Research

In this project, we will engage with water providers, tribal representatives, agricultural and other water users, ecological interests, and recreational groups about future snowpack and streamflow conditions, increasing understanding of how they view water system resilience to compound hazards. This continued engagement is essential both to disseminate new research findings and to understand evolving information and planning landscapes.

In Spring 2024, Western Water Assessment launched a new project focusing on understanding climate risks and building climate resilience within mobile home park communities. Mobile home park residents face unique and disproportionate exposure to climate related hazards, including heat, fires, and floods. Further, mobile home residents often are left out of many climate and disaster related assistance programs, due to the unique housing structure of mobile home parks. Addressing the needs of mobile home park communities is key to building climate resilience and addressing climate justice needs.

Wyoming communities face increasing climate-related risks including wildfire, drought, flooding, and heat waves. This funding competition provided a rare and important opportunity to directly support adaptation and build climate resilience in underserved communities in the state. Applicants provided brief, five-page descriptions of their projects. Proposals were ranked based on their demonstrated community interest, resources and networks in place to support the project, realistic budget and timeline, appropriate and sufficient partners, strong connection to their communities, clarity about how resilience or adaptation would be built through the project, their plan for communicating with WWA and leveraging of WWA resources, their plan for and potential impact of external outreach, and the quality, novelty, and innovation of their ideas. We particularly encouraged proposals from entities and communities who have been historically underserved including Indigenous and small rural communities.

The Intermountain West Climate Dashboard, which debuted in October 2012, is our most popular resource that provides information and graphics about current and forecasted regional weather, climate, and water information. Feedback from WWA stakeholders through multiple program evaluations and analyses of website traffic indicate that the dashboard is a very useful ‘one-stop shop’ for up-to-date climate and water information for WWA’s three-state region.

Wildfires create hazards for lives and property through combustion and high temperatures, as well as their impacts to catchment source water. This project focuses on these water-related vulnerabilities, which include far-reaching effects on flood risks (Ebel et al., 2012), on aquatic habitats, and on water treatment costs (Hohner et al., 2019; Pitlick and Van Steeter, 1998).