Developing a New Operations Plan for the Bow River Basin Using Collaborative Modeling for Decision Support

Abstract

The Bow River Basin is a cornerstone of Alberta's development. In 2010, stakeholders representing interests from agriculture, municipalities, environment, and more formed the Bow River Project Research Consortium to help determine the potential for improving the operations in the basin. At present, upstream reservoirs are operated primarily for hydropower, whereas downstream reservoirs are operated for irrigation. Through Collaborative Modeling for Decision Support the stakeholders were able to develop a new method for operating the system that would dramatically improve environmental performance. The main components of the new operating strategy called for: purchase or setting aside of a small amount of storage volume in the power reservoirs; a set of rules for releases from that storage; an agreement by the major irrigation districts with the largest water licenses to utilize their ability to shift deliveries to and from their large offstream storage reservoirs to allow for increased instream flows, and to allow junior water license holders (mainly municipal and industrial supplies) an uninterrupted water supply; limitations of reservoir fluctuations to improve inreservoir habitat for fisheries; and increased minimum flows throughout the system leading to improved environmental outcomes. Costs of this strategy were minimal, impacts on power revenue were estimated at <US$2 million/yr on average. Compensatory arrangements should be possible.

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

“…At the core of the SSRB Adaptation Project are river basin management models built on the OASIS simulation software platform, which is the product of years of development by HydroLogics, Inc. and its partners (Sheer et al, 2013). Most of the data and many of the operating rules included in the OASIS platform are taken directly or derived from models developed by Alberta Environment and Sustainable Resource Development (AESRD).…”

“…Watershed management and climate adaptation issues are complex and should be appropriately addressed not by any single initiative or sector, but rather by the collective knowledge and experience of communities, watershed groups, environmental organizations, government agencies, scientists, business leaders and industry sectors. The South Saskatchewan River Basin (SSRB) Adaptation to Climate Variability Project (http://albertawater.com/work/researchprojects/ssrb-adaption, accessed December 25, 2014) brought together some of the most knowledgeable and experienced water users and managers in southern Alberta to explore opportunities to enhance the resiliency of the management of the Bow, Oldman, and South Saskatchewan River subbasins (Figure 1), building on previous collaborative work in the region (Sheer et al, 2013). The diverse participants represented the major water users and a majority of the licensed water diversions (Table 1).…”

“…During this process, stakeholders identified and explored robust, integrative water resource management strategies as an adaptive response to the regional impacts of climate variability and change. This paper focuses on work in the Oldman and SSRBs (OSSK Basins); similar methods were previously applied to the Bow River Basin (Alberta WaterSMART andAIEES, 2013, 2014a;Sheer et al, 2013). The purpose of this paper is to (1) describe this stakeholderdriven collaborative SSRB Adaptation Project, which tested water management alternatives with the OASIS (Operational Analysis and Simulation of Integrated Systems) river system model (Sheer et al, 2013), (2) introduce our novel method of producing scenarios of future potential streamflow extremes that challenged the stakeholder working groups, and (3) present a synopsis of recommendations.…”

Water managers’ perspectives on reservoir operations for sustainable irrigation in Alberta

“…However, growing water conflicts with a rising population and increasing economic development, changing supply and demand with climate change, and an increasing emphasis on ecological concerns all threaten water availability in the SSRB (Martz et al [10]). Water resources modeling studies have been conducted to assess the effects of these changes and to minimize future drought impacts [11][12][13]. This research analyzes reservoir managers' perspectives in order to improve the applicability of reservoir management theory in Alberta's most allocated river basin, the SSRB.…”

Featured Collection Introduction: Collaborative Modeling for Decision Support as a Tool to Implement IWRM

“…Sheer et al . () describe a nine‐month effort by a consortium of agricultural, governmental, and environmental interests in Alberta, Canada, to examine the potential for improving system operations. The effort resulted in the unanimous approval of a low‐cost strategy that simultaneously provides for future water supply and dramatically improves environmental performance.…”