Announcements
Announcements
A water rights complaint filed in the 1990s initiated a California dispute over balancing the water rights of humans and critical aquatic species in the densely populated Silicon Valley region.
SEI researchers used a suite of tools to give a novel and holistic overview of a local water district and help authorities balance competing demands as water resources grow increasingly limited. This related journal article was published by PLOS Water.
Photo: Charles O’Rear / Getty Images
Water managers must often balance the needs of both aquatic habitat and human water supply. However, they frequently only have the tools to manage human water delivery alone. Existing modelling tools for habitat contain gaps in providing detailed biological estimates at a watershed scale and in simulating water supply operations and habitat suitability at the same time.
A new modelling platform and calculation framework, Aquatic Habitat Assessment, was applied in a case study to quantify habitat suitability and fish passage at a watershed scale for local species of Chinook salmon and steelhead trout. Aquatic Habitat Assessment was coupled with a suite of tools, including HEC-RAS used for hydraulics, WEAP for water allocations, and Tableau for visualization. The tools ensemble was used to simulate the operations of a water utility system near San Francisco Bay in California to evaluate the effects of reservoir reoperations on both human water supply and aquatic habitat.
The models generated by SEI ultimately informed local pilot operations and the method is now being applied to study aquatic species in the Magdalena River, Colombia and the Songkhram River, Thailand.
Feature / Water managers must balance the needs of aquatic habitat and human supply. SEI Scientist Doug Chalmers explains a new approach to help resolve that tension.
Project / SEI adapted WEAP to assess the needs of chinook salmon and steelhead trout in the Santa Clara Valley Water District.
Project / SEI researchers work throughout California to model complex water systems and explore sustainable management options.
Tool / The Water Evaluation and Planning tool (WEAP) provides a comprehensive, flexible and user-friendly framework for policy analysis in water resources planning.
SEI brief / Policy-makers can now model the effect of management options on the availability of habitat and the viability of aquatic species.
Feature / SEI's flagship water modelling tool helped a San Jose-area water district identify an opportunity to help protected steelhead in the wake of dam construction.
Feature / SEI experts break down complex topics, from water management in California to how fires affect Bolivia's water balance, in this podcast series.
Design and development by Soapbox.
