Supply and Demand Assessment (SDA) – Salmon Creek Watershed
Overview
The Salmon Creek Watershed is located in Sonoma County and originates near the town of Occidental before draining into the Pacific Ocean. The total drainage area of the watershed is approximately 35 square miles and ranges in elevation from near sea level to 1,300 feet in the northernmost portion. The majority of the watershed is evergreen forest or shrubland. Salmon Creek is important habitat for native aquatic species and spawning ground for anadromous fish, especially steelhead trout. Increases in sediment levels and temperature have been linked to declines in salmonid populations over time.
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Announcements
April 4, 2025 - Salmon Creek Watershed Model Work Plan - Now Available
The work plan from Paradigm Environmental for development of a hydrologic model for the Salmon Creek watershed is now publicly available in Model Development section below. Please email questions regarding the model development to DWR-SDA@waterboards.ca.gov.
Model Development
Outreach and Engagement
Additional Resources
Modeling in the Salmon Creek Watershed
The SDA Unit has continued to work on the models and tools developed for the Russian River Watershed during the State Water Board's 2021-2022 Regional Drought Response. These tools provided the necessary information for the Division of Water Rights (Division) to assess water availability and issue water right curtailments to ensure adequate, minimal water supplies for critical purposes under the emergency regulation.
To capture the water demand in the SDA Program Watersheds, water right demand estimates were incorporated based on information from annual reports of water diversion and use submitted to the Division. The SDA Unit continued to develop the Division’s demand dataset methodology and converted it into a series of R scripts and manual review spreadsheets that apply data quality correction flags. For example, the scripts identified and corrected unit conversion errors, duplicate reporting, and misplotted points of diversion. The SDA Unit then uses a water allocation tool adopted from the UC Davis Drought Water Rights Allocation Tool (DWRAT) to allocate available supply amongst water right holders based on their respective water right priority and water demands. This version of DWRAT allocates water at the subbasin level and accounts for imported flows.
The SDA Unit’s demand methodology, along with the supply scripts and the watershed specific versions of DWRAT, will be made available on the California Water Board Data Center GitHub page as separate repositories.
Supply and Demand Assessment Program Links
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Contact Us
If you have questions or please email them to: DWR-SDA@waterboards.ca.gov
