Over the Winter and Spring, I collaborated with WestWater Research and ESA Sitka on a tool to visualize future municipal water demands to 2050 across the Colorado Front Range. As local water supplies are already stressed, population growth in 13 counties may exacerbate the issue and reduce the ability for water service providers (WSP) to meet the demands of new customers with new sources of supply. In the face of water scarcity, a variety of strategies and practices can be taken by WSPs to accommodate new growth.
Nutrients across time: relationships with climate, hydrology, and land use in four rivers of the Pacific Northwest
I am pleased to announce the publication of my article, “Nutrients across time: relationships with climate, hydrology, and land use in four rivers of the Pacific Northwest.” My findings have important implications for spatio-temporal water resource management issues such as water quantity and quality, agriculture and land use development, climate change, harmful algal blooms, drinking water, fish populations, timber harvests, and public health.
Dynamic processes and static planning: 70-year Habitat Conservation Plan for the State Forest of Oregon.
Over the past year, I have been consulting for the Wild Salmon Center and Oregon Stream Protection Coalition, and providing guidance to the Oregon Department of Forestry (ODF) on the development of a 640,000 acre Western Oregon State Forests Habitat Conservation Plan (HCP). While the project has been intriguing and rewarding, I outline at the end of this post six opportunities that remain untapped.
Turning rough rocks into valuable gems: wielding data for water markets
For disparate watersheds of the Pacific Northwest, I have been working to address issues around the implementation of water markets. In doing so, I seek answers to the following questions:
With changes in flow from water transactions, what co-benefits exist for indicators of water quality?
What characteristics of watersheds explain baseline conditions for flow, temperature, nutrients, and sediment?
How well can we predict water quantity and quality in unmonitored streams?
Considering future water resource management efforts, what changes in water quantity and quality might we expect to achieve?
How much is that doggie in the window? How about that drop of water from the tap?
As a concept and practice, ecosystem services (ES) draw extensively from economics and finance including stocks, flows, capital, assets, valuation, and accounting. To foster integration between the economy and ecosystems, Ouyang et al. (2020) push to create a new index comparable to the widely-used gross domestic product (GDP)—the Gross Ecosystem Product (GEP).