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A team of UA researchers that has studied the Colorado River Basin have received the American Water Resources Association's "Boggess Award," which goes to the best paper published within a one-year period.

By Stephanie Doster, Institute of the Environment
July 17, 2009

Three University of Arizona researchers will receive an award from the American Water Resources Association for their analysis on the challenges of modeling, and the uncertainty in managing, the water supply in the Colorado River Basin.

The authors are: Dustin Garrick, a doctoral degree candidate in geography and regional development; Katharine Jacobs, professor of soil, water and environmental science; and Gregg Garfin, deputy director of science translation and outreach at the UA Institute of the Environment. 

The three will receive the Boggess Award at the association's award luncheon, which will be held Nov. 11 in Seattle. 

The award is a tribute to their paper, "Models, Assumptions, and Stakeholders: Planning for Water Supply Variability in the Colorado River Basin," which was published in the April 2008 issue of the Journal of the American Water Resources Association.

The Boggess Award was established by the association in 1973 to honor the author, or authors, of the best paper published in the journal during the previous year.

"The award signals the growing appetite for interdisciplinary, applied research that engages public managers to address pressing water sustainability challenges," Garrick said.

He led a team of graduate researchers from across the UA, who evaluated the role of climate information in the Bureau of Reclamation's management of the Lower Colorado River. The team identified opportunities to integrate climate information into rivers system models used for operations and long-range planning. 

"Credit goes to the stakeholders – water users and managers across Arizona and at the Bureau of Reclamation – who helped to frame the research problem addressed in the study in the context of unprecedented reservoir declines and heightened risk of triggering the first shortage in the Lower Colorado River system," Jacobs said.

The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation manages the water and reservoirs of the Colorado River, including the last 688 miles that make up the Lower Colorado.

The paper is centered on a seminal event on the Lower Colorado River: rapid declines in reservoir storage between 2001 and 2006 that modeling simulations generated in 2000 had not anticipated.

By April 2005, the Colorado River's second largest reservoir, Lake Powell, had dipped to its lowest elevation since 1968. This decrease spurred modeling efforts to frame alternatives for managing the reservoir system during prolonged droughts.

The paper addressed the management challenges that arise when using model simulation tools to manage water scarcity under variable hydroclimatology, shifting use patterns, and institutional complexity.

The authors concluded that water managers require model outputs that encompass a full range of future potential outcomes, including best and worst cases.

The Colorado River is vital to the Southwest: it supplies roughly 40 percent of Arizona's water. The river water is allocated among seven states – Arizona, California, Utah, Colorado, Wyoming, Nevada and New Mexico.

If a water shortage is declared on the Lower Colorado River, Arizona will be among the first states to have its allocation cut.

Modeling efforts that support long-range planning may involve a range of alternatives and competing sets of assumptions on key hydrologic and institutional factors. 

"Lending transparency to the modeling assumptions used in long-range water planning," Garrick said, "and understanding the interactions among demand, supply and allocation rules has proven critical as planning efforts emphasize public participation and form a more direct link between modeling and stakeholders."