Final Report: Assessing the Drivers of Water Availability for Historic and Future Conditions in the South Central U.S.
Dates
Publication Date
2017
Citation
Bock A., Hay L., LaFountaine J., Markstrom S., Viger R., Brown D., Emmerich C., Montgomery G., Schweizer H., Talbert M., 2017, Assessment of Water Availability and Associated Drivers for Historic and Future Conditions in the South Central Climate Science Center Region.
Summary
The increasing availability of climate projections provides natural resource managers and scientists with a number of scenarios from which to estimate variability in hydrologic response to future climatic conditions. This presents a need for consistent and efficient conversion of climate data into model-ready format, archiving and indexing of model simulation results, and the visualization and summation of model simulation results. Furthermore, decision-makers need this information at specific locations and for specific periods of record to effectively manage their water resources. This final report summarizes a collaborative effort to help address these issues through the construction of the Monthly Water Balance Model Futures [...]
Summary
The increasing availability of climate projections provides natural resource managers and scientists with a number of scenarios from which to estimate variability in hydrologic response to future climatic conditions. This presents a need for consistent and efficient conversion of climate data into model-ready format, archiving and indexing of model simulation results, and the visualization and summation of model simulation results. Furthermore, decision-makers need this information at specific locations and for specific periods of record to effectively manage their water resources. This final report summarizes a collaborative effort to help address these issues through the construction of the Monthly Water Balance Model Futures Portal for the conterminous United States.
A monthly water balance model (MWBM) was used to simulate historical and future climatic conditions from 222 gridded climate datasets for the years 1950 through 2099 across the conterminous United States (CONUS). The MWBM meteorological and hydrologic input and output variables were indexed to geographic information system (GIS) features of the Geospatial Fabric for National Hydrologic Modelling, a hydrographic database built upon the National Hydrography Datasets Plus stream network (Viger and Bock, 2014). Using the Geospatial Fabric stream network allows users access to and visualization of MWBM results at locations across the CONUS.
The primary contributions of this project are the following:
A. The creation of a portal and database that allows users to summarize hydrologic response to historical and potential future climatic conditions across the CONUS.
B. The development of hydrologic regionalization and calibration methods to estimate magnitude and variability of hydrologic response in areas with little or no measured streamflow information.
C. Streamlining best-management practices, workflows, and information architecture by leveraging existing expertise, support, and contributions from scientific communities across U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) and the Department of the Interior (DOI).
