Managing the dams in the Pacific Northwest’s Columbia River Basin, the nation’s largest hydropower system, is an intricate balancing act. Reservoirs must continually be emptied to avoid flooding and refilled to drive the turbines that generate electricity. Complicating matters is the need to accommodate numerous contracts and mandates on power generation, flood risks, irrigation and other factors. And of course, there’s the fish.

Making matters worse, anticipated climate change is poised to throw a monkey wrench into the planning as mountain snow cover (and its associated spring runoff) is expected to change significantly throughout this century.

Some new thinking is about to be applied to the problem. This week, the science news Website ScienceDaily reports that researchers at the University of Washington and U.S. Army Corps of Engineers have refined and optimized a water management model, taking the expected changes into account.

In a paper published in the Journal of Water Resources Planning and Management, the researchers noted that anticipated temperature changes for the region “will cause reduced spring snow pack, earlier melt, earlier spring peak flow, and lower summer flow.” And these changes are likely to disrupt the balance between flood control and reservoir refill in existing reservoir systems.

Current water management systems do not and will not be able to take the changes into account. The systems use historical stream-flow records to gauge when to open and close the floodgates. According to ScienceDaily, the University of Washington and the Army Corps of Engineers researchers “compared historical conditions with a scenario where temperatures are 2 degrees Celsius higher on average than today, a change expected in the Pacific Northwest by the second half of this century. And they created a computer program that uses long-term forecasts rather than historical records to recalculate when to begin filling and emptying the major storage reservoirs in the Columbia River basin in a warmer climate.”

Based on the refinements, the researchers believe, for some locations, due to the reduced snowpack and lower spring peak flows, water managers will be able to refill reservoirs a month earlier in the spring without fear of flooding. This could help supply more hydropower in the summer, while also providing more water storage for other purposes, according to the researchers.

Specifically, “computer simulations showed that switching to the new management system under a warmer future climate would lessen summer losses in hydropower due to climate change by about a quarter,” according to published reports on the research. It would also bolster flows for fish by filling reservoirs more reliably.

Essentially, what the researchers have done is develop a tool that might one day be used by water managers in the Pacific Northwest to address the changes from anticipated rising regional temperatures. ScienceDaily noted that it will be years before the current management practices are formally changed, but this work is a first step in that direction.

Modeling is great, but it seems as though the output of this modeling process is likely to be a static schedule for governing operations at different points in the system. Suggest ways in which this process might better be controlled dynamically, and reasons why dynamic control isn't now being used.
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Reader Comments: New Modeling Aims for Better Water Management for Pacific Northwest Dams >>> Post your comment now! RE: Follow up Norman I'll keep an eye on developments here. Posted At: 02-01-10 By: Sal Salamone A user comment on this article Will there be a follow up to this article? I'd be interested to see how this new information is used in day-to-day operations. Posted At: 02-01-10 By: NormanD >>> Post your comment now!

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