CE-QUAL-W2 models for select U.S. Army Corps of Engineers reservoirs in the Willamette Valley Project and an inter-reservoir reach of the Middle Fork Willamette River, northwestern Oregon, 2011, 2015, and 2016

The Willamette Valley Project (WVP) is a system of revetments, fish hatcheries, and 13 dams in the Willamette Basin of northwestern Oregon that is operated by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to provide flood risk management, irrigation, power generation, water quality improvement, and recreational opportunities, among other authorized purposes. By reducing available habitat and altering the natural hydrologic and thermal regimes in the Willamette Basin, the WVP has negatively influenced native populations of anadromous fish, including spring-run Chinook salmon (Oncorhynchus tshawytscha) and winter-run steelhead (O. mykiss), which were designated as threatened under the Endangered Species Act of 1973 (Public Law 93–205, 87 Stat. 884, as amended) in 1999. CE-QUAL-W2, a two-dimensional, hydrodynamic water quality model, has been used to simulate and analyze the temperature of water released from key Willamette Valley Project dams. and the effect on river reaches downstream that might result from a variety of theoretical management scenarios. This data release includes input, output, and calibration files for CE-QUAL-W2 models of Hills Creek Lake and Hills Creek Dam, the Middle Fork Willamette River between Hills Creek Dam and Lookout Point Lake, Lookout Point Lake and Lookout Point Dam, Dexter Lake and Dexter Dam, Cougar Reservoir and Cougar Dam, Green Peter Lake and Green Peter Dam, Foster Lake and Foster Dam, Detroit Lake and Detroit Dam, and Big Cliff Lake and Big Cliff Dam. The models, built by other researchers in the early to-mid-2000s to simulate a disparate range of time periods, were upgraded to CE-QUAL-W2 version 4.2 with additional USGS modifications. Models are set up to run from January through December of 2011, 2015, and 2016 except where truncated for the purposes of model stability. CE-QUAL-W2 models in this data release can be combined with CE-QUAL-W2 river models of the Fall Creek and the Coast Fork Willamette, Middle Fork Willamette, Row, South Fork McKenzie, McKenzie, South Santiam, North Santiam, Santiam, and Willamette Rivers, documented in OFR 2022-1017 (see External Sources), to run model scenarios for an “integrated, basin-wide” model of the Willamette Valley Project.