Low-Flow Variations in Source Water Supply for the Occoquan Reservoir System Based on a 100-Year Climate Forecast
Publication: Journal of Hydrologic Engineering
Volume 18, Issue 7
Abstract
The onset of climate and land-use change is forcing water managers to develop new techniques in response to the changing environment. This study uses established techniques to incorporate both projected climate change and projected land-use change into a hydrologic model of the Occoquan watershed, which encompasses an area of approximately in northern Virginia. The techniques used develop a future projection of weather that recreates the historic time series, including the drought of record, as influenced by climate change, thereby facilitating integration into existing water-management practices. Incorporating land use and using multiple metrics for analysis of low flow (drought) allows for the determination of variations between the historic and future model flows. This study revealed a likelihood of increased low-flow volumes for the Occoquan watershed from both climate and land-use change, the majority of which were produced from land-use change in combination with expanded reclaimed water supply. Also, the increases from climate change, although influencing measurable changes in flow patterns, were much less than those from land-use change.
Get full access to this article
View all available purchase options and get full access to this article.
References
Ahmed, S., Bencala, K., and Schultz, C. (2010). “2010 Washington metropolitan area water supply reliability study.”, Section for Cooperative Water Supply Operations on the Potomac, Interstate Commission on the Potomac River Basin (ICPRB), Rockville, MD.
Ames, D. (2007). MAPWINGIS reference manual: A function guide for the free MapWindow GIS Active X map component, MapWindow Open Source Team, Idaho Falls, ID.
ASCE. (1993). “Criteria for evaluation of watershed models.” J. Irrig. Drain. Eng., 119(3), 429–442.
Barnett, T., Malone, R., Pennell, W., Stammer, D., Semtner, B., and Washington, W. (2004). “The effects of climate change on water resources in the west: Introduction and overview.” Clim. Change, 62(1–3), 1–11.
BASINS 4.0 [Computer software]. (2008). U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA), Washington, DC.
Bicknell, B., Imhoff, J., Kittle, J., Jobes, T., and Donigian, A. (2001). Hydrologic Simulation Program FORTRAN user’s manual for version 12, USGS Water Resources Division, Reston, VA.
Bisese, J. (1995). “Methods for estimating the magnitude and frequency of peak discharges of rural, unregulated streams in Virginia.”, USGS, Washington, DC.
Brekke, L., et al. (2009). “Assessing reservoir operations risk under climate change.” Water Resour. Res., 45(4), 1–16.
Brunner, G., and Fleming, M. (2010). HEC-SSP statistical software package users manual, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Institute for Water Resources, Hydrologic Engineering Center (HEC), Davis, CA.
Climatic Research Unit (CRU). (2011). “University of East Anglia Climatic Research Unit.” 〈http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/〉 (Mar. 15, 2011).
Delworth, T., et al. (2006). “GFDL’s CM2 global coupled climate models. Part 1: Formulation and simulation characteristics.” J. Clim., 19(5), 643–675.
Fowler, H. J., Blenkinsop, S., and Tebaldi, C. (2007). “Linking climate change modelling to impacts studies: Recent advances in downscaling techniques for hydrological modelling.” Int. J. Climatol., 27(12), 1547–1578.
Gordon, C., et al. (2000). Hadley Centre coupled model version 3 (HadCM3), Hadley Centre for Climate Prediction and Research, Met Office, Devon, UK.
Gordon, H., et al. (2002). “The CSIRO Mk3 climate system model.”, Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation, Aspendale, Australia.
Hagen, E., Lorie, M., and Schultz, C. (2007). “2006 drought exercise and operations guide.”, Section for Cooperative Water Supply Operations on the Potomac, Interstate Commission on the Potomac River Basin (ICPRB), Rockville, MD.
Hagen, E., and Steiner, R. (2000). “Occoquan reservoir storage response curves.”, Section for Cooperative Water Supply Operations on the Potomac, Interstate Commission on the Potomac River Basin (ICPRB), Rockville, MD.
Hagen, E., Steiner, R., and Ducnuigeen, J. (1998). “Occoquan reservoir: ‘Natural’ daily-inflow development.”, Section for Cooperative Water Supply Operations on the Potomac, Interstate Commission on the Potomac River Basin (ICPRB), Rockville, MD.
Hasumi, H., and Emori, S., eds., (2004). “MIROC3.2 (model for interdisciplinary research on climate).” K-1 Coupled Model (MIROC) Description, K-1 Technical Rep., Center for Climate System Research, Univ. of Tokyo, Tokyo.
HEC-SSP [Computer software]. (2010). Hydrologic Engineering Center, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Davis, CA.
Hirsch, R. (1978). “Risk analysis for a water supply system: Occoquan reservoir, Fairfax and Prince Williams counties, Virginia, USA.” Hydrolog. Sci. Bull., 23(4), 475–505.
HSPexp [Computer software]. (1994). U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), Washington, DC.
Hulme, M. (1994). Validation of large-scale precipitation fields in general circulation models, Springer, Berlin.
Hydrologic Simulation Program FORTRAN (HSPF) [Computer software]. (1997). U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), Washington, DC.
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). (2007). Climate Change 2007: Synthesis Rep. Contribution of Working Groups I, II and III to the Fourth Assessment Rep. of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Geneva.
Interstate Commission on the Potomac River Basin (ICPRB). (2008). “Potomac timeline.” 〈http://www.potomacriver.org/2012/39-facts-faqs/facts-faqs/96-timeline〉 (May 20, 2011).
Jennings, M., Thomas, W., Jr., and Riggs, H. (1994). “Nationwide summary of U.S. Geological Survey regional regression equations for estimating magnitude and frequency of floods for ungaged sites, 1993.”, USGS, Washington, DC.
Jones, P., and Moberg, A. (2003). “Hemispheric and large-scale surface air temperature variations: An extensive revision and an update to 2001.” J. Clim., 16(2), 206–223.
Jungclaus, J., Roeckner, E., Mikolajewicz, U., and Hagemann, S. (2005). ECHAM5/MPI-OM, Max Planck Institute for Meteorology, Hamburg, Germany.
Kame’enui, A., and Hagen, E. (2005). “Climate change and water resources in the Washington metropolitan area: Research motivations and opportunities.”, Section for Cooperative Water Supply Operations on the Potomac, Interstate Commission on the Potomac River Basin (ICPRB), Rockville, MD.
Kame’enui, A., Hagen, E., and Kiang, J. (2005). “Water supply reliability forecast for the Washington metropolitan area.”, Section for Cooperative Water Supply Operations on the Potomac, Interstate Commission on the Potomac River Basin (ICPRB), Rockville, MD.
Kim, U., and Kaluarachchi, J. J. (2008). “Application of parameter estimation and regionalization methodologies to ungauged basins of the Upper Blue Nile River Basin, Ethiopia.” J. Hydrol., 362(1–2), 39–56.
Kim, U., and Kaluarachchi, J. J. (2009). “Climate change impacts on water resource in the Upper Blue Nile River Basin, Ethiopia.” J. Am. Water Resour. Assoc., 45(6), 1361–1378.
Liuzzo, L., Noto, L. V., Vivoni, E. R., and Loggia, G. L. (2010). “Basin-scale water resources assessment in Oklahoma under synthetic climate change scenarios using a fully distributed hydrologic model.” J. Hydrol. Eng., 15(2), 107–122.
Lorie, M., and Hagen, E. (2007). “Predicting refill of the Patuxent and Occoquan reservoirs: A new iterative tool based on ARIMA.”, Section for Cooperative Water Supply Operations on the Potomac, Interstate Commission on the Potomac River Basin (ICPRB), Rockville, MD.
Lumb, A., McCammon, R., and Kittle, J. (1994). “Users manual for an expert system (HSPexp) for calibration of the Hydrologic Simulation Program–Fortran.”, USGS, Washington, DC.
Maldonado, P. (2011). “Low flow variations in source water supply for the Occoquan reservoir system based on a 100-year climate forecast.” M.S. thesis, Dept. of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State Univ., Manassas, VA.
MapWindow GIS [Computer software]. (2007). MapWindow Open Source Team, Idaho Falls, ID.
McCuen, R. (2005). Hydrologic analysis and design, 3rd Ed., Pearson, Upper Saddle River, NJ.
McFarlane, N., Scinocca, J., Lazare, M., Harvey, R., Verseghy, D., and Li, J. (2005). “The CCCma third generation atmospheric general circulation model.” CCCma Internal Rep., Canadian Centre for Climate Modelling and Analysis, Gatineau, Quebec.
McMahon, T., Adeloye, A., and Zhou, S. (2006). “Understanding performance measures of reservoirs.” J. Hydrol., 324(1–4), 359–382.
Mehrotra, R., and Sharma, A. (2010). “Development and application of a multisite rainfall stochastic downscaling framework for climate change impact assessment.” Water Resour. Res., 46(7), W07526.
Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments (MWCOG). (2000). “Metropolitan Washington water supply and drought awareness response plan: Potomac river system.”, Regional Task Force on Water Supply Issues, Washington, DC.
Mitchell, T., Carter, T., Jones, P., Hulme, M., and New, M. (2004). “A comprehensive set of high-resolution grids of monthly climate for Europe and the globe: The observed record (1901–2000) and 16 scenarios (2001–2100).”, Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research, Norwich, UK.
Mitchell, T., and Jones, P. (2005). “An improved method of constructing a database of monthly climate observations and associated high resolution grids.” Int. J. Climatol., 25(6), 693–712.
Moglen, G., and Shivers, D. (2005). “Methods for adjusting U.S. Geological Survey rural regression peak discharges in an urban setting.” Scientific Investigations Rep. 2006-5270, USGS, Washington, DC.
Moriasi, D., Arnold, J., Van Liew, M., Bingner, R., Harmel, R., and Vieth, T. (2007). “Model evaluation guidelines for systematic quantification of accuracy in watershed simulations.” Trans. ASABE, 50(3), 885–900.
Nash, J., and Sutcliffe, J. (1970). “River flow forecasting through conceptual models. Part 1: A discussion of principles.” J. Hydrol., 10(3), 282–290.
New Millennium Occoquan Watershed Task Force (NMOTF). (2003). “Fulfilling the promise: The Occoquan watershed in the new millennium.” Rep. to the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors, Fairfax, VA.
Northern Virginia Regional Commission (NVRC). (2010). “Data for 1977, 1979, 1984, 1989, 1995, 2000, and 2006.” Occoquan Land Use Analysis, Occoquan Watershed Monitoring Laboratory (OWML), Manassas, VA.
Northern Virginia Regional Commission (NVRC). (2011). “Occoquan.” 〈http://www.novaregion.org/index.aspx?nid=410〉 (Jul. 3, 2011).
Smith, J., and Tirpak, D. (1989). “The potential effects of global climate change on the United States.” Rep. to Congress, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA), Office of Policy, Planning, and Evaluation, Washington, DC.
Steiner, R., et al. (1997). “Water resource management in the Potomac river basin under climate uncertainty.”, Section for Cooperative Water Supply Operations on the Potomac, Interstate Commission on the Potomac River Basin (ICPRB), Rockville, MD.
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA). (2000). “Estimating hydrology and hydraulic parameters for HSPF.” BASINS Technical Note 6, Washington, DC.
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA). (2007a). “NOAA’s National Climatic Data Centers (NCDC) weather data management (WDM) stations point locations in the United States, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands.” 〈http://water.epa.gov/scitech/datait/models/basins/index.cfm〉 (Jun. 29, 2010).
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA). (2007b). “USGS 300-meter resolution, 1-degree digital elevation models (DEM) for CONUS, Alaska, Hawaii, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands.” 〈http://water.epa.gov/scitech/datait/models/basins/index.cfm〉 (Jun. 29, 2010).
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA). (2008). BASINS 4.0: Users manual, National Service Center for Environmental Publications (NSCEP), Cincinnati, OH.
U.S. Geological Survey (USGS). (1980). Geographic Information Retrieval and Analysis System (GIRAS), 〈http://water.usgs.gov/GIS/metadata/usgswrd/XML/huc250k.xml〉 (Jun. 29, 2010).
U.S. Geological Survey (USGS). (1992). “1992 data.” National Land Cover Database, 〈http://www.mrlc.gov/index.php〉 (Jun. 29, 2010).
U.S. Geological Survey (USGS). (1999). National Hydrography Dataset (NHD), 〈http://nhd.usgs.gov/〉 (Jun. 29, 2010).
U.S. Geological Survey (USGS). (2001). “2001 data.” National Land Cover Database, 〈http://www.mrlc.gov/index.php〉 (Jun. 29, 2010).
Washington, W., et al. (2000). “Parallel climate model (PCM) control and transient simulations.” Clim. Dyn., 16(10–11), 755–774.
Wilby, R., Charles, S., Zorita, E., Timbal, B., Whetton, P., and Mearns, L. (2004). Guidelines for use of climate scenarios developed from statistical downscaling methods, Task Group on Data and Scenario Support for Impacts and Climate Analysis (TGICA), Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Geneva.
Wiley, M. (2004). “Analysis techniques to incorporate climate change information into Seattle’s long range water supply planning.” M.S. thesis, Dept. of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Univ. of Washington, Seattle.
Wood, A., Leung, L., Sridhar, V., and Lattenmaier, D. (2004). “Hydrologic implications of dynamical and statistical approaches to downscaling climate model outputs.” Clim. Change, 62(1–3), 189–216.
Wood, A. W., and Maurer, E. P. (2002). “Long-range experimental hydrologic forecasting for the eastern United States.” J. Geophys. Res., 107(D20), 1–15.
Xu, Z. (2005). “A complex, linked watershed-reservoir hydrology and water quality model application for the Occoquan watershed, Virginia.” Ph.D. thesis, Dept. of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Virginia Tech, Falls Church, VA.
Xu, Z., Godrej, A., and Grizzard, T. (2007). “The hydrological calibration and validation of a complexly-linked watershed–reservoir model for the Occoquan watershed, Virginia.” J. Hydrol., 345(3–4), 167–183.
Information & Authors
Information
Published In
Journal of Hydrologic Engineering
Volume 18 • Issue 7 • July 2013
Pages: 787 - 796
Copyright
© 2013 American Society of Civil Engineers.
History
Received: Sep 28, 2011
Accepted: Mar 23, 2012
Published online: Mar 26, 2012
Published in print: Jul 1, 2013
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.