Final Report: Balancing Water Usage and Ecosystem Outcomes Under Drought and Climate Change: Enhancing an Optimization Model for the Red River
Dates
Publication Date
2021-02-05
Citation
Thomas Neeson, Hernan Moreno, Hamed Zamani Sabzi, and Rachel Fovargue, 2021-02-05, Final Report: Balancing Water Usage and Ecosystem Outcomes Under Drought and Climate Change: Enhancing an Optimization Model for the Red River: .
Summary
The Red River Basin is a vital source of water in the South Central U.S., supporting ecosystems, drinking water, agriculture, tourism and recreation, and cultural ceremonies. Stretching from the High Plains of New Mexico eastward to the Mississippi River, the Red River Basin encompasses parts of five states – New Mexico, Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, and Louisiana. In the Red River Basin, resource managers face the challenge of allocating scarce water resources among competing uses, but they lack a systematic framework for comparing the costs and benefits of proposed water management decisions and conservation actions. In 2016, researchers worked with the Great Plains LCC to develop a decision support model for identifying the most cost-effective [...]
Summary
The Red River Basin is a vital source of water in the South Central U.S., supporting ecosystems, drinking water, agriculture, tourism and recreation, and cultural ceremonies. Stretching from the High Plains of New Mexico eastward to the Mississippi River, the Red River Basin encompasses parts of five states – New Mexico, Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, and Louisiana. In the Red River Basin, resource managers face the challenge of allocating scarce water resources among competing uses, but they lack a systematic framework for comparing the costs and benefits of proposed water management decisions and conservation actions.
In 2016, researchers worked with the Great Plains LCC to develop a decision support model for identifying the most cost-effective water conservation alternatives across the Red River basin that can be used by resource managers in the region to aid in the decision-making process. This project extended that optimization model from the previous project in three significant ways to support cost-effective conservation decisions in the face of more droughts and floods. (1) SC CASC-developed predictions of rainfall, runoff, and stream flows through the year 2099 were incorporated into a database. Using this database, the enhanced optimization model enables decision-makers to visualize and evaluate multiple competing water use scenarios under future drought conditions. (2) SC CASC predictions of stream flows and temperature through the year 2099 were used to estimate the future distributions of 28 fish species of conservation concern across the Red River. These future distribution maps enable conservation practitioners to proactively manage species projected to be at greatest risk from declining water availability. (3) The optimization model was extended to enable decision-makers to measure trade-offs between competing water uses and ecological outcomes under multiple scenarios. The results of this project will provide resource managers with a means to identify conservation strategies that maximize outcomes for Great Plains stream ecosystems while meeting growing societal needs for water.
