Cold Water and Salmon in the Columbia River: Challenges in Translating Uncertainty to Inform Decision-making
Abstract
Natural resource agencies in the United States have a long history of developing and applying models to inform policy and regulation. Examples include water quality models for Total Maximum Daily Load regulation or population viability models for species recovery. We will describe one current effort by the US Environmental Protection Agency to apply a spatially-explicit, individual-based modeling approach. The objectives of the modeling application are to evaluate cold water refuge sufficiency for Pacific salmon (Oncorhynchus spp.) in the Columbia River of Washington and Oregon, USA, and inform water temperature standards applied by the States. We will draw examples from this model development to discuss the challenges of designing models to meet client needs, managing client expectations, the tendency to over-promise, trade-offs between realism and defensibility, and limitations imposed by agency planning, conflicting management objectives, and IT structures.
- Publication:
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AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts
- Pub Date:
- December 2019
- Bibcode:
- 2019AGUFMPA34A..02E
- Keywords:
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- 1880 Water management;
- HYDROLOGY;
- 4343 Preparedness and planning;
- NATURAL HAZARDS;
- 6309 Decision making under uncertainty;
- POLICY SCIENCES;
- 6620 Science policy;
- POLICY SCIENCES & PUBLIC ISSUES