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Maia Powell edited this page Jun 15, 2023 · 4 revisions

6/14 [Wednesday] - Began required readings

  • Water in the Balance (Famiglietti & Rodell, 2013)

    • Mentions a lot of relevant terminology that will likely arise again: groundwater, aquifer, basin, discharge
    • What causes water to move? How does water move?
    • How hard is it to quantify/measure/predict water evaporation? Is it as simple as computing the missing water?
    • What "political barriers" are there in climate justice work?
    • May need to research "water security" and "water diplomacy".
    • Can population data be incorporated into climate models? If so, how? -- spatial population data may not be representative of general water demand

  • Groundwater depletion during drought threatens future water security of the Colorado River Basin (Castle et al., 2014)

    • Relevant terminology: snow water equivalent (SWE), mass balance, terrestrial water storage anomalies (TWSA), snowpack
    • Are there other major basins/areas that allocate water/resources on such a large scale (besides the CBR)?
    • May be interesting to look at a timeline of climate justice/CBR successes (in terms of bills passing, etc.).
    • How important is it to understand the finer details of the relationship between gravity and water (i.e. how GRACE works)?
    • Skipped methods section for now, but it will likely be relevant later in the project
    • "conjunctive surface water and groundwater management plan is essential for sustainable water management in the Basin" -- this is a question that has been around for a long time it seems

  • Preliminary search into datasets

6/15 [Thursday] - Continuing required readings

  • Contributions of GRACE to understanding climate change (Tapley et al., 2019)

    • Overview: "highlights some representative breakthroughs"
    • Relevant terminology: geodesy, mean field, subaqueous, altimetry, firn compaction, speckle, lithospgere, glacial-isostatic adjustment (GIA)—a slow rebound of the Earth’s underlying lithosphere and mantle following readjustment from past ice-sheet retreat, El Nino, La Nina, in-situ, wetting, drying, TWS - sum of snow, ice, surface water, soil moisture and groundwater, streamflow, Argo, essential climate variables (ECVs)
    • Need to mindful of natural variability and anthropogenic influence
    • Note: provides semi-approachable explanation of how GRACE works/takes measurements
    • (Probably a silly question) how challenging is filtering water/using ocean water to mediate water scarcity/insecurity?
    • What role does soil moisture play in GRACE's measurements? Is "greenwater" picked up by GRACE?
    • Note: being able to track exact droughts/circumstances [like figure 3] based on measurements is very cool
    • "Of the world’s 37 largest aquifer systems, 13 were found to be suffering critical depletion" -- what are these 37? And 13?
    • What is the role of carbon in the hydrological cycle/climate change/etc.?
    • Need to be mindful of natural variations vs. anthropogenic climate change or human water-management practices -- limitations of everyday individuals to contribute to large scale water conservation/sustainability practices
    • Need to educate myself more on Earth's energy/energy imbalance -- how is this measured? What does it mean?
    • How much work has been done on assimilating multiple types of data (to include GRACE) has been done? Where are there areas where the field is lacking?
    • Very interesting that a model incorporating GRACE was used for seasonal wildfire prediction!

  • Scenario Planning: Embracing the Potential for Extreme Events in the Colorado River Basin (Gerlak et al., 2021)

    • Relevant terminology: Scenario planning (SP)
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