applicable) were divided into equal area polygons (cells) so that all cells within a given study unit (or study area) have an equal area. These grid cells can be found in the GAMA_PBP_SAA_GridCells shapefile included in this Data Release.

Access & Use Information

Public: This dataset is intended for public access and use. License: No license information was provided. If this work was prepared by an officer or employee of the United States government as part of that person's official duties it is considered a U.S. Government Work.

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Dates

Metadata Created Date September 12, 2025
Metadata Updated Date November 26, 2025

Metadata Source

Harvested from DOI USGS DCAT-US

Additional Metadata

Resource Type Dataset
Metadata Created Date September 12, 2025
Metadata Updated Date November 26, 2025
Publisher U.S. Geological Survey
Maintainer
Identifier http://datainventory.doi.gov/id/dataset/usgs-5fea4f52d34ea5387ded6e77
Data Last Modified 2020-12-28T00:00:00Z
Category geospatial
Public Access Level public
Bureau Code 010:12
Metadata Context https://project-open-data.cio.gov/v1.1/schema/catalog.jsonld
Metadata Catalog ID https://ddi.doi.gov/usgs-data.json
Schema Version https://project-open-data.cio.gov/v1.1/schema
Catalog Describedby https://project-open-data.cio.gov/v1.1/schema/catalog.json
Harvest Object Id 7d75d97a-219a-41d8-b5d5-2ce3326b0005
Harvest Source Id 2b80d118-ab3a-48ba-bd93-996bbacefac2
Harvest Source Title DOI USGS DCAT-US
Metadata Type geospatial
Source Datajson Identifier True
Source Hash eac16d7bc8d02b8d7ed79c6d74d88cf0dd8628210a0ee1bb961fe63274afd44b
Source Schema Version 1.1

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