Investigating the Sensitivity of U.S. Streamflow and Water Quality to Climate Change: U.S. EPA Global Change Research Program’s 20 Watersheds Project

Johnson, Thomas E.; Butcher, Jonathan B.; Parker, Andrew; Weaver, C. P.

doi:10.1061/(asce)wr.1943-5452.0000175

Cited by 52 publications

(32 citation statements)

References 32 publications

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“…The A2 IPCC scenario was selected in order to highlight the most austere impacts of CO 2 emissions on climatic patterns by mid-century and because of computational limitations associated with running SWAT for additional scenarios. An approach similar to that used by Johnson et al (2012) to analyze the outputs from many GCM runs for a particular scenario rather than to use fewer GCMs from many scenarios. Finally, I acknowledge that the SCW does not overlap many 1/8 th degree grid cells, which can potentially limit the breadth of the GCM outputs utilized.…”

Section: 31: Data and Modelmentioning

confidence: 99%

Simulating the hydrologic response of a semiarid watershed to switchgrass cultivation

2013

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The conversion of land from existing uses to biofuel cultivation is expected to increase given concerns about the sustainability of fossil fuel supplies. Nonetheless, research into the environmental impacts of biofuel crops, primarily the hydrological impacts of their cultivation, is in its infancy. To investigate such issues, the response of a 1,649 km2 semiarid basin to the incremental substitution of the widely discussed biofuel candidate switchgrass (Panicum virgatum L.) for native land uses was modeled using the Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT). Median discharges decreased by 5.6–20.6% during the spring and by 6.4–31.2% during the summer, depending on the quantity of acreage converted. These were driven by an increased spring and summer evapotranspiration of 3.4–32.0% and 1.5–18.9%, respectively, depending on the quantity of switchgrass biomass produced. The substitution of switchgrass also resulted in larger quantities of water stress days than in baseline scenarios. The authors encourage the exploration of alternative biofuel crops in semiarid areas to mitigate such negative impacts.

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Section: 31: Data and Modelmentioning

confidence: 99%

Simulating the hydrologic response of a semiarid watershed to switchgrass cultivation

2013

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“…Meteorological time series used here are a subset of those we developed for a U.S. EPA study of potential climate impacts on hydrology and water quality in large U.S. watersheds (Johnson et al 2012; U.S. EPA 2013). To represent different baseline climate conditions we selected a set of nine first-order weather stations located in different hydroclimatic regions ranging from humid subtropical Tampa, FL (mean temperature 22.3°C) to cold, high-elevation Sugarloaf Reservoir, CO (mean temperature 4.6°C; see Fig.…”

Section: Climate Forcingmentioning

confidence: 99%

Sensitivity of lake thermal and mixing dynamics to climate change

et al. 2015

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Warming-induced changes in lake thermal and mixing regimes present risks to water quality and ecosystem services provided by U.S. lakes and reservoirs. Modulation of responses by different physical and hydroclimatic settings are not well understood. We explore the potential effects of climate change on 27 lake "archetypes" representative of a range of lakes and reservoirs occurring throughout the U.S. Archetypes are based on different combinations of depth, surface area, and water clarity. LISSS, a one-dimensional dynamic thermal simulation model, is applied to assess lake response to multiple mid-21st century change scenarios applied to nine baseline climate series from different hydroclimatic regions of the U.S. Results show surface water temperature increases of about 77 % of increase in average air temperature change. Bottom temperature changes are less (around 30 %) for deep lakes and in regions that maintain mid-winter air temperatures below freezing. Significant decreases in length of ice cover are projected, and the extent and strength of stratification will increase throughout the U.S., with systematic differences associated with depth, surface area, and clarity. These projected responses suggest a range of future challenges that lake managers are likely to face. Changes in thermal and mixing dynamics suggest increased risk of summer Climatic Change (2015) 129:295-305

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“…However, the mismatch of scale between AOGCMs and impacts models (e.g., watershed modeling for water quality and quantity (Johnson et al 2012)) is only one motivation for downscaling. The other major motivation for applying regionalization techniques is the need to resolve important processes at scales finer than those represented in AOGCMs that are important for simulating regional climate.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Downscaling of Climate Information

Mearns¹,

Bukovsky²,

Pryor³

et al. 2014

Regional Climate Studies

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The previous chapter summarized the application of global models to simulate climate. The horizontal resolution of these models-generally 1-3 degrees-while adequate for resolving sub-continental North American climate features, is insufficient for simulating the more detailed properties of regional climate. To achieve higher resolution, a variety of so-called downscaling methods have been developed. This chapter reviews these methods and the results of applying them to the regional climate change problem. BackgroundAwareness of the potential inadequacy of the spatial scale of coupled atmosphereocean general circulation models (AOGCMs), for a variety of purposes, has been with us for a long time. When model projections were first used to determine the impacts of future climate on important resources such as crop yields and water resources (e.g., Liverman et al. 1986;Rosenzweig 1985;White 1985) the so-called mismatch of scale issue gained prominence.'Most GCMs neither incorporate nor provide information on scales smaller than a few 100 km. The effective size or scale of the ecosystem on which climatic impacts actually occur is usually much smaller than this. We are therefore faced

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Investigating the Sensitivity of U.S. Streamflow and Water Quality to Climate Change: U.S. EPA Global Change Research Program’s 20 Watersheds Project

Cited by 52 publications

References 32 publications

Simulating the hydrologic response of a semiarid watershed to switchgrass cultivation

Simulating the hydrologic response of a semiarid watershed to switchgrass cultivation

Sensitivity of lake thermal and mixing dynamics to climate change

Downscaling of Climate Information

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