Robust Operations for Klamath River Basin
Funding Agency
Bureau of Reclamation Technical Services Center
Research Team
- Mitchell Frischmeyer, MS student
- Edie Zagona, principal investigator
- David Neumann, senior PRA and technical modeling lead
Due to changing hydrologic conditions and changing demands and environmental regulations, river basins in the Western U.S. and elsewhere need to revise their operating policies and implement new types of policies that are robust to uncertain future changing conditions. Further, water managers need decision support tools for planning and operating the systems and for communicating operations and policies to stakeholders.
CADSWES is collaborating with the Bureau of Reclamation Technical Services Center (BOR-TSC) to assist the Klamath Basin Area Office (KBAO) with analysis and tools for flexible reservoir operations in the context of changing hydrologic conditions (droughts and floods), upcoming changes in infrastructure (removal of three hydropower plants), and new management objectives and policies based on the 2018 Biological Assessment for operations of the Klamath Project on three endangered fish species. The project will result in tools and processes for KBAO for operations and planning of the reservoirs in the basin and for communication of policies and operational decisions to stakeholders and regulating agencies. Through this project, CADSWES with Reclamation seeks to address the exceptional challenges to the KBAO in developing new flexible approaches to future operations in the face of significant changes and to develop flexible and robust operational paradigms that could also be used in other basins.
The project began in August 2018 and was completed by September 30, 2019.