South Platte Regional Assessment Tool (SPRAT)

Draining the northeast quadrant of Colorado, the South Platte River Basin covers approximately 20 percent of the state and houses roughly 70 percent of its population, including the Denver-Metro area and Front Range cities to the north. Rapid population growth, climate change and recent drought have highlighted the need for a better understanding of how future changes in the basin might affect water users. Despite the social and economic importance of the South Platte basin, a tool explicitly designed for investigating future water management scenarios across the basin has not existed until now. The South Platte Regional Assessment Tool (SPRAT) addresses this planning need. SPRAT models the movement and allocation of water throughout the Basin, allowing users to make relative comparisons of the water supply and demand impacts associated with various population growth, climate/hydrologic, and agricultural land-use scenarios, and by allowing the merits of various water management alternatives (adaptations) and infrastructure changes to be similarly compared. Click on any of the links below to learn more about the South Platte and SPRAT.