Enhancing Water Supply Reliability: An Interdisciplinary Research Project to Enhance Predictive Capacity on the Colorado River
Since 2004, an interdisciplinary research team at the University of Arizona has worked with the Bureau of Reclamation to enhance predictive capacity in Lower Colorado River by incorporating climate information into river operations modeling. The project team also evaluates economic and management tools capable of mitigating the impacts of water supply variability during prolonged dry-year conditions. Support for the research has been provided by the University of Arizona Water Sustainability Program and the Bureau of Reclamation. The project team works closely with the Bureau of Reclamation's Lower Colorado River Region. Kathy Jacobs, AWI Executive Director, along with UA Principal Investigators Dr. Bonnie Colby, Dr. Dave Meko, Dr. Bart Nijssen, and Dr. Peter Troch work in collaboration on this unique research project. For additional information, please visit the website at: EWSR website.
November 2007 - EOS, Transactions, American Geophysical Union Article "New Data Sets to Estimate Territorial Water Storage Change" by Dr. Peter Troch (UA) and Dr. Matej Durcik (UA). This article, available here discusses different methods to estimate terrestrial water storage changes in the Colorado River basin.
September 2007 - Office of the President of the United States "A Strategy for Federal Science and Technology to Support Water Availability and Quality in the United States" click here for publication.
Decadal Predictions Workshop
On March 23, 2007 a workshop was held that was organized jointly by the US CLIVAR program and a research project at the University of Arizona and the University of Washington, titled "Integrating Improved Water Supply Predictive Capacity and Response into Lower Colorado Basin Policy and Management." This research project, jointly funded by the Bureau of Reclamation and the University of Arizona, is a stakeholder-driven, interdisciplinary project focused on helping Reclamation use climate predictions at various time scales in managing the Colorado River. FOne of the components of Phase II of our project is helping to define a research agenda to help focus research on the potential for predictive capacity in the 1-3 year time frame. This idea came directly from multiple stakeholders in Arizona.
This topic has also been raised in the context of a NOAA project in support of CLIVAR, and efforts are currently underway to establish a limited life-time working group on decadal prediction, to help focus research and make funding agencies aware of opportunities in this area across multiple sectors and regions. Although it is clear that we are a long way from good predictive capacity in the 1 to 10 year time frame, there is significant progress being made in understanding decadal oscillations. The US CLIVAR program has agreed that it would be useful to focus on what research has already been done in this area, and identify areas where progress could be made in the relatively short term. There is a need to understand the characteristics of the 1-3 and 1-10 year fluctuations, implications for regions, and potential applications of improved information, among other topics.
For an agenda of this meeting, please click here
For outcomes of this meeting, please click here .
AWI Sponsored or Attended Upcoming Events
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