Adaptive Water Resource Planning in the South Saskatchewan River Basin: Use of Scenarios of Hydroclimatic Variability and Extremes

Abstract

The South Saskatchewan River Basin is one of Canada's most threatened watersheds, with water supplies in most subbasins over‐allocated. In 2013, stakeholders representing irrigation districts, the environment, and municipalities collaborated with researchers and consultants to explore opportunities to improve the resiliency of the management of the Oldman and South Saskatchewan River subbasins. Streamflow scenarios for 2025‐2054 were constructed by the novel approach of regressing historical river flows against indices of large‐scale ocean‐atmosphere climate oscillations to derive statistical streamflow models, which were then run using projected climate indices from global climate models. The impacts of some of the most extreme scenarios were simulated using the hydrologic mass‐balance model Operational Analysis and Simulation of Integrated Systems (OASIS). Based on stakeholder observations, the project participants proposed and evaluated potential risk management and adaption strategies, e.g., modifying existing infrastructure, building new infrastructure, changing operations to supplement environmental flows, reducing demand, and sharing supply. The OASIS model was applied interactively at live modeling sessions with stakeholders to explore practical adaptation strategies. Our results, which serve as recommendations for policy makers, showed that forecast‐based rationing together with new expanded storage could dramatically reduce water shortages.

The Influence of the Pacific Decadal Oscillation on Annual Floods in the Rivers of Western Canada

“…We explored creating a similar regional index for the equally economically important South Saskatchewan River Basin (SSRB), a premier agricultural region of Canada, which is heavily dependent on SSRB surface flows for irrigation (Figure A). This region is under such severe demand for surface water supplies that large portions of the SSRB have been closed to further allocation (Rood and Vandersteen, ; Sauchyn et al ., ). It was also severely impacted by the June 2013 southern Alberta floods, heightening interest in more accurate flood frequency curves.…”

Climate change and hydrology at the prairie margin: Historic and prospective future flows of Canada's Red Deer and other Rocky Mountain rivers

“…Following from the patterns of other rivers in the SSRB (Rood et al, ; Sauchyn et al, ; Shepherd et al, ; St. Jacques et al, ), we expected that the historic climate changes would have resulted in the progressive decline in RDR flows, providing our second prediction. This was supported, as there was apparently decline in May, and June flows, and annual flows over the past century.…”

“…Following from the patterns of other rivers in the SSRB (Rood et al, 2005;Sauchyn et al, 2016;Shepherd et al, 2010;St. Jacques et al, 2013), we expected that the historic climate changes would have resulted in the progressive decline in RDR flows, providing our second prediction.…”

Water use in a riparian cottonwood ecosystem: Eddy covariance measurements and scaling along a river corridor

“…Our analyses involved eddy covariance flux measurements and upscaling based on remote sensing estimates of ecosystem leaf area index. The findings will contribute to the understanding of the eco-physiological function of riparian forests, and work towards resolving the largest current information gap for river basin water balance models (Nagler et al, 2005;Doody et al, 2015;Sauchyn et al, 2016).…”

“…Mass balance river basin models are developed and these characterize the water supply as provided by the natural, seasonal river inflows, and then consider the multiple human withdrawals, along with considerations for flow trapping and storage with dams and reservoirs (Sauchyn et al, 2016). A fundamental weakness in these models is the incomplete understanding of water use by the natural ecosystems along the river corridor.…”