URGWOM: Upper Rio Grande Water Operations Model
The Upper Rio Grande (URG) River Basin extends from the headwaters in Colorado to the USGS streamflow gage Rio Grande near Fort Quitman, Texas, and includes both native water and transmountain water from the Colorado River Basin. Because of surface-water allotment issues, input from various sources of water (native and transmountain), numerous reservoirs, and complex stream-aquifer relations, operating and planning water operations in the URG Basin are difficult.
Both Federal and local agencies need a tool to simulate the complex water operations in daily time steps for real-time operations and in monthly time steps for planning.
Approach:
- Serve as the interagency Technical Team Lead
- Support further operations model development, including adding reaches above Cochiti, coupling watershed models on a daily scale, improving evapotranspiration approaches, and other technical needs as they arise
- Assist development of water-quality (salinity) modeling.
Objectives:
Gain an understanding of surface-water flow within
the URG Basin through development of a basin-wide, interagency water-operations model, which will be used to:
- Account for deliveries, use, and routing of the different water sources
- Forecast effects of hypothetical water-operation scenarios.
The Upper Rio Grande (URG) River Basin extends from the headwaters in Colorado to the USGS streamflow gage Rio Grande near Fort Quitman, Texas, and includes both native water and transmountain water from the Colorado River Basin. Because of surface-water allotment issues, input from various sources of water (native and transmountain), numerous reservoirs, and complex stream-aquifer relations, operating and planning water operations in the URG Basin are difficult.
Both Federal and local agencies need a tool to simulate the complex water operations in daily time steps for real-time operations and in monthly time steps for planning.
Approach:
- Serve as the interagency Technical Team Lead
- Support further operations model development, including adding reaches above Cochiti, coupling watershed models on a daily scale, improving evapotranspiration approaches, and other technical needs as they arise
- Assist development of water-quality (salinity) modeling.
Objectives:
Gain an understanding of surface-water flow within
the URG Basin through development of a basin-wide, interagency water-operations model, which will be used to:
- Account for deliveries, use, and routing of the different water sources
- Forecast effects of hypothetical water-operation scenarios.