Welcome to WaRP, NHA’s new Waterpower Research Portal.

PNNL is developing an enhanced real-time and autonomous water quality monitoring system to advance water quality measurement technologies for challenging locations, resulting in more informed management decisions regarding new and existing hydroelectric facilities that minimize or avoid environmental impacts and maximize operational efficiency.

Can Reclamation develop a set of tools and techniques that will allow researchers to gain a better understanding of benthic turbidity layers, their composition, what causes them, and why in some areas have they only recently been observed? If this is potentially becoming a bigger problem, and if we can describe the cause, can we identify other reservoirs that are likely susceptible to this same phenomenon over time, and through mechanistic and modelling approaches provide solutions for Clark Canyon and other reservoirs?

Do dynamically downscaled, higher-resolution regional climate model simulations from the North American Coordinated Regional Climate Downscaling Experiment (NA-CORDEX) offer clear, stakeholder-relevant benefit to the understanding of current causes and future projections of precipitation amount, type, and distribution for the Western United States? The proposed research would reduce uncertainty in regional climate projections, particularly with regard to downscaling (7.02). In short, the proposed research offers insight into issue after issue which has been identified as a "gap" impeding effective utilization of temperature and precipitation projections by water resource managers.

This scoping proposal seeks to develop a detailed collaborative experiment to advance our understanding of the impacts of extreme hydro-climate events on water management of Reclamation's reservoirs. A particular focus will be the roles of climate variability versus long-term trends in producing extreme events. We plan to leverage the joint expertise/interests at the University of Colorado at Boulder (CU), the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation (Reclamation), and possibly elsewhere, to investigate atmospheric/climate drivers of hydrologic and land surface processes during drought periods and/or wet (i.e. pluvial) periods to understand the likelihood of acute or prolonged extremes.

This study will identify a new treatment for harmful algal blooms that could potentially lead to Reclamation administered HAB treatments, as well as help develop mitigation techniques that could be commercialized with potential future private industry partners. Recent large scale harmful algal bloom (HAB) events in lakes and large river systems emphasize the need for more research on freshwater HAB to improve water quality and protect public health.

Can deployment of the Collison Floating Evaporation Pan (CFEP) to monitor evaporation loss rates from Reclamation reservoirs improve our understanding of the available water supplies in Reclamation projects? Lake Powell evaporates around 500,000 acre-feet of water annually, based on research conducted in the early 1980's using a mass-transfer analyses and comparisons to Class A evaporation plans. The results of these older studies were used to establish coefficients that are still in use today and are in need of validation and/or refinement. This study aims to provide Reclamation a tool that can be used to refine pan coefficients and/or an alternative method for estimating reservoir evaporation rates.

Reclamation Regions, Technical Service Center, and Research and Development Office have partnered with the Desert Research Institute to develop and implement a methodology for remotely sensing daily reservoir evaporation. This product will have the ability to provide real-time, daily reservoir evaporation estimates for most, if not all Reclamation facilities. High priority reservoirs for this effort include Lake Mead, Lake Powell, Lahontan Reservoir, Stampede Reservoir, Clear Lake, Elephant Butte, and American Falls Reservoir.

How does short term weather variability influence losses and gains on the lower Colorado River? Can statistical post-processing and blending of different weather forecast models improve the 1-5 day precipitation forecast, especially for high impact events, such as convective situations during summer months? Does improved weather forecast skill at the grid cell level translate into improvement of loss/gain forecasting skill on the 1-5 day time scale for the Lower Colorado?

This study will evaluate the feasibility of using a new technology for characterizing the type and distribution of sediments deposited in reservoirs. Chirp sonar transmits high-powered acoustic pulses over a broad range of frequencies, making portable units capable of penetrating several meters into sediments for remote characterization of deposits. This project will further evaluate the capabilities and limitations of the technology in a reservoir setting to understand under what reservoir and sediment conditions is chirp technology appropriate for studying the depositional profile.