With the updated structural changes, the future portion of the model is able to incorporate scenario inputs. The three preliminary inputs that have been developed are:

1. Climate Change
2. Population Growth
3. Efficiency

Climate change is the main driver of the model moving forward. It incorporates four separate climate emission scenarios based on three Global Circulation Model (GCM) runs. This scenario provides the precipitation, surface water flows, and temperature for the future portion of the model. Population growth can be altered from the predicted population change to determine the effects of public and domestic water use. The efficiency metrics allow for a change in either agricultural efficiency or human use efficiency again to examine the impacts of water use on the overall water budget at different spatial resolutions. These scenarios allow a user to create a specific future scenario based on a combination of parameters that are of interest.

The preliminary future scenario tool was presented to the Interstate Stream Commission on March 17, 2017 to showcase how the NMDSWB can be used as a tool for water planners, users, and scientists in New Mexico. The NMDSWB is still in development, continuing to improve on these current scenarios, integrating other research from the SWA, and incorporating new scenarios. The online web model that runs the historic water budget model is being enhanced to include the new future NMDSWB model and corresponding scenarios.

Project collaborators include Jesse Roach (PE, PhD) and Ken Peterson (MS), Tetra Tech Inc.; Bruce Thomson (PhD), UNM; Vince Tidwell (PhD), Sandia National Laboratories, and Joshua Randall (MS), NM WRRI, and Austin Hanson (BS), NM WRRI.

Unbeknownst to the engineers at the time, the treatment process to destroy the fuel residues created trace amounts of NDMA in the water, Brewer said. “In the 1980s, NASA became aware of the NDMA and other organic pollutants in the water underneath WSTF,” Brewer said. “Since then, they have been pumping up the water, treating it and re-injecting it underground.”

Brewer said the treatment process will likely need to be continued over the next century with thousands of gallons per day, requiring much electricity and costing a great deal. “The purpose of this project is to see if we can make activated carbons out of pecan shells that can adsorb the NDMA out of the water as effectively but for a lower cost,” Brewer said.

Brewer said the project started two years ago and is currently in the analytical method development stage—measuring NDMA concentrations in water at the part per trillion level. “After that, the remaining time of the three-year project will be spent designing the adsorption water treatment system using the pecan shell activated carbons,” Brewer said.

The NSF grant is for Brewer to research a water desalination system that uses heat from burning bio-waste, such as pecan shells, pecan orchard prunings, cotton gin trash and yard waste. The system design is intended to reduce the effects of scaling, a common problem when desalinating water, especially in this region, Brewer said.

In addition to these two projects, Brewer has also been the principal investigator for five other projects, funded by the Sun Grant Program South Central Region, the NMSU-Bureau of Reclamation Cooperative Agreement, the Western Excelsior Corporation, NASA and the USDA. These five projects have received more than $574,000 in funding.

“On every project, I have worked with researchers from multiple colleges, multiple institutions, and industry,” Brewer said. “As a land-grant institution, NMSU is well-suited for this kind of research as it is easy to pull together the needed expertise from basic science, applied agricultural science, engineering and extension. I am very grateful for the wonderful collaborators I have found here.”

The NM Office of the State Engineer along with federal agency U.S. Geological Survey, and programs such as the Bosque Ecosystem Monitoring Program and the Canadian River Riparian Restoration Project participated. Several posters were presented by the private sector including Hawley Geomatters, NV5 Inc, Swanson Geoscience, and Tetra Tech, Inc.

Sandia National Laboratories has been very generous in its financial support of the poster session over many years and NM WRRI is grateful for their continued sponsorship.

Click here to view poster abstracts of research presented at the NM WRRI annual water conference.

The next tour stop took participants across the valley to the west side of the Gila valley to view another proposed off-stream storage site at Winn Canyon. Continuing south, the group made its way to the existing diversion that supplies Bill Evans Lake where the tour ended. Much appreciation to Anthony Gutierrez for hosting the tour.

Attorney Jeffrey Wechsler opened the conference with his talk, Where does all the water go in New Mexico? Jeff’s overview of New Mexico’s water setting was divided into the topic areas of: Where does the water come from? How is water used in New Mexico? Where does the water go? Presented was a review of compacts, adjudications, water development, and current litigation. His presentation set the tone for the conference topics and presenters addressing policy direction and opportunities; vegetation management and water yield; preserving agriculture against new demands; water resiliency; monitoring surface, groundwater, and vegetation relationships; groundwater recharge; and managing drought risks through water banks. Proceedings of the conference will be available and posted on the NM WRRI website.

The 2016 Albert E. Utton Memorial Water Lecture by former Senator Jeff Bingaman was well received. His talk on Rethinking Western Water Management discussed three questions: What are our water policy objectives in the West? How well are our current laws and policies designed to achieve those objectives? How can we do better? Senator Bingaman also listed five objectives to pursue: ensure an adequate supply of water for current and future needs; ensure that our uses of water are sustainable; protect valid existing water rights; ensure our uses of water are consistent with protecting the environment; and facilitate the use of water for highest value purposes. The Senator said that if he identified the right objectives, he felt we can do a better job of aligning our laws, policies, and practices to achieve them. He provided six examples of alternative ways to administer and manage water to show how it can be done.

Planning for next year’s water conference will begin soon and is expected to include another information filled program with current topics, research, and inspiring discussion to formulate new horizons for the water resources citizenry to aim toward.

Doing Hydrology Backwards in New Mexico to Estimate a Statewide Water Budget

Published Date:

March 2016

Authors:

Cameron Herrington and Ricardo González-Pinzón

Abstract:

Accurate statewide water budgets are dependent on the quality, quantity and availability of measured information in catchments. Given typical data acquisition constraints, water budgets rely on the measurement of a limited number of water fluxes (e.g., precipitation and streamflow) and on modeling tools that allow for estimation and scaling of other relevant, unmeasured fluxes. We seek to use a parsimonious modeling technique (Doing Hydrology Backward (DHB) from Kirchner (2009)) that utilizes discharge data alone to estimate catchment-averaged precipitation and evapotranspiration rates in New Mexico. Since the United States Geological Survey (USGS) now maintains a network of 23,000 stream gages nationally, with approximately 130 sites across the major catchments of New Mexico, estimating precipitation and evapotranspiration rates from streamflow data has enormous potential to provide catchment-scale information on processes that are not extensively monitored, but are key in estimating statewide water budgets. Ideally, the DHB method could take advantage of the highly scrutinized discharge datasets available from the USGS through the employment of a simple discharge-storage model to estimate catchment fluxes thus minimizing common modeling errors and bias caused by over-parameterization. We developed a MATLAB code capable of estimating catchment-average precipitation and evapotranspiration rates. We successfully validated the code using the original data presented by Kirchner (2009). Despite providing accurate estimates of hydrologic processes in humid catchments, the standard DHB model did not accurately represent precipitation rates observed in three dryland basins in New Mexico. As it is, the DHB code that we developed in MATLAB will be useful in humid catchments. However, it requires the addition and validation of snowmelt terms before it can be used in our characteristic New Mexico dryland basins.

Download:

Attachment
tr371.pdf

Keywords:

Discharge, evapotranspiration, precipitation, water budget, dryland, climate change, equifinality, computer modeling, catchment, storage