Upper Green River Basin (United States) Streamflow Reconstructions
Publication: Journal of Hydrologic Engineering
Volume 15, Issue 7
Abstract
The Upper Green River represents a vital water supply for southwestern Wyoming and Upper/Lower Colorado River Compact states. Rapid development in the southwestern United States combined with the recent drought has greatly stressed the water supply of the Colorado River system, and concurrently increased the interest in long-term variations in streamflow. The current research developed six new tree-ring chronologies in and adjacent to the Upper Green River Basin (UGRB). Nine proxy reconstructions (three main-stem streams and six headwater streams) of UGRB streamflow were created by combining these new tree-ring chronologies with existing tree-ring chronologies from sites adjacent to the UGRB. All UGRB streamflow reconstructions extended back to the year 1615 or earlier. The variance explained by these reconstructions ranged from a low of 0.44 at one headwaters gauge to 0.65 for the lowest main-stem gauge in the drainage. An extended reconstruction of the main-stem Green River gauge near Greendale, Utah extends back to 1439. As a group, the nine reconstructions show that strong regional coherency in interannual flow variability and multiyear to decadal flow regimes are consistent features of the preinstrumental period. Focusing on the Green River at Greendale reconstruction, our analyses point to unusual wetness in the 20th century and a regional hydroclimate characterized by inherent nonstationarity. Overall, these results suggest that instrumental records capture a relatively small subset of potential streamflow variability in the UGRB.
Get full access to this article
View all available purchase options and get full access to this article.
Acknowledgments
This research is supported by the University of Wyoming Water Research Program funded jointly by the USGS, the Wyoming Water Development Commission, and the University of Wyoming. The writers would like to acknowledge James Prairie (USBR) and Paul Miller (USBR/UNLV) for the providing natural flow estimates and the disaggregated flow estimates for the three CRSS node gauges in the UGRB. We also thank Jared Despain and Mike Follum for field and laboratory assistance in tree-ring chronology development. Additionally, the writers wish to thank Connie Woodhouse and Jeff Lukas for providing training and workshops in support of this research.UNSPECIFIED
References
Biondi, F., and Waikul, K. (2004). “DENDROCLIM2002: A C++ program for statistical calibration of climate signals in tree-ring chronologies.” Comput. Geosci., 30, 303–311.
Braithwaite, R. J., and Olsen, O. B. (1988). “Effects of glaciers on annual run-off, Johan Dahl Land, South Greenland.” J. Glaciol., 24, 200–207.
Cook, E. R. (1985). “A time series approach to tree-ring standardization.” Ph.D. dissertation, Univ. of Ariz., Tucson, Ariz.
Cook, E. R., and Kairiukstis, L. A. (1990). Methods of dendrochronology: Applications in the environmental sciences, Kluwer Academic Publishers and Int. Institute for Applied System Analysis, Dordrecht, The Netherlands.
Cook, E. R., Meko, D. M., Stahle, D. W., and Cleaveland, M. K. (1999). “Drought reconstructions for the continental United States.” J. Climate, 12, 1145–1162.
Draper, N. R., and Smith, H. (1998). Applied regression analysis, 3rd Ed., Wiley, New York, 330–346.
Ferguson, R. I. (1973). “Sinuosity of supraglacial streams.” Geol. Soc. Am. Bull., 84, 251–255.
Fountain, A. G., and Tangborn, W. V. (1985). “The effect of glaciers on streamflow variations.” Water Resour. Res., 21, 579–586.
Fritts, H. C. (1976). Tree rings and climate, Academic Press, London.
Garen, D. C. (1992). “Improved techniques in regression-based streamflow volume forecasting.” J. Water Resour. Plann. Manage., 118(6), 654–670.
Gedalof, Z., Peterson, D. L., and Mantua, N. J. (2004). “Columbia River flow and drought since 1750.” J. Am. Water Resour. Assoc., 40(6), 1579–1592.
Graumlich, L. J., Pisaric, M. F. J., Waggoner, L. A., Littell, J. S., and King, J. C. (2003). “Upper Yellowstone River flow and teleconnections with Pacific Basin climate variability during the past three centuries.” Clim. Change, 59(1–2), 245–262.
Gray, S. T., Fastie, C., Jackson, S. T., and Betancourt, J. L. (2004a). “Tree-ring based reconstructions of precipitation in the bighorn Basin, Wyoming since AD 1260.” J. Climate, 17, 3855–3865.
Gray, S. T., Graumlich, L. J., and Betancourt, J. L. (2007). “Annual precipitation in the Yellowstone National Park region since AD 1173.” Quat. Res. 68(1), 18–27.
Gray, S. T., Jackson, S. T., and Betancourt, J. L. (2004b). “Tree-ring based reconstructions of interannual to decadal-scale precipitation variability for northeastern Utah.” J. Am. Water Resour. Assoc., 40, 947–960.
Haan, C. T. (2002). Statistical methods in hydrology, 2nd Ed., Iowa State University Press, Ames, Iowa.
Handbook of hydrology. (1993). D. R. Maidment, eds., McGraw-Hill, New York, 17.42–19.20.
Hidalgo, H. G., Piechota, T. C., and Dracup, J. A. (2000). “Streamflow reconstruction using alternative PCA-based regression procedures.” Water Resour. Res., 36(11), 3241–3249.
Holmes, R. L. (1983). “Computer-assisted quality control in tree-ring dating and measurement.” Tree-ring Bull., 43, 69–95.
Hunter, T., Tootle, G. A., and Piechota, T. C. (2006). “Oceanic-atmospheric variability and western U.S. snowfall.” Geophys. Res. Lett., 33(L13706), 5.
International Tree Ring Data Bank (ITRDB). (2007). Tree-ring data search, ⟨http://hurricane.ncdc.noaa.gov/pls/paleo/fm_createpages.treering⟩ (Nov. 2007).
Lord, W. B., Booker, J. F., Getches, D. M., Harding, B. L., Kenney, D. S., and Young, R. A. (1995). “Managing the Colorado River in a severe sustained drought: An evaluation of institutional options.” Water Resour. Bull., 31(6), 939–944.
Meko, D. M., et al. (2007). “Medieval drought in the upper Colorado River Basin.” Geophys. Res. Lett., 34, L10705–L10709.
Meko, D. M., Therrell, M. D., Baisan, C. H., and Hughes, M. K. (2001). “Sacramento River flow reconstructed to A.D. 869 from tree rings.” J. Am. Water Resour. Assoc., 37, 1029–1039.
Meko, D. M., and Woodhouse, C. A. (2009). “Dendroclimatology, dendrohydrology, and water resources management.” Tree rings and climate: Sharpening the focus, H. F. Diaz and M. K. Hughes, eds., Kluwer/Springer, Dordrecht, The Netherlands/New York.
Michealson, J. (1987). “Cross validation in statistical climate forecast models.” J. Appl. Meteorol., 26(11), 1589–1600.
Milly, P. C. D., Betancourt, J. L., Falkenmark, M., Hirsch, R. M., Kundzewicz, Z. W., Lettenmaier, D. P., and Stouffer, R. J. (2008). “Climate change: Stationarity is dead—Whither water management?” Science, 319, 573–574.
Moore, D., et al. (2009). “Glacier change in western North America: Influences on hydrology, geomorphic hazards, and water quality.” Hydrolog. Process., 23, 42–61.
National Water Information System (NWIS). (2007). USGS surface-water data for the nation, ⟨http://waterdata.usgs.gov/nwis/sw⟩ (Nov. 2007).
Prairie, J., and Callejo, R. (2005). Natural flow and salt computation methods, U.S. Dept. of Interior, Salt Lake.
Slack, J. R., Lumb, A., and Landwehr, J. M. (1993). Hydro-climatic data network (HCDN) streamflow data set, 1874–1998 (CD-ROM). USGS, Reston, Va., ⟨http://www.daac.ornl.gov⟩ (November 2009).
Stahle, D. W., et al. (2000). “Tree-ring data document 16th century megadrought over North America.” Eos Trans. Am. Geophys. Union, 81(12), 121–125.
Stockton, C. W., and G. C. Jacoby (1976). “Long-term surface water supply and streamflow trends in the Upper Colorado River Basin.” Lake Powell Research Project Bulletin No. 18, National Science Foundation, Arlington, Va.
Stokes, M. A., and Smiley, T. L. (1968). An introduction to tree-ring dating, University of Arizona Press, Tucson, Ariz.
Swetnam, T. W., Thompson, M. A., and Sutherland, E. K. (1985). “Using dendrochronology to measure radial growth of defoliated trees.” Agriculture Handbook, Vol. 639, Forest Service, U.S. Dept. of Agriculture, Washington, D.C.
Timilsena, J., Piechota, T. C., Hidalgo, H. G., and Tootle, G. (2007). “Five hundreds years of drought in the Upper Colorado River Basin.” J. Am. Water Resour. Assoc., 43(3), 798–812.
Tootle, G. A., Singh, A. K., Piechota, T. C., and Farnham, I. (2007). “Long lead-time forecasting of U.S. streamflow using partial least squares regression.” J. Hydrol. Eng., 12(5), 442–451.
Wallis, J. R., Lettenmaier, D. P., and Wood, E. F. (1991). “A daily hydro-climatical data set for the continental United States.” Water Resour. Res., 27(7), 1657–1663.
Watson, T., Barnett, F. A., Gray, S., and Tootle, G. (2009). “Reconstructed streamflow for the headwaters of the Wind River, Wyoming USA.” J. Am. Water Resour. Assoc., 45(1), 224–236.
Weisberg, S. (1980). Applied linear regression, Wiley, New York.
Western Regional Climate Center (WRCC). (2007). Historical climate information, ⟨http://www.wrcc.dri.edu⟩ (Nov. 2007).
Wigley, T., Briffa, K., and Jones, P. D. (1984). “On the average value of correlated time series, with applications in dendroclimatology and hydrometeorology.” J. Clim. Appl. Meteorol., 23, 201–213.
Woodhouse, C. A. (2001). “A tree-ring reconstruction of streamflow for the Colorado Front Range.” J. Am. Water Resour. Assoc., 37, 561–569.
Woodhouse, C. A., Gray, S. T., and Meko, D. M. (2006). “Updated streamflow reconstructions for the Upper Colorado River Basin.” Water Resour. Res., 42, W05415.
Woodhouse, C. A., and Lukas, J. J. (2006). “Multi-century tree-ring reconstructions of Colorado streamflow for water resource planning.” Clim. Change, 78, 293–315.
Wyoming State Water Plan. (1970). Green River Basin water plan technical memoranda, ⟨http://waterplan.state.wy.us/plan/green/techmemos/reservoir.html⟩ (Nov. 2007).
Wyoming Water Development Commission (WWDC). (2007). Wyoming framework water plan, Vol. 1, Cheyenne, Wyo.
Young, R. A. (1995). “Coping with a severe sustained drought on the Colorado River: Introduction and overview.” Water Resour. Bull., 31(6), 779–788.
Information & Authors
Information
Published In
Copyright
© 2010 ASCE.
History
Received: Jan 5, 2009
Accepted: Oct 26, 2009
Published online: Dec 4, 2009
Published in print: Jul 2010
Authors
Metrics & Citations
Metrics
Citations
Download citation
If you have the appropriate software installed, you can download article citation data to the citation manager of your choice. Simply select your manager software from the list below and click Download.