Threading the Needle: Upper Colorado River Basin Responses to Reduced Water Supply Availability

Mahdi Asgari and Kristiana Hansen

Choices: The Magazine of Food, Farm, and Resource Issues, 2024, vol. 39, issue 3

Abstract: Lakes Mead and Powell, the two largest reservoirs in the Colorado River Basin (CRB) and the entire United States, are at historic low levels due to a 20-year megadrought and steady demand pressures from the Basin’s water users. Periodic severe and sustained droughts in the CRB have occurred in the past and will likely continue to occur in the future. Hydrologic models for the basin further project overall decreased annual flows under climate projections of increased temperature and variability in precipitation (Kopytkovskiy, Geza, and McCray, 2015; Salehabadi et al., 2022). Low reservoir levels in Lakes Mead and Powell lead to reduced deliveries to downstream water users and threaten hydropower production.

Keywords: Environmental Economics and Policy; Sustainability (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ags:aaeach:347746

DOI: 10.22004/ag.econ.347746

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