Case Study Application Of The BASINs Climate Assessment Tool, And Development Of A Framework For Assessing Climate Change Impacts On Water Quality In The Chesapeake Bay Watershed

Much of the U.S. is likely to experience warming temperatures and changes in precipitation amount and/or intensity during the next century. Water resources are highly vulnerable to these changes, with possible effects including increased occurrence of floods and droughts, and water quality degradation. The EPA Global Change Research Program (GCRP) recently supported the development of a Climate Assessment Tool (CAT) for the Office of Water's BASINS water quality modeling system. The BASINS CAT provides users with the ability to modify historical climate, generate synthetic weather time series, and conduct systematic sensitvity analysese of specific hydrologic and water quality end-points to changes in climate using the BASINS models (e.g. HSPF). EPA's Chesapeake Bay Program, in partnership with other government agencies, are working to restore water quality and living resources in the Chesapeake Bay Watershed. The potential impacts of climate change on the Bay Watershed are not well understood, but are likely to be significant.

Impact/Purpose

This project will demonstrate the use and capabilities of the BASINS CAT, as well as support on-going efforts to achieve Bay-wide integrated climate and land use change scenarios for 2030 and, ultimately, 2100. More specifically, the project will investigate the sensitivity of important hydrologic and water quality endpoints to a range of climate and BMP implementation scenarios in the Monocacy River watershed using the BASINS CAT. The project will also develop an assessment framework, climate scenarios, and model parameters to facilitate a broader, Baywide assessment of climate change impacts on water quality using the Phase V Chesapeake Bay Watershed Model.