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About

The Colorado River Science Wiki is being created to provide a web-based clearinghouse for scientific and technical information and data relevant to the Colorado River Basin and management of its water resources and related natural resources. This clearinghouse is intended to be useful to managers and other decision-makers, to researchers, to the media, and to the broader public. Its objectives are to:

• Share recent and ongoing Colorado River research efforts and findings
• Provide up-to-date synthesis of the science relevant to management
• Allow one-stop access to key technical datasets and data tools
• Provide guidance for the ongoing Interim Guidelines renegotiation
• Engage the greater Colorado River community in a joint information-gathering effort

As of April 2021, the Wiki is still in the early stages of development. We welcome your comments and questions; please see the contact information at the bottom of this page.

Outline

Below is the list of topics to be covered eventually by the Wiki. The general plan is that there will be a separate page for each topic, but multiple topics may end up being combined on one page, while other topics may end up being split out among multiple pages.

As pages are developed, links to them will be activated in the topic list.

Each page will contain the following content, as appropriate:

• Summary description of the topic
• The topic's relevance to Colorado River water management
• Annotated links to datasets, tools, and other resources on that topic
• Research directions (ongoing and potential) for that topic
• New research on that topic (since 2020)

The content on datasets and tools, and on new research, will also be collated across topics and available through separate headings.

The Basin Setting

Basin Overview

• Physical Geography
• Cultural & Socioeconomic

Water Law & Policy

• Overview
• Prior Appropriation
• Law of the River
• Other Policy
• Renegotiation of Interim Guidelines
• Commentary on Policy

Key Players

• Overview
• Researchers
  • University
    • Ongoing projects/centers
  • Agency
  • Other
• Operations/decision-making
• Forecasters
• Water Managers
• Water Users
• Other Groups

Science Topics

Weather & Climate

• Past and current climate
  • Mechanisms & spatial patterns
  • Variability & trends over time
    • Paleoclimate
  • Recent trends & climate change
• Climate monitoring
  • Weather station networks
    • Errors & adjustments
  • Gridded climate products
  • Drought monitoring
• Weather & Climate forecasts
  • Overview
  • Weather forecasts
  • Subseasonal forecasts
  • Seasonal forecasts
  • Decadal climate forecasts
• Future climate
  • Fundamentals of climate change
  • Climate models
  • Downscaling
  • Projected future climate

Hydrology & Water Availability

• Water balance and basin water budget
• Snowpack
  • Snowpack processes & patterns
  • Snowpack monitoring
  • Dust-on-snow
  • Cloud seeding
• Soil moisture
  • Soil moisture monitoring
• Evaporation and evaporative demand
• Groundwater
• Streamflow
  • Paleohydrology
  • Historical (gaged) records
  • Adjusted streamflow
    • BoR Natural Flows
    • Other naturalized
  • Variability & trends over time
  • Recent trends & climate change
  • Real-time streamflows
  • Streamflow forecasts
    • Short-term streamflow forecasts
    • Seasonal streamflow forecasts
• Droughts
  • Dynamics/causes
  • Impacts
  • Historic droughts
  • Paleodroughts
  • Megadrought
• Floods
  • Historic
  • Paleofloods
• Channel dynamics
• Hydrologic modeling
• Water operations and planning
  • Reservoirs and infrastructure
  • Operating rules
  • System models
    • 24-Month Study
    • MTOM
    • CRSS
    • Other models used in CRB
  • Planning approaches
• Future hydrology and water availability
  • Methods
  • Future streamflow changes
  • Other hydrology changes
• Synthesis: Future CRB water availability

Water Use

• Agricultural water use
  • ET measurement
  • Conservation strategies
• Municipal water use
  • Conservation strategies
• Environmental/instream water use
• Other depletions
  • Reservoir evaporation
  • Channel/bank losses
  • Phreatophytic vegetation
• Demand accounting and scenarios
  • State/Basin reports
  • Demand schedules
  • Other demand scenarios
• Synthesis: Future CRB demand

Water Quality & Sediment

• Salinity
  • Salinity monitoring
  • Salinity control measures
• Other contaminants
  • Uranium mining/tailings
• Sediment
  • Erosion/sediment sources
  • Reservoir sedimentation
  • Riverbed sediment dynamics

Ecosystems & Environment

• Overview
• Forests
  • Disturbances
    • Wildfires
    • Insect infestations/disease
• Riparian
  • Tamarisk and invasive plants
• Aquatic
  • T & E fish species
    • Upper Basin
    • Lower Basin
  • Invasive mussels
• Specific hot spots
  • Salton Sea
  • Colorado River Delta

Societal & Economic Issues and Research

• Benefits/impacts of water
• Social vulnerability
• Other

To obtain a login to allow editing, please contact the site administrator below.

Edits are subject to review and will not be made public until approved.

This site is under construction as of 1/21/2020. Currently, a skeleton is in place to allow prototyping and initial design.

Contact Brad Udall Bradley.udall @ colostate.edu for information.