HR: 16:00h
AN: H24E-01    [Abstracts]
TI: Climate and Management of the Colorado River: What Does the SSD Study Tell Us About Scenario Analysis?
AU: * Kenney, D S
EM: douglas.kenney@colorado.edu
AF: Western Water Assessment, Univ. of Colorado, NRLC UCB 401, Boulder, CO 80309-0401, United States
AB: The "Severe Sustained Drought in the Southwestern US" (SSD) research project conducted between 1989-1994 focused on the likely size and distribution of water shortages in the Colorado River Basin should the most severe, long-term drought found in the tree-ring record reoccur in the modern era. The research approach, generally, was to (a) utilize tree-ring studies to reconstruct prehistoric flows, (b) select the drought from this record that was most likely to catastrophically stress the system, (c) estimate future water demand in the basin, (d) utilize institutional studies and water system modeling to identify the timing, location and magnitude of likely water shortages should this drought reoccur, (e) assess impacts and damages associated with these shortages, and (f) investigate a small set of coping strategies. Each step in this process raised a variety of technical challenges and drew upon the talents of approximately 40 researchers including engineers/hydrologists, attorneys, economists, environmental scientists, sociologists, and policy specialists. The goal was to stimulate thinking and reform prior to a drought crisis; however, the study findings were largely ignored until the recent drought crisis, and then once discovered, some of the key conclusions of the study regarding substantive issues of water shortage vulnerability and distribution were found to be inconsistent with (and thus potentially irrelevant to solving) the current drought. Understanding why some key results of the research scenario differ significantly from the current crisis is important in informing future scenario analyses. Specifically, this case study highlights the importance and difficulty of (a) effectively linking scientific modeling efforts with social analyses, and (b) linking scenario analyses to real-world policy-making settings. In this basin, improving the understanding of drought is likely less about improved scholarship in climate and hydrology, and more about understanding the role of water demand, risk allocation, legal and political uncertainties, distorted economic incentives, and the lack of adequate forums, tools and incentives for dispute resolution. Until the institutional problems are better understood and integrated into scientific assessments, efforts such as the SSD study are unlikely to achieve their full theoretical benefits.
DE: 1812 Drought
DE: 1880 Water management (6334)
DE: 6319 Institutions
DE: 6334 Regional planning (1880)
SC: Hydrology [H]
MN: 2007 Fall Meeting