Projects

Website

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Point of Contact

Connie Woodhouse

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Future of the Colorado River - Utah State University

Project Summary

This project explores alternative Colorado River water supply and river management strategies. Our goals are threefold:

to develop new tools and approaches by which the river-ecosystem outcomes of water-supply decisions can be considered; to explicitly evaluate a range of water-supply management approaches that meet water-supply security and reliability needs of Colorado River water users; and, to identify, articulate, and evaluate alternative water-supply management approaches offered by traditional and non-traditional Colorado River stakeholders. Evaluations will be conducted from the perspectives of water supply and of river ecosystems, using traditional and non-traditional modeling approaches. This project is being conducted in recognition of the impending re-negotiation of the Colorado River Interim Guidelines for Lower Basin Shortages and Coordinated Operations of Lake Powell and Lake Mead. Formal discussion of those Guidelines is to begin in 2020. The Future of the Colorado River (FCR) project is organized within the Center for Colorado River Studies at Utah State University.

Scientific Team

Jack Schmidt, Utah State University
David Rosenberg, Utah State University
Bethany Neilson, Utah State University
David Tarboton, Utah State University
Lael Gilbert, Utah State University
Kevin Wheeler, Oxford
Brad Udall, Colorado State University

Publications and Presentations

White Paper 1. Fill Mead First – A Technical Assessment

Water Resource Modeling of the Colorado River: Present and Future Strategies

White Paper 3. Managing the Colorado River for an Uncertain Future

Website

Center for Colorado River Studies

Point of Contact

Jack Schmidt, Utah State University

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Colorado River State of the Science

Project Summary

Effective water resources management in the Colorado River Basin relies on using science to inform operational and planning activities. While this is true at any time, the ongoing historic drought and recent scientific advancements provide additional motivation for the Bureau of Reclamation (Reclamation) and stakeholders to better understand opportunities to incorporate and advanceclimate and hydrologyresearch. Due to the large volumeof scientific activity relating to the climate and hydrology of the Colorado River Basin, an important step in strategically integrating new science into practice is to assess the current state of knowledge. To this end, the Upper and Lower Colorado Regions of Reclamation and a work group of state and local water management agencies are partnering with Western Water Assessment (WWA) and Climate Assessment for the Southwest (CLIMAS) to synthesizeprogress in climate and hydrology researchin the Colorado River Basin. The resulting report will establish a common scientific foundation on which to base future management and research efforts. The report will primarily focus on thehydroclimatic inputs to Reclamation’s short-, mid-, and long-term operations and planning tools. The report will describe research on the methods, models, concepts, and datasets that currently,or may in the future,contribute to Reclamation’s and other stakeholders’ activities, aswell as remaining knowledge gaps, uncertainties, and opportunities. The report is expected to be available in the fall of 2019.

Publications and Presentations

Final CRS SoS Project Overview

Point of Contact

For more information:

1. Seth Shanahan, Southern Nevada Water Authority—seth.shanahan@snwa.com
2. Rebecca Smith, Reclamation—rebeccasmith@usbr.gov
3. Jeff Lukas, WWA—lukas@colorado.

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Reclamation Colorado River Science Efforts

Reclamation's Ongoing Research Projects

Reclamation's Colorado Research to Operations (Includes past projects)

Current Projects (described in uppermost link above)

1. Exploration of Robust Planning Techniques in the Colorado River Basin
2. Exploring the Feasibility and Benefits of Incorporating Additional Data Sources into the Colorado Basin River Forecast Center’s Consumptive Use Modeling
3. Using ICAR and En-GARD to Explore the Implications of Using Different Downscaling Methods to Generate CMIP5-Derived Streamflow Projections
4. Generating and Evaluating Temperature-Conditioned Colorado River Basin Streamflow Ensembles
5. Exploring Climate and Hydrology Projections from the CMIP5 Archive
6. Identifying Future Climatological Ensembles and their Impacts on Colorado River Reservoir Operations

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Colorado River Research Group

Point of Contact

Doug Kenney

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Open ET

Project Summary

Filling the Biggest Data Gap in Water Management

Sustainable water management is one of the most challenging issues of our time, especially in arid regions like the western U.S. The health of communities, rivers and wildlife depends on adequate water supplies, and nothing is more important to agriculture’s ability to produce food for the world’s growing population. Maximizing the benefits of our water supplies requires careful measurement of their availability and use. For irrigated agriculture, evapotranspiration (ET) is a measure of the water used to grow food, and is the biggest water use in most arid environments around the world. However, access to this data has been limited and expensive, keeping it out of the hands of most water users and decision-makers. OpenET aims to provide open and easily accessible ET data for improved water management.

Note: OpenET is not Colorado River specific.

Website

Open ET

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Past Projects

These are older, notable projects.

Reconciling Colorado River Flows

This study reconciled different climate change projections for Colorado River flows. It resulted in several publications including...

Severe and Sustained Drought Study

1995? era study on how the basin would respond to a long term drought. This was mostly ignore by decision makers.

Papers were published in a special edition of the Water Resources Bulletin of the American Water Resources Association.

Chapters included

1. Hydrology
2. Economics
3. ETC

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