Improving US Bureau of Reclamation Water Supply, Demand Monitoring and Forecasting Using NASA Earth Data Products for the Carson and Truckee River Basins

The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation (Reclamation) manages the largest quantity of wholesale water in the U.S. and is responsible for many aspects of water management, including flood control, irrigation, maintaining sufficient water levels for healthy wildlife and endangered species habitat, hydroelectric power, and other important public- and industrial-related uses. Reclamation relies heavily on “decision support tools” (DST) tools that utilize ground-based observation networks of hydrologic and meteorological variables, from a variety of different agencies, to estimate short term and seasonal forecasts of water supply (streamflow into reservoirs), demand (municipal, industrial, and agricultural), and the associated impacts of different operational scenarios on streamflow deliveries to downstream water users. Throughout much of the western U.S., however, ground-based observation stations are sparse and require the use of regionalization techniques to distribute the point information throughout large spatial areas creating the potential for large errors in model input and parameter estimation. In response to this need for more spatially and temporally complete information, Reclamation has partnered with the Desert Research Institute and NASA to explore the use of satellite products from MODIS, SRTM and ASTER, and also water availability products from the NASA data integration and assimilation tool, “Land Information System”. Results from these evaluations will be presented for the Carson River and Truckee River watersheds.