432 - Regional Water Availability Changes Resulting from Human Interferences in Hydrology

The impacts of water management operations cascade through a hydrological system in both spatial and temporal domains. Consequently, unforeseen alterations in downstream water availability result from upstream water management. We develop a CONUS (Contiguous United States) scale model as an experimental tool to visualize changes in water availability occurring across the country due to human interferences such as reservoir operations, irrigation, and water supply for domestic and industrial purposes. Reservoir operations are modeled using a recently introduced state-of-the-art data driven model that can realistically capture reservoir operators’ behavior under specific inflow and climate conditions. We include multiple human interference components (reservoirs, irrigation, water supply) into a rainfall-runoff model successively so that the individual contributions towards changes in water availability may be disaggregated. Water availability changes are visualized by mapping several key hydrological signatures such as mean flow, slope of the flow duration curve, 7-day minimum flow, high and flow frequency, high and low flow duration, corresponding to each simulation. Results from the modeling analysis can help improve the understanding of crucial issues such as the propagation of drought through a hydrological system impacted by human water management operations.