Out of the Box Thinking for the Colorado River System
Behind the management and policies of the Colorado River System is a computer model…The Colorado River Simulation System (CRSS) is a continuously evolving model that has been revised and modified over a 40-year period. We talk with Dr. Kevin Wheeler who is an important interpreter and translator of the model for stakeholders. We discuss how using the model to explore alternative management strategies for the Colorado River will benefit water supply users and river ecosystems and empower more stakeholders to participate in planning the future of the river system.
Meet the Scientist: Kevin Wheeler
Kevin Wheeler PhD, P.E. is an Oxford Martin Fellow at the Environmental Change Institute, of the University of Oxford and Principal of Water Balance Consulting
His research and experience focus upon the shared management of transboundary watercourses, emphasizing multi-stakeholder negotiations and cooperative planning to manage environmental risks through multi-objective infrastructure. His methods involve collaborative risk-based modelling, particularly when facing deep uncertainties of future climate changes and growing pressures on natural resources. Since 2000, Dr. Wheeler has worked on multiple issues surrounding the Colorado River for a variety of governmental, non-governmental and private stakeholders. Most notably he contributed substantively to Interim Surplus and Shortage agreements between the seven Basin States and to the successful negotiations between the USA and Mexico in 2012 on jointly managing droughts and shortages.
Dr. Wheeler has extended this approach to the Nile River Basin by exploring cooperative development pathways among the co-riparian countries of Egypt, Sudan and Ethiopia. Alongside regional academic and governmental partners, he examines alternative cooperative management strategies for new and existing infrastructure to secure water supplies, meet growing energy demands, and support environmental needs.
Dr. Wheeler is an associate editor for the journal Water International, an advisor for the Future of the Colorado River Project, and a former Research Fellow in Sustainability Science at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government.
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Interview Transcript
The modeling of the Colorado River System. This modeling is used to predict future flow scenarios, and can be used to influence river management and policies.
This week, we speak with Dr. Kevin Wheeler, an Oxford Martin Fellow at the Environmental Change Institute at the University of Oxford and the Principal of Water Balance Consulting, who has spent decades developing and communicating this model. We discuss the model’s functioning, its uses, and how it impacts the way water is managed in the West.
Science Moab: What is the Colorado River model?
Wheeler: The Colorado River Simulation System, or CRSS, is a modeling tool that was developed by the Bureau of Reclamation back in the 1970s and early 80s to help simulate how Lake Mead and Lake Powell would operate under different circumstances. In the 1990s, it became much more accessible to other stakeholders, who can now test different ideas and explore policies on how the river can be operated.
One factor that the model takes into account is the natural hydrology of the river based on historical data. Two other major inputs are supply and demand of water in the river. The other major input is how the river system is actually managed and operated.
Science Moab: How close has the simulation come to the actual modern river system?
Wheeler: When we run CRSS, we run a lot of different potential futures. When you look at the outputs of the CRSS model, you don’t just get a single projection; you get a cone of possibilities that go off into the future. One of the things we’re really seeing now is that we’re tending toward that low side of that cone. Previously, we treated that cone as roughly equally probable. Now, we’re seeing much drier scenarios, and we have to rethink how we resample the past as we use the model into the future.
Science Moab: How do you disseminate all this data?
Wheeler: It’s something I’ve focused on for pretty much my whole water career: how do you share these complex modeling outputs with stakeholders? It’s complicated because you have multiple dimensions, you have many different possible futures. So what you have to do is figure out ways to present that, often graphically, for people to understand. It’s hard, it’s messy, but it’s critical to be able to make use of those complex tools.
If we have the courage to use these tools in an exploratory way, and take their output seriously, and let the science inform the policy, or minimize the politics driving the science, these tools are incredibly powerful. But they also have to be trusted. A very important part of it is making sure that people have the ability to access it, to understand it, to be able to use it.
Science Moab: So, has the model been used by decision-makers for water management and policy?
Wheeler: The CRSS has really been a cornerstone of the decision-making process for the Colorado River, at least since I’ve been involved. The model would be continuously used by all the major stakeholders. Someone proposes an idea that everyone else can test, by putting it in their model and trying things.
Science Moab: What kinds of ideas have you tested?
Wheeler: The most significant one was: how could you operate the system much more cohesively if you combined Lake Powell and Lake Mead? Management paradigms right now kind of treat one reservoir as the property of the upper basin, and the lower reservoir as the property of the lower basin. But really, they’re just two large buckets connected by the Grand Canyon.
Science Moab: What additions or adaptations to the model do you foresee in the next few years?
Wheeler: We have to take into account the notion that the past is no longer going to represent the future. We’re entering an era of deep uncertainty. The modeling needs to reflect that; we need to look at a lot more potential futures and not assume an underlying statistical distribution.
Maybe the last five or 10 years are going to be much more representative of the future than the flows back in the 1920s, which we know were incredibly wet. We shouldn’t be thinking of those anymore as relevant to the future.
Science Moab is a nonprofit dedicated to engaging community members and visitors with the science happening in Southeast Utah and the Colorado Plateau. To learn more and listen to the rest of Kevin Wheeler’s interview, visit www.sciencemoab.org/radio. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
