Storing and managing water for the environment is more efficient than mimicking natural flows

Sarah E. Null (), Harrison Zeff, Jeffrey Mount, Brian Gray, Anna M. Sturrock, Gokce Sencan, Kristen Dybala and Barton Thompson
Additional contact information
Sarah E. Null: Utah State University
Harrison Zeff: University of North Carolina
Jeffrey Mount: Public Policy Institute of California
Brian Gray: Public Policy Institute of California
Anna M. Sturrock: University of Essex
Gokce Sencan: Public Policy Institute of California
Kristen Dybala: Point Blue Conservation Science
Barton Thompson: Stanford University

Nature Communications, 2024, vol. 15, issue 1, 1-13

Abstract: Abstract Dams and reservoirs are often needed to provide environmental water and maintain suitable water temperatures for downstream ecosystems. Here, we evaluate if water allocated to the environment, with storage to manage it, might allow environmental water to more reliably meet ecosystem objectives than a proportion of natural flow. We use a priority-based water balance operations model and a reservoir temperature model to evaluate 1) pass-through of a portion of reservoir inflow versus 2) allocating a portion of storage capacity and inflow for downstream flow and stream temperature objectives. We compare trade-offs to other senior and junior priority water demands. In many months, pass-through flows exceed the volumes needed to meet environmental demands. Storage provides the ability to manage release timing to use water efficiently for environmental benefit, with a co-benefit of increasing reservoir storage to protect cold-water at depth in the reservoir.

Date: 2024
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-024-49770-4 Abstract (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:natcom:v:15:y:2024:i:1:d:10.1038_s41467-024-49770-4

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/ncomms/

DOI: 10.1038/s41467-024-49770-4

Access Statistics for this article

Nature Communications is currently edited by Nathalie Le Bot, Enda Bergin and Fiona Gillespie

More articles in Nature Communications from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().