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White River National Forest Watershed Vulnerability Assessment, Rocky Mountain Region (R2) LESSONS LEARNED The important thing to remember is that this analysis is an attempt to determine the relative vulnerability of subwatersheds to the anticipated effects of climate change and to give managers a general idea about geographic areas of concern. It is, by nature, a broad-brush approach, and the level of precision and detail of the input parameters need to be commensurate with the precision of the final product. To a significant degree, less is more. As an example, when the scope of the analysis is being determined, there is inevitably a lot of brainstorming about what resource values would be affected by certain aspects of a changing climate. The initial list of resource values can be long. We found that resource issues often had similar sensitivities and expected responses. For example, two resource values that both respond negatively to decreases in streamflow are likely to give very similar vulnerability results. In the mountainous region of the Rocky Mountain west, it may be reasonable to limit resource values to one affected by timing/magnitude of decreasing flows, one affected by timing/magnitude of increasing peak flows, and/or one affected by changes in stream temperatures. Similarly, the list of inherent subwatershed attributes and anthropogenic influences (e.g., geology, precipitation, roads) that affect the vulnerability of a resource value can also be quite long. Although many small factors can cumulatively affect resource value vulnerability, they may not exert much influence in a particular numeric rating scheme. We found that factors with a low influence (assigned weights) had very little influence on the final rating. It would be a simple matter to do a sensitivity analysis of the numeric results to see if some attributes could be dropped early in the process, to streamline the analyses. Finally, as time goes on, much more detailed data on climate change exposure becomes available. Models are constantly being tuned and down-scaled to smaller areas. These data have limits based on their uncertainty, and that uncertainty grows with down-scaling. We structured this analysis so that the actual values for temperature changes, runoff changes, etc. were not critical. Rather, we focused on the magnitude and direction of the predicted change. We were more concerned with the direction of change (increasing or decreasing) and whether that change was a big number or small number relative to the annual variability that we see now. Not getting lost in the myriad of details of the Variable Infiltration Capacity model results was easily justified by keeping the original goal of the process in mind. REFERENCES Christensen, N. and D.P. Lettenmaier. 2006. A multimodel ensemble approach to assessment of climate change impacts on the hydrology and water resources of the Colorado River basin. Hydrology and Earth System Sciences Discussion, 3:1-44. Merritt, D.M. and N.L. Poff. 2010. Shifting dominance of riparian Populus and Tamarix along gradients of flow alteration in western North American rivers. Ecological Applications, 20(1): 135-152. Painter, T.H., J.S. Deems, J. Belnap, A.F. Hamlet, C.C. Landry and B. Udall. 2010. Response of Colorado River runoff to dust radiative forcing in snow. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America. 6 pp. Full report available at http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2010/09/14/0913139107.full.pdf+html 128 Assessing the Vulnerability of Watersheds to Climate Change
White River National Forest Watershed Vulnerability Assessment, Rocky Mountain Region (R2) Ray, R.J, J.J Barsugli, and K.B. Averyt. 2008. Climate change in Colorado: a synthesis to support water resources management and adaptation. A report by the Western Water Assessment for the Colorado Water Conservation Board. 52 pp. Full report available at http://wwa.colorado.edu/CO_Climate_Report/index.html Staley, D.M., D.J. Cooper, and E. Wohl, 2008. White River National Forest – Aquatic and Riparian and Wetland Assessment. Draft Report, USDA Forest Service, Rocky Mountain Region. Denver, CO. 129 Assessing the Vulnerability of Watersheds to Climate Change
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AUTHORS AND CONTRIBUTORS Authors* M
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ASSESSSING THE VULNERABILITY OF WAT
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staff; the task group included repr
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Figure 2. Conceptual model for asse
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Figure 3. Density of springs and sm
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Using Historic Data One finding con
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NF (Region 8) relied on information
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level of uncertainty. Though there
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climate (Casola et al. 2005). Only
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sensitivity. Most were derived from
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The sensitivity evaluation typicall
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in exposure. The result of combinin
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highest priority for management act
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to information affected the assessm
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with and rely on in many resource d
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Pilot National Forest Reports Conte
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Assessment of Watershed Vulnerabili
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Gallatin National Forest Watershed
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Helena National Forest Watershed Vu
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Grand Mesa, Uncompahgre and Gunniso
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Sawtooth National Forest Watershed
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Shasta Trinity National Forest Wate
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Umatilla National Forest Watershed
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Ouachita National Forest Watershed
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Chequamegon-‐Nicolet National F
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Chugach National Forest Watershed V
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