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Regional Watershed Resilience: Robust Decision Making Case Studies
Citation:
Detenbeck, N., C. Weaver, P. Morefield, AND M. TenBrink. Regional Watershed Resilience: Robust Decision Making Case Studies. 2021 Air Climate and Energy Program BOSC Review: Meet the Scientists Session 2, NA, Virtual, October 13, 2021.
Impact/Purpose:
This is a brief overview of research being conducted under ACE 6.3.6 for a BOSC review (Meet the Scientists Session 2).
Description:
This product leverages a newly enhanced version of the Watershed Management Optimization Support Tool (WMOST), building on accomplishments under ACE/CIVA-3, to support the implementation of watershed BMPs for long-term resilience in the face of changing climate and land-use patterns across several regional case studies. The most recent development of WMOST, developed jointly across ACE and SSWR, includes functions to evaluate the effectiveness of various management practices, including projects related to stormwater (i.e. green infrastructure, combined sewer overflow systems, etc), stream restoration, wastewater, and land resources such as LID and land conservation, under both historical conditions and future scenarios of climate and/or land-use change. WMOST v3.01 includes the ScenCompare module for evaluating the results of multiple WMOST runs simultaneously to more easily explore the effects of varying future conditions. ScenCompare can assist users interested in applying WMOST as part of Robust Decision Making (RDM) approaches for identifying vulnerabilities and managing risks in the face of uncertain future conditions. In this product, WMOST v3.01 with ScenCompare will be applied in several case studies, leveraging existing partnerships in Regions 6 and 7, to explore the resilience of potential BMPs across a range of scenarios spanning potential future climate conditions and land-use changes, with objectives including: maximizing reductions in cumulative runoff volume (representative of water quantity issues such as erosion, nuisance flooding, infrastructure degradation); maximizing reductions in cumulative nitrogen and phosphorus loads; and minimizing costs (both capital and operations/maintenance) of Integrated Water Resources Management (IWRM) plans designed to meet the above objectives.