Hydro-Ecological Pathways to Stabilize the Colorado River with Water Markets
Abstract
The Colorado River is experiencing a basin-wide water security crisis driven by an ongoing 23-year-long megadrought and decades of water management policies that led to systematic overallocation of water supplies. Currently, levels of Lakes Mead and Powell, the largest reservoirs in the U.S., are at their historical minima. Proposed actions to stabilize reservoir levels rely heavily on water-use reductions, with significant reductions expected through water market transactions that pay water users to leave water in the river. Meanwhile, the Colorado River system routinely runs so dry that severe ecological damage to fish habitat occurs, with 44 of 49 native fish species endangered, threatened, or extinct.
In this study, we explored how strategic environmental water rights transactions can simultaneously stabilize Lake Powell, preserve fish habitat, and minimize agricultural community economic impacts. To do so, we developed an integrated modeling framework to realistically simulate these water transactions across Colorado's Western Slope, which generates about 75% of runoff for the entire Colorado River Basin. Then, we identified cost-effective portfolios among thousands of formal and informal environmental water transactions. By incorporating water resource, ecological, and agronomic dimensions, our framework presents a useful tool for stakeholders to define and explore pathways for holistic stabilization of the Upper Colorado River.- Publication:
-
AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts
- Pub Date:
- December 2022
- Bibcode:
- 2022AGUFM.H33F..02W