Climate Change and Curtailment: Evaluating Water Management Practices in the Context of Changing Runoff Regimes in a Snowmelt-Dominated Basin

Hydrologic scientists and water resource managers often focus on different facets of flow regimes in changing climates. The objective of this work is to examine potential hydrological changes in the Upper Boise River Basin, Idaho, USA in the context of biophysical variables and their impacts a key variable governing administration of water resources in the region in an integrated way. This snowmelt-dominated, mountainous watershed supplies water to a semi-arid, agriculturally intensive, but rapidly urbanizing, region. Using the Envision integrated modeling framework, we created a hydrological model to simulate hydrological response to the year 2100 using six alternative future climate trajectories. Annual discharge increased from historical values by 6–24% across all simulations (with an average 13% increase), reflecting an increase in precipitation in the climate projections. Discharge peaked 4–33 days earlier and streamflow center of timing occurred 4–17 days earlier by midcentury. Examining changes in the date junior water rights holders begin to be curtailed regionally (the Day of Allocation), we found that the it occurs at least 14 days earlier by 2100 across all simulations, with one suggesting it could occur over a month earlier. These results suggest that current methods and policies of water rights accounting and management may need to be revised moving into the future.

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Evaluating impacts of climate change on future water scarcity in an intensively managed semi-arid region using a coupled model of biophysical processes and water rights

10.5194/hess-2018-140 ◽

2018 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Bangshuai Han ◽

Shawn G. Benner ◽

Alejandro N. Flores

Keyword(s):

Climate Change ◽

Water Scarcity ◽

Water Rights ◽

Future Climate Change ◽

Climate Projections ◽

Modeling Framework ◽

Stochastic Weather Generator ◽

Biophysical Processes ◽

Intensively Managed ◽

Semi Arid

Abstract. In semiarid and arid regions with intensively managed water supplies, water scarcity is a product of interactions between complex biophysical processes and human activities. Evaluating water scarcity under climate change necessitates modeling how these coupled processes interact and redistribute waters in the system under alternative climate conditions. A particular challenge on the climate input lies in adequately capturing the plausible range of variability of future climate change along with central tendencies. This study generates a large ensemble of daily climate realizations by combining a stochastic weather generator, historical climate observations, and statistically downscaled General Circulation Model projections. Three climate change scenario groups, reflecting the historical, RCP4.5, and RCP8.5 conditions, are developed. A modeling framework is built using the Envision alternative futures modeling platform to 1) explicitly capture the spatiotemporally varying irrigation activities as constrained by local water rights; and 2) project water scarcity patterns under climate change. The study area is the Treasure Valley, an irrigation-intensive semi-arid human-environment system. Climate projections for the region show future increases in both precipitation and temperature. The projected increase in temperature has a significant influence on the increase of the allocated and unsatisfied irrigation amount. Projected changes in precipitation produce more modest responses. The scenarios identify spatially distinct areas more sensitive to water scarcity, highlight the importance of climate change as a driver of scarcity, and identify potential shortcomings of the current water management. The approach of creating climate ensembles overcomes deficiencies of using a few or mean values of individual GCM realizations.

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Modelling of the Discharge Response to Climate Change under RCP8.5 Scenario in the Alata River Basin (Mersin, SE Turkey)

Water ◽

10.3390/w13040483 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 13 (4) ◽

pp. 483

Author(s):

Ümit Yıldırım ◽

Cüneyt Güler ◽

Barış Önol ◽

Michael Rode ◽

Seifeddine Jomaa

Keyword(s):

Climate Change ◽

River Basin ◽

Hydrological Model ◽

Baseline Period ◽

Change Scenario ◽

Climate Projections ◽

Worst Case ◽

Distributed Process ◽

In The Beginning ◽

Se Turkey

This study investigates the impacts of climate change on the hydrological response of a Mediterranean mesoscale catchment using a hydrological model. The effect of climate change on the discharge of the Alata River Basin in Mersin province (Turkey) was assessed under the worst-case climate change scenario (i.e., RCP8.5), using the semi-distributed, process-based hydrological model Hydrological Predictions for the Environment (HYPE). First, the model was evaluated temporally and spatially and has been shown to reproduce the measured discharge consistently. Second, the discharge was predicted under climate projections in three distinct future periods (i.e., 2021–2040, 2046–2065 and 2081–2100, reflecting the beginning, middle and end of the century, respectively). Climate change projections showed that the annual mean temperature in the Alata River Basin rises for the beginning, middle and end of the century, with about 1.35, 2.13 and 4.11 °C, respectively. Besides, the highest discharge timing seems to occur one month earlier (February instead of March) compared to the baseline period (2000–2011) in the beginning and middle of the century. The results show a decrease in precipitation and an increase in temperature in all future projections, resulting in more snowmelt and higher discharge generation in the beginning and middle of the century scenarios. However, at the end of the century, the discharge significantly decreased due to increased evapotranspiration and reduced snow depth in the upstream area. The findings of this study can help develop efficient climate change adaptation options in the Levant’s coastal areas.

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How good are hydrological models for gap-filling streamflow data?

Hydrology and Earth System Sciences ◽

10.5194/hess-22-4593-2018 ◽

2018 ◽

Vol 22 (8) ◽

pp. 4593-4604 ◽

Cited By ~ 8

Author(s):

Yongqiang Zhang ◽

David Post

Keyword(s):

Model Calibration ◽

Hydrological Model ◽

Hydrological Models ◽

Hydrological Response ◽

Gap Filling ◽

Annual Streamflow ◽

Response Variable ◽

Benchmark Data ◽

Streamflow Data ◽

Streamflow Trend

Abstract. Gap-filling streamflow data is a critical step for most hydrological studies, such as streamflow trend, flood, and drought analysis and hydrological response variable estimates and predictions. However, there is a lack of quantitative evaluation of the gap-filled data accuracy in most hydrological studies. Here we show that when the missing data rate is less than 10 %, the gap-filled streamflow data obtained using calibrated hydrological models perform almost the same as the benchmark data (less than 1 % missing) when estimating annual trends for 217 unregulated catchments widely spread across Australia. Furthermore, the relative streamflow trend bias caused by the gap filling is not very large in very dry catchments where the hydrological model calibration is normally poor. Our results clearly demonstrate that the gap filling using hydrological modelling has little impact on the estimation of annual streamflow and its trends.

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Diversification and Land Use Management Practices for Food and Nutritional Security Under the Climate Change Scenario in Arid and Semi-arid Regions of India

Food Security and Land Use Change under Conditions of Climatic Variability ◽

10.1007/978-3-030-36762-6_15 ◽

2020 ◽

pp. 281-309

Author(s):

P. K. Pankaj ◽

Mahesh K. Gaur ◽

G. Nirmala ◽

V. Maruthi ◽

Pushpanjali ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Climate Change ◽

Land Use ◽

Arid Regions ◽

Management Practices ◽

Climate Change Scenario ◽

Change Scenario ◽

Land Use Management ◽

Nutritional Security ◽

Food And Nutritional Security ◽

Semi Arid

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Missing Links in Predicting Berry Sunburn in Future Vineyards

Frontiers in Plant Science ◽

10.3389/fpls.2021.715906 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 12 ◽

Author(s):

Christopher Bahr ◽

Dominik Schmidt ◽

Katrin Kahlen

Keyword(s):

Environmental Conditions ◽

Management Practices ◽

Developmental State ◽

Local Heat ◽

Mitigation Strategies ◽

Plant Management ◽

Modeling Framework ◽

Promising Tool ◽

Berry Quality ◽

Open Issues

Sunburn in grapevine berries is known as a recurring disorder causing severe yield losses and a decline in berry quality. The transition from healthy to sunburnt along a temporal trajectory is not fully understood. It is driven by light-boosted local heat impact and modulated by, e.g., past environments of the berry and its developmental state. Events of berry sunburn are often associated with heatwaves, indicating a link to climate change. In addition, the sensitivity of grapevine architecture to changing environmental condition indicates an urgent need to investigate and adapt mitigation strategies of berry sunburn in future vineyards. In this perspective, we want to identify missing links in predicting berry sunburn in vineyards and propose a modeling framework that may help us to investigate berry sunburn in future vineyards. For this, we propose to address open issues in both developing a model of berry sunburn and considering dynamic canopy growth, and canopy interaction with the environment and plant management such as shoot positioning or leaf removal. Because local environmental conditions drive sunburn, we aim at showing that identifying sunburn-reducing strategies in a vineyard under future environmental conditions can be supported by a modeling approach that integrates effects of management practices over time and takes grapevine architecture explicitly into account. We argue that functional-structural plant models may address such complex tasks. Once open issues are solved, they might be a promising tool to advance our knowledge on reducing risks of berry sunburn in silico.

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What happens after the catchment caught the storm? Hydrological processes at the small, semi-arid Weatherley catchment, South-Africa

Advances in Geosciences ◽

10.5194/adgeo-2-237-2005 ◽

2005 ◽

Vol 2 ◽

pp. 237-241 ◽

Cited By ~ 9

Author(s):

S. Uhlenbrook ◽

J. Wenninger ◽

S. Lorentz

Keyword(s):

South Africa ◽

Electrical Resistivity ◽

Soil Moisture ◽

Experimental Techniques ◽

Storm Event ◽

Residence Times ◽

Hydrological Response ◽

Flow Paths ◽

Flow Pathways ◽

Semi Arid

Abstract. The knowledge of water flow pathways and residence times in a catchment are essential for predicting the hydrological response to a rain storm event. Different experimental techniques are available to study these processes, which are briefly reviewed in this paper. To illustrate this, recent findings from the Weatherley catchment a 1.5 km2 semi-arid headwater in South-Africa, are reported in this paper. Beside classical hydrometric measurements of precipitation and runoff different experimental techniques were applied to explore flow paths (i.e. soil moisture and groundwater measurements, natural tracers, and 2-D electrical resistivity tomographies (ERT)).

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