Climate-driven disturbances in the San Juan River sub-basin of the Colorado River

Bennett, Katrina E.; Bohn, Theodore J.; Solander, Kurt; McDowell, Nathan G.; Xu, Chonggang; Vivoni, Enrique; Middleton, Richard S.

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-22-709-2018

Articles | Volume 22, issue 1

https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-22-709-2018

© Author(s) 2018. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.

Special issue:

Observations and modeling of land surface water and energy...

https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-22-709-2018

© Author(s) 2018. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.

Articles | Volume 22, issue 1

Research article

|

26 Jan 2018

Research article |

| 26 Jan 2018

Climate-driven disturbances in the San Juan River sub-basin of the Colorado River

Katrina E. Bennett, Theodore J. Bohn, Kurt Solander, Nathan G. McDowell, Chonggang Xu, Enrique Vivoni, and Richard S. Middleton

Data sets

Multivariate Adaptive Constructed Analogs (MACA) dataset J. Abatzoglou https://climate.northwestknowledge.net/MACA/

The Variable Infiltration Capacity Model Computational Hydrology Group, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of Washington https://github.com/UW-Hydro/VIC

Daily gridded Hhdrometeorological data set for Mexico, the conterminous U.S., and southern Canada B. Livneh ftp://gdo-dcp.ucllnl.org/pub/dcp/archive/OBS/livneh2014.1_16deg/

Colorado River Basin Natural Flow, 1906--2015 U.S. Bureau of Reclamation https://www.usbr.gov/lc/region/g4000/NaturalFlow/current.html

Short summary

We applied the Variable Infiltration Capacity hydrologic model to examine scenarios of change under climate and landscape disturbances in the San Juan River basin, a major sub-watershed of the Colorado River basin. Climate change coupled with landscape disturbance leads to reduced streamflow in the San Juan River basin. Disturbances are expected to be widespread in this region. Therefore, accounting for these changes within the context of climate change is imperative for water resource planning.