Algae are Good

April 9, 2021

The algae have a marketing problem. While the scientific community may appreciate the important roles algae play as the base of the food chain in aquatic ecosystems, their contributions to global CO2-O2 cycling and practical applications are less understood. The messages the general public receives about algae are in the...

Optimization and Machine Learning to Improve Water Resources Sustainability

April 9, 2021

Integrated water resources planning is an example of a large-scale, long-term infrastructure planning problem that is impacted by climate change and multiple potential design alternatives and goals. Traditionally, simulation models were used to evaluate a small number of alternatives in a benefit-cost analysis. Emerging studies of deep uncertainty, conditions where...

The role of science in municipal water supply operations and management

April 9, 2021

The City of Boulder is responsible for supplying reliable, high-quality treated water to 120,000 customers. The reliability and quality of the water supply result from short-term operational decisions, long-term planning efforts and policy development that are informed by a variety of factors including scientific research, data, hands-on experience, economic considerations...

Placing Hydrological Change in Context in the Yukon River Watershed: Community-Based Monitoring & Knowledge Co-Production

April 9, 2021

Profound changes in hydrology are occurring in Arctic and sub-Arctic regions. The Yukon River Watershed, covering 330,000 square miles in Alaska and western Canada, is no exception. Since 2006 the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) and the Yukon River Inter-Tribal Watershed Council (YRITWC) have collaboratively managed the Indigenous Observation Network (ION)...

Urbanization and climate trends in streamflow

April 9, 2021

Urban development leads to changes in stormflow and baseflow, although the magnitude of these changes varies by city. This presentation will examine trends in streamflow with urbanization at the national scale (across the United States) and in Denver, Colorado. Across the U.S., we will examine trends in the flow duration...

Snow Hydrology 2.0: A new generation of methods for observing and modeling the changing mountain snowpack

April 9, 2021

Over a billion people globally depend on snowmelt runoff to meet water demands, predominantly from snow that accumulates annually in mid-latitude mountains. Decades of observations show that this natural reservoir is at risk; snow water equivalent and snow extent are declining; even as growing populations rely more on snow water...

Patterns and Processes of Change Where Rivers Meet Oceans

April 9, 2021

Poised at the interface of rivers, ocean, atmosphere and dense human settlement, estuaries are driven by a large array of natural and anthropogenic forces. Long-term study of San Francisco Bay illustrates responses to five common agents of change where land and sea meet: water consumption and diversion, human modification of...

A Paleolimnological Assessment of Possum Kingdom Lake

April 8, 2021

Reservoirs are typically considered too young and dynamic to validate paleolimnological analysis (Filstrup et al. 2010). Using biological and mineralogical proxies, three shifts were identified in the history of Possum Kingdom Lake, successfully demonstrating the application of paleolimnology in reservoirs. The trends documented may provide insight into the factors driving...

Dissolved Organic Carbon Chemostasis in Antarctic Polar Desert Streams

April 8, 2021

In the McMurdo Dry Valleys [MDV], Antarctica, little is known about concentration-discharge ( C-q ) relationships for biological solutes such as DOC. Because MDV streams are low in organic carbon and experience large diel fluctuations in discharge ( q ), we expected that the MDV DOC- q relationship would be...

Buried lakes detected across the Greenland Ice Sheet

April 8, 2021

The Greenland Ice Sheet (GrIS) rapid mass loss is primarily driven by an increase in meltwater runoff, which highlights the importance of understanding the formation, evolution and impact of meltwater features on the ice sheet. Buried lakes are meltwater features that contain liquid water and exist under layers of snow,...

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