GC066-02
Assessing tradeoffs in the sustainability and resilience of a FEW system with a demonstration in the Columbia River Basin

Thursday, 10 December 2020: 20:34
Virtual
Alexandra (Sasha) Richey1, Julie Padowski2, Fabio Scarpare3, Jennifer Givens4, Kirti Rajagopalan5, Sonia Hall6, Georgine Yorgey1, Michael Briscoe7, Jennifer C Adam3, Michael Federick Meyer8, Dustin McLarty9 and Bo Xu10, (1)Washington State University, Pullman, WA, United States, (2)Washington State University, State of Washington Water Research Center, Pullman, WA, United States, (3)Washington State University, Civil and Environmental Engineering, Pullman, WA, United States, (4)Utah State University, Dept. of Sociology, Social Work and Anthropology, Logan, UT, United States, (5)Washington State University, Biological Systems Engineering, Pullman, WA, United States, (6)Washington State University, Center for Sustaining Agriculture and Natural Resources, Pullman, WA, United States, (7)Utah State University, Department of Sociology, Social Work, and Anthropology, Logan, United States, (8)Carnegie Institution for Science Washington, Washington, DC, United States, (9)Washington State University, Mechanical and Materials Engineering, Pullman, WA, United States, (10)Washington State University, Pullman, United States
Recorded Presentation
Abstract:
The Columbia River Basin is a regional food-energy-water system that distributes available water supplies to meet hydropower, agricultural, ecological and domestic or municipal needs. As climate change and other stressors begin to reduce the capacity for snowpack to supply year-round water, innovations will be necessary to allow for continued support of the region’s diverse coupled human-natural system. We seek to understand how climate scenarios can be planned for and innovations can be implemented to support continued or improved sustainability and resilience of the Columbia River Basin in a way that accounts for the interconnections of the FEW system. To do so requires a mechanism to evaluate the sustainability and resilience of the system to compare between scenarios. We present a SusTainability And Resilience (STAR) calculator that assesses tradeoffs in the face of a changing climate and different management and innovation scenarios. A STAR value is calculated for the food, energy, water, and social (FEWS) systems so that tradeoffs can be evaluated not just between scenarios but also across each of the FEWS sectors. The calculator is a weighted indicator built from metrics within each FEWS sector and uses a novel approach to estimate weighting factors based on expert opinion. A case study of the STAR calculator is presented for the Columbia River Basin, which integrates feedback from a stakeholder advisory group and an interdisciplinary research team to develop stakeholder-appropriate, quantitative weighting factors and management goals. The metrics are based on a mix of model output from a coupled hydrology-cropping systems model and energy systems model and supplemented with historical observed data, as necessary. We compare the 2013 and 2015 hydrologic years as a representative normal and drought year, respectively, to assess how the sustainability and resilience of the FEWS system changed in response to the severe drought.
<< Previous Abstract | Next Abstract >>