During the severe drought of 2010-2015, several communities in southeast Oklahoma almost ran out of water. Some of these communities rely on streams and rivers as their sole source of water and when these sources almost ran dry, it left them searching for alternatives and wondering how to continue growing, economically, with this water uncertainty. The possibility of climate change has these communities further concerned, primarily because they do not know what to expect. Previously, the USGS, both Chickasaw and Choctaw Nations collaborated on a project to apply a range of possible climate change scenarios to the Red River watershed to determine future water availability. This study will focus specifically on southeast Oklahoma, refining [...]
Summary
During the severe drought of 2010-2015, several communities in southeast Oklahoma almost ran out of water. Some of these communities rely on streams and rivers as their sole source of water and when these sources almost ran dry, it left them searching for alternatives and wondering how to continue growing, economically, with this water uncertainty. The possibility of climate change has these communities further concerned, primarily because they do not know what to expect. Previously, the USGS, both Chickasaw and Choctaw Nations collaborated on a project to apply a range of possible climate change scenarios to the Red River watershed to determine future water availability. This study will focus specifically on southeast Oklahoma, refining existing numerical models and identifying specific communities and water bodies most at risk. The previous project provided watershed-wide estimates of future impacts to water resources, but not at the level of detail needed to make decisions at the local scale. This study will build on the results of the previous study, developing water demand supply projections for the most water vulnerable communities, helping them with long range planning. In addition, this study will look at the likelihood and environmental implications of rivers in southeast Oklahoma drying out – specifically impacts on fish populations – and the ability of these species to return to the rivers once normal flow conditions are restored.
Click on title to download individual files attached to this item.
Tishomingo NWR_Oklahoma_AlanCressler.jpg “Tishomingo National Wildlife Refuge, Oklahoma; Credit: Alan Cressler”
8.11 MB
image/jpeg
Project Extension
parts
type
Technical Summary
value
Several communities within the Chickasaw-Choctaw jurisdictional territory, broadly covering southeast Oklahoma, have water supply vulnerabilities, as recently demonstrated by the 2010-2015 drought. Some of these communities are located within the Red River Basin, for which a climate change study has recently been completed. Tishomingo, Oklahoma, which relies on Pennington Creek as its sole source of water, and Durant, Oklahoma, which relies exclusively on the Blue River are good examples of these types of communities. Both cities nearly ran out of water during the last drought, experiencing exceptionally low flows at their respective intake structures. Temperatures are expected to be higher and droughts are predicted to be longer and more severe in the future, impacting ecosystem health and making the water availability situation worse. Using 27 downscaled Global Climate Models and Representative Concentration Pathway combinations that represent a likely range of possibilities for the future and that were developed as part of the previous Red River Basin study, this study will “zoom in” on the southeast Oklahoma portion of the watershed, identifying the most vulnerable communities and shedding light on ecosystems that are at greater risk of fish species being extirpated or becoming extinct. The RiverWare Model built for that project will be refined to look specifically at individual water providers and the flows in individual tributaries that they rely on, to determine when future demand will exceed supply. In addition to the possibility of water supplies shrinking in the future, population growth will increase demand, which will need to be considered too. Complementing this water supply planning work, project staff will collaborate with the United States Geographical Survey (USGS) to investigate the impacts of drought on fish species, determine changes in occupancy and the potential of ecosystems to repopulate with key species following very dry conditions.
projectStatus
Completed
Budget Extension
annualBudgets
year
2017
totalFunds
62698.0
year
2018
totalFunds
74062.0
parts
type
Award Type
value
Grant
type
Award Number
value
G17AP00129
totalFunds
136760.0
Preview Image
Tishomingo National Wildlife Refuge, Oklahoma; Credit: Alan Cressler