Cold water and salmon in the Columbia River: Challenges in translating uncertainty to inform decision-making

Natural resource agencies in the United States have a long history of developing and applying models to inform policy and regulation. Examples include water quality models for Total Maximum Daily Load regulation or population viability models for species recovery. We will describe one current effort by the US Environmental Protection Agency to apply a spatially-explicit, individual-based modeling approach. The objectives of the modeling application are to evaluate cold water refuge sufficiency for Pacific salmon (Oncorhynchus spp.) in the Columbia River of Washington and Oregon, USA, and inform water temperature standards applied by the States. We will draw examples from this model development to discuss the challenges of designing models to meet client needs, managing client expectations, the tendency to over-promise, trade-offs between realism and defensibility, and limitations imposed by agency planning, conflicting management objectives, and IT structures.

Impact/Purpose

EPA has a long history of developing and applying models to inform water policy and regulation. In water management, models can inform our ability to understand water resources and decide how best to manage them. Managing water is increasingly difficult thanks to growing demand, population growth and climate change. Water managers need models that are useful, understandable and available long-term. Models must also be tailored to needs, with the right resolution, latency and format, to contribute to decision pipelines. This talk will be part of a session exploring data-driven water management. How can silos between data producers/modelers/scientists and decision-makers be broken down? How are decision-maker priorities uncovered, then translated into needs-driven science? How is scientific uncertainty conveyed to policymakers? Speakers in this session will share successes, challenges and lessons learned.

Citation

Ebersole, J., M. Snyder, AND N. Schumaker. Cold water and salmon in the Columbia River: Challenges in translating uncertainty to inform decision-making. American Geophysical Union, San Francisco, CA, December 09 - 13, 2019.