faced in modern times." Marcus argues that California needs to "conserve what little we have to use later in the year, or even in future years." Pritchett & Manning 2009 showed that the alkali meadow vegetation plant community is groundwater dependent and that this characteristic buffers the system from the effects of drought. This means that certain plants are actually able to help prevent droughts, but can only do so if groundwater is maintained at a certain level. One of the reasons that the study was conducted was to ascertain whether the Owens Valley region of California could handle any practiced or proposed groundwater extraction. In February 2014, the Californian drought reached for the first time in the 54-year history of the State Water Project to shortages of water supplies. The California Department of Water Resources planned to reduce water allocations to farmland by 50%. California's 38 million residents experienced 13 consecutive months of drought. This is particularly an issue for the state's 44.7 billion dollar agricultural industry, which produces nearly half of all U.S.-grown fruits, nuts, and vegetables. This is after the LADWP expected to increase the pumping of aquifers to about a year (City of Los Angeles and County of Inyo 1991) but the United States Geological Survey (USGS) reported that a sustainable pumping rate is a third lower, at around a year (Danskin 1998). According to NASA, tests published in January 2014 have shown that the twelve months prior to January 2014 were the driest on record, since record-keeping began in 1885. In mid-May 2014, the US Drought Monitor analysis showed that 100% of California was already under "Severe Drought" or a higher level. The 2014 drought is considered the worst in 1,200 years. As California received additional rainfall in December 2014, this was not expected to end California's drought, and trees were at risk due to weakened roots. Experts also noted that due to the soil's extreme dryness and low groundwater levels, it would take significantly more rain—at least five more similar storms—to end the drought. On December 18, it was revealed that almost all of the Exceptional Drought in Northern California had been reduced to Extreme Drought severity, as a result of the winter storms that brought rain to California during December. In 2014, a study by the UC California Institute for Water Resources was released which found that rainfall has been abnormally high since