Scott River

SEI staff will be developing the Scott River Watershed Allocation Model to help evaluate management responses to the current drought, as well as future droughts, using SEI’s WEAP software.

WEAP is ideally suited to studying the impact of in-stream flow requirements on agriculture, rural communities, aquatic habitat and other beneficial uses in a watershed. The model will be built using inputs from the existing Scott Valley Integrated Hydrology Model (SVIHM) developed by UC Davis, as well as from water rights documentation. SEI will take advantage of its eWRIMS Analyzer tool to extract water right allocation data based on the state’s eWRIMS water rights database.

Application of the model will help inform the drought response by the California State Water Resources Control Board and the California Department of Fish and Wildlife to protect native salmon habitat. The Scott River contains vital habitat for the federally and state-designated threatened coho salmon, containing one of the last self-sustaining wild runs in California with over half of the state’s wild population.