Folders: ROOT > ScienceBase Catalog > National and Regional Climate Adaptation Science Centers > South Central CASC > FY 2019 Projects > Understanding New Paradigms for “Environmental Flows” and Water Allocation in the Middle Rio Grande River Basin in a Changing Climate ( Show direct descendants )
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ROOT _ScienceBase Catalog __National and Regional Climate Adaptation Science Centers ___South Central CASC ____FY 2019 Projects _____Understanding New Paradigms for “Environmental Flows” and Water Allocation in the Middle Rio Grande River Basin in a Changing Climate Filters
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Data were used for a total of 97 climate projection scenarios in this study. These scenarios show monthly and annual streamflow in the Rio Grande main channel at the pair of USGS gauges at San Marcial, representing the inflows to Elephant Butte reservoir from 2022 to 2099. Townsend and Gutzler (2020) developed an adjustment procedure to convert natural flows projected by the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation at the Elephant Butte dam to realistic flow values at San Marcial (at the upstream end of Elephant Butte Reservoir) to account for upstream water management. The scenarios cover a range of dry (average annual projected flow less than the historical value) to wet (average annual projected flow higher than the historical...
Categories: Data;
Tags: Climate conditions projection,
Global Climate Models,
Normalization methods,
Rio Bravo,
Rio Grande,
Abstract (from ScienceDirect): Study region Middle Section of the Rio Grande Basin (MRG), U.S. Study focus Long-term tradeoffs of technologically possible land and water management interventions were analyzed to adapt irrigated agriculture to growing water scarcity in a desert environment under a projected warm-dry future. Nineteen different intervention scenarios were investigated to evaluate potential watershed-scale agricultural water savings and associated water budget impacts in the MRG. The interventions are based on (i) management innovations of growers in implementing deficit irrigation and changing cropping patterns using existing crops, (ii) changing cropping patterns by introducing new alternative drought-...
Categories: Publication;
Types: Citation
We present a comprehensive analysis of water availability under plausible future climate conditions in a heavily irrigated agricultural watershed located in the middle section of the Rio Grande Basin in the United States Desert Southwest. Future managed streamflow scenarios (through year 2099) were selected from among 97 scenarios developed based on downscaled, bias-corrected global climate model outputs to evaluate future inflows to the principal surface water storage reservoirs, possible future reservoir releases, and groundwater pumping to sustain irrigated agriculture. The streamflow projections describe a wide range of dry and wet conditions compared to the average historical flows in the river, indicating...
Categories: Publication;
Types: Citation
The main source of surface water for irrigation in the study area is the Rio Grande River. The upstream reservoirs, Elephant Butte and Caballo, are used to regulate river flow into the study area. In order to estimate the future surface water availability, we developed a model and routed the reservoir inflow projections at the USGS San Marcial through the reservoir system. The data are available in csv worksheet as open source for free public use.
Categories: Data;
Tags: Caballo Reservoir,
Elephant Butte Reservoir,
Irrigation water resources,
Reservoir routing,
Rio Bravo,
Groundwater resources are important for irrigated agricultural activities in the region. Farmers use groundwater to compensate for insufficient surface water availability. The data are stored in a csv file titled 'Monthly Groundwater Projections' (groundwater_availability_projections.csv). The columns represent monthly groundwater pumping rates (m3/day) while the rows represent months and dates. The data are open source and available for free public use.
Categories: Data;
Tags: Fresh Groundwater,
Groundwater Resources,
Irrigation Water Resources,
Rio Bravo,
Rio Grande,
The Middle Rio Grande Hydroeconomic Optimization Model, also referenced as "The Bucket Model”, is a simple coarse-scale basin model that simulates all major water sources, sinks, uses, and losses. It also includes economic values of water, as well as institutional constraints governing water supply and use for the Middle Rio Grande between the inflow to Elephant Butte Reservoir and Fort Quitman on the Rio Grande. This model is designed to be a useful tool for improving our understanding of the hydrology, agronomy, institutions, and economics to guide analysis of policy and management questions that are important to stakeholders. The current version of the model is an aggregate “three bucket” model that reflects...
Riparian forests have declined in the Middle Rio Grande, from upstream Elephant Butte Reservoir in NM, to Presidio, TX, where water stress is increasing due to human water withdrawals coupled with climate variability and change. To inform the dialogue about the feasibility and impact of providing environmental flows to maintain the riparian forests, we developed scenarios of surface water availability in the Middle Rio Grande under projected climate conditions. We also used state-of-the art hydrologic and hydroeconomic models to evaluate environmental flow allocations and associated water management tradeoffs under current and projected climate conditions. Our results indicate that water managers in the Middle Rio...
Categories: Publication;
Types: Citation
We review over twenty years of publications on Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT) applications in arid/semi-arid irrigated agricultural watersheds. Our review reveals strict dominance of the model's use for better understanding water quantity aspects of water management. While this is to be expected given the reality of water scarcity and associated challenges for agricultural production systems in arid/semi-arid regions, the capabilities of SWAT to model water quality have been underutilized. The main modeling challenges are lack of observational data, poor data quality, concerns about simulation accuracy, and technical limitations of the model despite numerous advancements in the last two decades. To deal with...
Categories: Publication;
Types: Citation
The Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT; Arnold et al., 1998) was used in this study to simulate the impacts of climate change, land and water conservation practices, and developing riparian forests on the water budget across the watershed. We used the SWAT 10.2 version in the ARCGIS 10.2 environment. The model has 10 sub-basins and 6661 hydrological response units (HRUs) with similar land use, soil type, and topography (slope). We used the completely calibrated and validated SWAT model of the study area developed by Samimi et al. (2022 & 2023), using a USGS 10 m × 10 m DEM (Digital Elevation Model), Land use information of 2008 (near normal year) to represent the average historical crop pattern (Crop Data Layer,...
The Rio Grande/Bravo is an arid river basin shared by the United States and Mexico, the fifth-longest river in North America, and home to more than 10.4 million people. By crossing landscapes and political boundaries, the Rio Grande/Bravo brings together cultures, societies, ecosystems, and economies, thereby forming a complex social-ecological system. The Rio Grande/Bravo supplies water for the human activities that take place within its territory. While there have been efforts to implement environmental flows (flows necessary to sustain riparian and aquatic ecosystems and human activities), a systematic and whole-basin analysis of these efforts that conceptualizes the Rio Grande/Bravo as a single, complex social-ecological...
Categories: Publication;
Types: Citation
A fully calibrated and validated SWAT model was used to provide watershed simulation results including irrigation water availability, crop evapotranspiration, outflow, and other components of the water budget such as groundwater recharge under different climate conditions (Dry (access1_0 rcp85) and Wet (fio_esm rcp45); Samimi et al., 2022), and selected environmental water allocation scenarios. The results are presented in the annual time interface for each Hydrologic Response Unit (HRU) in the watershed. We later aggregated these data to determine the values of each related component across the watershed. The data are available as open source to the public.
Categories: Data;
Tags: Irrigation water availability,
Rio Bravo,
Rio Grande,
Soil and Water Analysis Tool (SWAT),
Water budget components,
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