An integrated multi-directional approach to understanding local hydrologic responses to global climate change

Julie Vano博士获得了NSF地球科学博士后奖学金，以开发新方法来了解未来气候对太平洋西北地区当地水资源的影响。 气候变暖可能会改变生态系统和人类社区可用水的地点、时间和数量。 然而，水资源管理人员不断努力在各种利益相关者的需求之间找到平衡，他们不确定如何将气候变化纳入其规划过程。 这项研究通过开发两种新的方法来应对这一挑战，以情景规划，可以更有效地利用水资源管理者和决策者。这些方法使用全球气候模型输出、水文模型和影响评估工具来构建未来水文气候情景。首先从气候情景和水文敏感性开始，以了解径流变化的中心趋势和范围-通过模拟温度和降水变化如何转化为径流量变化的实验确定的敏感性。第二种方法通过使用相同的建模框架来探索径流极端情况，但方向相反：首先，资源管理人员确定一个关注的指标，例如在某个测量仪上超过75千立方英尺的流量，然后诊断导致该指标的水文因素，最后量化与气候驱动因素的联系。 哥伦比亚河的洪水将是这种影响驱动方法的测试案例。 这项研究将在俄勒冈州州立大学进行，在那里它将利用研究人员和利益相关者之间建立的网络。该项目旨在：（1）提高对大气条件、水文过程、地表特性和当地水文影响的理解和联系，（2）通过使用水文景观对中心趋势变化的敏感性概念，开发新的方法来量化当地变化（增量变化）和极端事件，（3）在科学和管理之间建立持久的伙伴关系，确保决策者参与研究过程，以便创造适当的工具，更好地评估未来水规划备选方案的可持续性。 在整个工作过程中，将继续努力，通过利益相关者会议确保结果与更大的管理社区相关，其经验将用于为俄勒冈州州立大学和更大的科学社区的学生创建利益相关者互动的短期课程。

Dr. Julie Vano has been awarded an NSF Earth Science Postdoctoral Fellowship to develop new approaches to understand future climate impacts on local water resources in the Pacific Northwest. A warmer climate threatens to alter where, when, and how much water is available for ecosystems and human communities. Yet water resource managers, who constantly work to find balance between a diversity of stakeholder needs, are unsure how to incorporate climate change into their planning processes. This research addresses this challenge through developing two new approaches to scenario planning that can be more effectively used by water resource managers and decision-makers. These approaches use global climate model output, hydrological models, and impact assessment tools to construct scenarios of future hydroclimate. The first begins with climate scenarios and hydrologic sensitivities to understand central tendencies and ranges of runoff changes - sensitivities identified through modeled experiments of how changes in temperature and precipitation translate to changes in streamflow magnitude. The second explores runoff extremes by using the same modeling framework, but works in the reverse direction: first, resource managers identify a metric of concern, e.g. flow above 75 Kcfs at a certain gauge, then hydrologic factors that lead to the metric are diagnosed, and finally connections to climate drivers are quantified. Floods in the Columbia River will be the test case for this impacts-driven approach. This research will be carried out at Oregon State University, where it will leverage established networks between researchers and stakeholders. The project aims to: (1) improve understanding of and the connections between atmospheric conditions, hydrologic processes, land surface properties, and local hydrologic impacts, (2) develop new approaches to quantify local change through using concepts of hydrologic landscape sensitivities to changes in central tendencies (incremental changes) and extreme events, and (3) build lasting partnerships between science and management that ensures decision-maker participation in the research process, so as to create appropriate tools to better evaluate the sustainability of future water planning options. Throughout this work, there will be a continued effort to insure results are relevant to the larger management community through stakeholder meetings, the experiences of which will be used to create a short-course on stakeholder interactions for students at Oregon State University and the larger science community.