2016
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Wyoming drought worsening; summary released
SpotlightTo convey the intensifying and expanding drought conditions in Wyoming, a 2-page drought summary was released today by the National Integrated Drought Information System (NIDIS) and several partners, including WWA. Dry and hot conditions in June and July have led to 55% of Wyoming now being classified as "abnormally dry" or worse, up from 43% just one week ago.
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Report released on WWA snowpack workshops
SpotlightIn August and September 2015, WWA convened three all-day workshops, supported the National Integrated Drought Information System (NIDIS), to improve the usability of snowpack monitoring information in the Rocky Mountain West. The workshops brought together 180 participants, mainly representing a core user community of local, state, and federal water managers, along with other stakeholders, researchers, and information providers. The newly released report on the workshop summarizes the current state of snowpack monitoring and application to runoff forecasting, describes new spatial snow products, and conveys the user needs expressed in the workshops.
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An Evaluation of the Upper Colorado River Basin Drought Early Warning System
SpotlightWWA completed an evaluation of the Upper Colorado River Basin Drought Early Warning System (UCRB DEWS), which is part of the National Integrated Drought Information System (NIDIS) and is operated out of the Colorado Climate Center at Colorado State University. The UCRB DEWS was the first of nine DEWS across the United States, and is based around regular webinars and a website that communicate drought conditions to water managers, agricultural producers, and other decision-makers. WWA’s evaluation assessed whether the UCRB DEWS is meeting NIDIS’ goals for the DEWS and improving drought preparedness in the Upper Colorado River Basin. The evaluation report describes several areas where the UCRB DEWS is succeeding and recommends steps that could be taken to improve its effectiveness. WWA’s evaluation is currently being used to inform NIDIS strategic planning across all of the DEWS.
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John Berggren Receives CIRES Graduate Student Research Fellowship
SpotlightJohn Berggren received the CIRES Graduate Student Research Award for his project "Transitioning to a New Era in Western United States Water Governance: Examining Adaptive Capacity and Equitable Water Policy in the Colorado River Basin". This project uses a multi-method case study research design to theoretically and empirically determine criteria for sustainable and equitable water policy. It focuses on the Colorado River Basin as a case study to better understand how these criteria might be identified, contextualized, and put into operation. Additionally, this research will examine how water managers can use these criteria to help incorporate new scientific information and successfully adapt existing institutions to continually changing environmental conditions.
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WWA Receives CU Innovative Seed Grant
SpotlightWestern Water Assessment was awarded an Innovative Seed Grant from the Office of the Vice Chancellor to work with the University of Colorado Grand Challenge project, Earth Lab. Earth Lab uses new data harmonization techniques and innovative visualization tools to identify and characterize changes in key processes in the earth system. Drawing on the experience of WWA, we will partner with Earth Lab researchers to pilot research co-production processes and training to fully harness the power of Earth Lab to improve societal decision making. This partnership will bring together some of the most innovative data science with new techniques to connect science with decision makers in private and public sectors and thus create impact beyond the university.
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NOAA SARP Award: Advancing the use of drought early warning systems in the Upper Colorado River Basin
SpotlightBen Livneh and colleagues recently received an award from NOAA’s Sectoral Applications Research Program. This project will identify opportunities to improve drought risk management by characterizing decision processes related to drought risk and describing the current use of information among water providers in the Western Slope. Then, we will assess whether snowpack indicators will remain good predictors of seasonal water supplies under a warming climate. The first element of the project will consist of in-depth interviews, participant observation, document analysis and focus groups of five Western Slope water entities. The second element will evaluate the robustness of current snow-based drought indicators, estimate the change in robustness under projected future climate warming using modeled data, and explore the implications of changing robustness for climate adaptation resilience through focus groups with water managers. The project team consists of researchers and practitioners with diverse and complementary backgrounds (hydrology, climatology, social science, policy, civil engineering, and water resources management) and broad experience working on water and climate issues on the Western Slope. Personnel for this project include: Ben Livneh, Lisa Dilling, Bill Travis, Jeff Lukas, Nolan Doesken, and Eric Kuhn.