Collaborative Research: Coordinating Water Markets and Critical Infrastructure Management to Build Community Resilience to Extreme Drought

干旱是美国最严重的自然灾害之一，对依赖供水的农业和城市社区构成挑战，淡水生态系统受到低流量的威胁。这些经济和环境影响涟漪社会系统，由于水和空气质量受损而影响公共健康，由于收入损失和失业而影响心理健康。不幸的是，通过需求方和供应方管理减少多部门干旱影响的努力协调不力。此外，干旱管理往往启动得太晚，因为用水者追求短期经济收益，而干旱却在缓慢发展。迫切需要改进干旱预报，并将预警更好地纳入水管理决策支持系统，以减少这些时间上的权衡。该项目的目标是评价对水系统及其体制和有形基础设施进行更好的协调和预测性干旱管理的潜在收益，以同时减少干旱对社区的影响并促进可持续经济增长。这项研究将支持NSF的使命，以促进国家的健康，繁荣和福利，因为改善干旱管理可以增加农业和城市社区的社会，经济和环境效益。该项目将集中在干旱易发的上游科罗拉多河流域，在那里，由于气候变暖和快速城市发展导致融雪径流减少加剧了水资源短缺的风险。将讨论三个科学问题：1）在目前的水资源管理做法和事先拨款制度下，干旱对农业和城市社区的经济和环境影响是什么？2)如何将预测调节水库运营与水市场战略（如补贴休耕、农民对农民的水权交易和城市对农业的期权合同）相结合，以减少这些影响？3)这种综合计划在多大程度上减少了对不断变化的极端气候的脆弱性，在这些计划仍然不够的情况下，需要何种预测技能或额外的适应机制才能取得令人满意的业绩？这些问题将通过面板回归模型和制定多目标优化框架来解决，该框架将根据季节性气候预测共同调节关键水库基础设施的运营和水市场交易。 这项研究的成果将是制定替代干旱管理政策的综合办法，利益攸关方可以考虑实施这些政策，以更可持续地适应不断变化的极端干旱。研究团队将在整个项目中与流域的农业和城市利益相关者合作，以促进将这项研究转化为实践。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

Droughts are among the most severe natural disasters in the US, challenging agricultural and urban communities reliant on water supply, and freshwater ecosystems threatened by low streamflow. These economic and environmental impacts ripple through social systems as well, impacting public health due to impaired water and air quality, and mental health due to revenue losses and unemployment. Unfortunately, attempts to reduce multi-sectoral drought impacts through demand-side and supply-side management are poorly coordinated. Furthermore, drought management often is initiated too late, as water users pursue short-term economic gains while droughts slowly develop. Improved drought forecasts and better integration of early warnings into decision support systems for water management are critically needed to reduce these temporal tradeoffs. The goal of this project is to evaluate the potential gains of better coordinated, forecast-informed drought management of water systems and their institutional and physical infrastructure to simultaneously reduce community impacts of drought and facilitate sustainable economic growth. This research will support NSF’s mission to advance national health, prosperity, and welfare, as improved drought management can increase social, economic, and environmental benefits for agricultural and urban communities.The project will focus on the drought-prone Upper Colorado River Basin, where decreased snowmelt runoff resulting from climate warming and rapid urban growth are intensifying water scarcity risks. Three scientific questions will be addressed: 1) What are the economic and environmental impacts of droughts on agricultural and urban communities under current water management practices and the system of prior appropriation? 2) How can integrating forecast-conditioned reservoir operations with water market strategies such as subsidized fallowing, farmer-to-farmer water rights trading, and urban-to-agricultural option contracts reduce these impacts, and what are the tradeoffs of alternative plans? 3) To what extent do such integrated plans reduce vulnerabilities to changing climate extremes, and where they are still insufficient, what forecast skill or additional adaptation mechanisms would be needed to attain satisfactory performance? These questions will be addressed through panel regression models and the development of a multi-objective optimization framework that jointly conditions the operations of critical reservoir infrastructure and water market transactions on seasonal climate forecasts. The outcome of this research will be an integrated approach to developing alternative drought management policies that stakeholders could consider implementing to achieve more sustainable adaptation to changing drought extremes. The research team will work with agricultural and urban stakeholders in the basin throughout the project to facilitate the translation of this research into practice.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.