Inferring water scarcity: do large-scale hydrologic and node-based water systems model representations of the Upper Colorado river basin lead to consistent vulnerability insights?
Antonia Hadjimichael1,2*, Jim Yoon3, Patrick M. Reed4, Nathalie Voisin3, Wenwei Xu3
1 Department of Geosciences, The Pennsylvania State University, State College, PA, USA
2 Earth and Environmental Systems Institute (EESI), The Pennsylvania State University, State College, PA, USA
3 Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, Richland, WA, USA
4 School of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, USA
* corresponding author: hadjimichael@psu.edu
Water resources model development and simulation efforts have seen rapid growth in recent decades to aid evaluations and planning around water scarcity and allocation. Models are typically developed by two distinct communities: large-scale hydrologic modelers emphasizing hydro-climatological processes and water systems modelers emphasizing environmental, infrastructural, and institutional features that shape water scarcity at the local basin level. This study assesses whether two representative models from these communities produce consistent insights when evaluating the water scarcity vulnerabilities in the Upper Colorado River Basin within the state of Colorado. Results show that while the regional-scale model (MOSART-WM) can capture the aggregate effect of all water operations in the basin, it underestimates the sub-basin scale variability in specific user’s vulnerabilities. The basin-scale water systems model (StateMod) suggests a larger variance of scarcity across the basin’s water users due to its more detailed accounting of local water allocation infrastructure and institutional processes. This model intercomparison highlights potentially significant limitations of large-scale studies in seeking to evaluate water scarcity and actionable adaptation strategies, as well as ways in which basin-scale water systems model’s information can be used to better inform water allocation and shortage when used in tandem with larger-scale hydrological modeling studies.
Hadjimichael, A., Yoon, J., Reed, P.M., Voisin, N., Xu, W., Inferring water scarcity: do large-scale hydrologic and node-based water systems model representations of the Upper Colorado river basin lead to consistent vulnerability insights? (submitted to Journal of Water Resources Planning and Management August 2021)
| Model | Version | Repository Link | DOI |
|---|---|---|---|
| StateMod | 15.0 | https://github.com/OpenCDSS/cdss-app-statemod-fortran | - |
| MOSART-WM | version | https://github.com/IMMM-SFA/wm | https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.1225343 |
- Install all package dependencies listed in environment.yml using
conda env create --file environment.yml - Activate environment using
conda activate Hadjimichael-etal_2021_JWRPM - Execute all scripts in the
workflowdirectory to re-create all paper figures