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Sustainable water management under future uncertainty with eco-engineering decision scaling

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Poff, N. LeRoy, Brown, Casey M., Grantham, Theodore E., Matthews, John H., Palmer, Margaret A., Spence, Caitlin M., Wilby, Robert L., Haasnoot, Marjolijn, Mendoza, Guillermo F., Dominique, Kathleen C., Baeza, Andres·2016·Nature Climate Change
DOI 10.1038/nclimate2765
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Abstract

Managing freshwater resources sustainably under future climatic and hydrological uncertainty poses novel challenges. Rehabilitation of ageing infrastructure and construction of new dams are widely viewed as solutions to diminish climate risk, but attaining the broad goal of freshwater sustainability will require expansion of the prevailing water resources management paradigm beyond narrow economic criteria to include socially valued ecosystem functions and services. We introduce a new decision framework, eco-engineering decision scaling (EEDS), that explicitly and quantitatively explores trade-offs in stake - holder-defined engineering and ecological performance metrics across a range of possible management actions under unknown future hydrological and climate states. We illustrate its potential application through a hypothetical case study of the Iowa River, USA. EEDS holds promise as a powerful framework for operationalizing freshwater sustainability under future hydrologi- cal uncertainty by fostering collaboration across historically conflicting perspectives of water resource engineering and river conservation ecology to design and operate water infrastructure for social and environmental benefits. evaluation a significant challenge 7,8 . These costs can be substantial, as evidenced by human displacement 5,9 , local species extinctions 10

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Metadata

Authors
Poff, N. L., Brown, C. M., Grantham, T. E., Matthews, J. H., Palmer, M. A., Spence, C. M., Wilby, R. L., Haasnoot, M., Mendoza, G. F., Dominique, K. C., & Baeza, A.
Venue
Nature Climate Change
Publisher
Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Published
2015-09-14
Volume
6
Issue
1
Pages
25-34
ISSN
  • 1758-678X (ISSN-L)
  • 1758-6798
DOI
10.1038/nclimate2765
OpenAlex
W2254345962
Cited by
520
References
5
FWCI
56.66
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
green
Licence
www.springer.com/tdm (tdm)

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Poff, N. L., Brown, C. M., Grantham, T. E., Matthews, J. H., Palmer, M. A., Spence, C. M., Wilby, R. L., Haasnoot, M., Mendoza, G. F., Dominique, K. C., & Baeza, A. (2016). Sustainable water management under future uncertainty with eco-engineering decision scaling. Nature Climate Change. https://doi.org/10.1038/nclimate2765

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