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Joint climate and land cover change can significantly alter catchment hydrologic response, e.g., in terms of runoff and sediment delivery, and thus key determinants for downstream hydropower outcomes. While many studies highlight climate risk for hydropower operation, it is less clear how climate and landuse change together will impact hydropower outcomes, if managing landuse can reduce those impacts, and how to prioritize effective investments in the face of uncertainty about the future climatic drivers.In this study, we use Chaglla Dam, Peru’s third largest electricity generator, to develop an ensemble approach to identify parts of Chaglla’s contributing area with consistent changes in runoff and sediment under climate change. Those areas could then be targeted for maintaining or restoring natural land cover to increase baseflow and decrease sediment. We use SWAT to model catchment response for a large ensemble of climate trajectories based on latest CMIP 6 data, downscaled using multiple state-of-the-art algorithms and high-resolution regional weather observations (Figure 1 A and B). Based on the results, we identify parts of the catchment with greatest changes in water yield. We find that 35 % of the watershed area shows consistent trends in water yield and sediment across all climate scenarios.Climate risks will increase in the near and midterm future with increases the length of low-flow periods (up to 40 %) and increases in sediment (up to 17 %). Compared to that, additional changes in water and sediment because of projected land use change are relatively minor (+ 0.3 % in low-flow length and + 0.7 % in sediment).Yet, our study introduces a spatially-explicit framework for analyzing large ensembles of climate and landuse projections to identify where future change will translate in most change in hydrologic parameters related to hydropower. Results enable to study if investing in catchment conservation in those areas will significantly improve hydropower outcomes and will thus help to develop management plans for hydropower catchment that are robust under future change.

Hundreds of dams have been proposed throughout the Amazon basin, one of the world’s largest untapped hydropower frontiers. While hydropower is a potentially clean source of renewable energy, some projects produce high greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions per unit electricity generated (carbon intensity). Here we show how carbon intensities of proposed Amazon upland dams (median = 39 kg CO2eq MWh−1, 100-year horizon) are often comparable with solar and wind energy, whereas some lowland dams (median = 133 kg CO2eq MWh−1) may exceed carbon intensities of fossil-fuel power plants. Based on 158 existing and 351 proposed dams, we present a multi-objective optimization framework showing that low-carbon expansion of Amazon hydropower relies on strategic planning, which is generally linked to placing dams in higher elevations and smaller streams. Ultimately, basin-scale dam planning that considers GHG emissions along with social and ecological externalities will be decisive for sustainable energy development where new hydropower is contemplated., Some dams produce large amounts of GHGs and it is important to see whether future dams will satisfy sustainable energy goals. Here the authors estimate the range of GHG emission intensities expected for 351 proposed and 158 existing Amazon dams and find that existing Amazon hydropower reservoirs collectively emit 14 Tg CO2eq per year, and that if all proposed Amazon dams are built, annual emissions would increase 5-fold.

Este capítulo presenta una recopilación de las principales transformaciones de gran escala de los hábitats fluviales de la cuenca del río Magdalena, que han resultado de los efectos acumulativos y concurrentes de diversas intervenciones antrópicas. Los análisis integran tres factores principales para cuantificar los cambios en los hábitats de agua dulce a escala de la cuenca: a) conectividad hidrológica, b) régimen de caudales, y c) el régimen de sedimentos y geomorfológico. Cada uno de estos componentes es analizado de manera espacialmente explicita para la red fluvial, indicando las zonas que concentran los mayores niveles de transformación. Específicamente, se documentan cambios asociados a: la perdida de los corredores de conexión entre hábitats de zonas bajas, medias y altas; modificaciones en la conectividad lateral asociadas a la modificación del régimen de caudales por el efecto concurrente de la operación de embalses, las demandas de agua para agricultura y la expansión de la frontera agropecuaria en zonas de humedales; y cambios en los regímenes de transporte de sedimentos. A su vez, estos cambios se discuten respecto a intervenciones prospectivas de los sectores de navegación, irrigación, minería y energía. Los análisis aquí presentados pueden contribuir a acelerar la aplicación en los instrumentos de gestión de la cuenca, incorporando la integridad de los hábitats como objetivos de la planificación inter-sectorial. Específicamente, pueden contribuir a la adopción de criterios para salvaguardar y restaurar la conectividad hidrológica, la aplicación regional de caudales ambientales; y definir prioridades de monitoreo, protección o restauración de hábitats críticos.

The socio-economic development of a country depends mainly on adequate integrated water resources management (IWRM). Sectors such as mining and agriculture are two main economic activities in Bolivia, that negatively impact the water resource quality and availability. Also, every year, floods and droughts hit the most vulnerable populations in different regions of Bolivia. Floods represent the greatest hydroclimatological risk factor in the country along with landslides caused by heavy precipitation. Along with these challenges in the country, there is also inefficient water treatment for water supply which can lead to other problems like diseases. Nowadays, the media such as newspapers, television, radio, report on these problems, in terms of water resources, which are experienced year after year in the country. Furthermore, due to advances in technology, this information can be found digitally. In the same way, people have made use of social networks, such as twitter, to express their opinion on a specific topic. The type of information found both in the media and in social networks is called qualitative information.This digital information will be extracted using web crawling and web scrapping techniques that allow the process to be automated. This process is performed by applying keywords in the context of water resources in Bolivia, such as names of different water bodies in a basin. Once the information has been extracted, it will be transformed into a quantitative form, in such a way that it is useful for planning and decision-making processes of IWRM in Bolivia.The purpose of this research is focused on the application of Natural Language Processing in the digital information found for three hydrological basins located in Bolivia, in order to recognize how Bolivian society relates the management of water resources. These hydrological basins are La Paz - Choqueyapu, Tupiza and Pampa – Huari. Initially, the digital information that will be studied in this research consists of three Bolivian newspapers and the information found on Twitter. The application of a sentiment analysis classification model in Python language programming is developed. In order to preserve the semantic information and the different words in the text, Word2Vec model will be used. The extracted digital information is pre-processed, eliminating empty words that do not add sentiments to a text and punctuation marks. Once the information is pre-processed, it is divided into two types, training and testing. The training data will be used to train the Word2Vec model. The result of the model consists of a value that determines the positive, neutral or negative sentiment of the text. Once the model is trained, the testing data that has not been used will be applied in order to evaluate the performance of the model.This research helps to identify key elements, actors, frequent words related to IWRM, factors related to river health and improve the concept of citizen science. The results are mapped by geolocation, as a frequency distribution considering the digital perception (sentiment analysis) found and the frequency in which a topic is mentioned in the analysed digital information.

Human population is progressing into a predominantly urban configuration. Currently, 3.5 billion people – 55% of the total human population – live in urban areas, with an increase to 6.68 billion (68%) projected by 2050. In this progressively more populated world, a central issue of sustainability assessments is understanding the role of cities as entities that, despite their comparatively small physical footprint (less than 0.5% of the global area) demand resources at regional and global scales.Many of the resources that sustain urban population directly depend on the freshwater system: from direct fluxes from/to the immediate environment of cities for water supply or waste elimination, to water-dependent activities like biomass (food, biofuels, fibers) and energy production. Urban and freshwater system interactions are subject to multiple sources of non-linearity. Factors like the patterns of size or spatial distribution and interconnection of groups of cities; or the nested and hierarchical character of freshwater systems, can vastly influence the amount of resources required to sustain and grow urban population; likewise, equivalent resource demands can be met through different management strategies that vary substantially in their cumulative pressure exerted on the freshwater system.Here we explore the non-linear character of those interactions, to i. identify water management options to avoid, minimize or offset regional impacts of growing urban populations, and ii. explore long term implications of such non-linearities in sustained resource base of urban areas. We propose a framework integrating three elements: 1. properties of the size and spatial distribution of urban center sizes, 2. scaling regime of urban energy resource dependencies, and 3. scaling regime of associated physical and ecological impacts in freshwater systems.An example of this approach is presented in a case study in the Magdalena River Basin – MRB (Colombia). The basin covers nearly one quarter of Colombia’s national territory and provides sustenance to 36 million people, with three quarters of basin inhabitants living in medium to large urban settlements of populations of 12 000 or more inhabitants and 50% concentrated in the 15 largest cities. The case study results indicate that freshwater-mediated resource dependencies of urban population are described by a linear or super-linear regime that indicates a lack of scale economies, however, freshwater systems’ capacity to assimilate those resource demands is characterized by a sublinear regime. As a result, current practices and technological approaches to couple freshwater and urban systems will not be able to withstand the resource demands of mid-term future population scenarios. Our approach allows to quantify the projected gaps to achieve a sustained resource base for urban systems in MRB.

In Bolivia, since 2006 the Ministry of Environment and Water, through the National Watershed Plan, has developed the conceptual framework and national policy for Watershed Management. At present, this national policy is still in the process of learning and construction from its application in various river basins, principally through the development of Watershed Master Plans.Three principles guide the development of this national planning effort: i. the recognition of the growing dependence on participatory processes as a forum to identify and enable legitimate water management and governance options, ii. the need to plan for an uncertain future caused by climate change and other societal prerogatives iii. the systemic analysis of the territory incorporating biophysical, sectoral and regional interactions.Here we present results and lessons learned of this process in the formulation of the Master Plan of the Río Rocha Basin (PDCR); With a population of ~ 1,500,000 people (13% of Bolivia’s population), the basin has high levels of water scarcity that feed an intricate network of conflicts related to access, governance, and environmental degradation. The PDCR is a planning opportunity to enable the necessary conditions to resolve current conflicts and set the foundation of sustainable water management.Robust decision support (RDS) has been adopted as a guiding framework, constructing a participatory process that considers uncertainties and strategies within an array of management options for the system. To accommodate the large disparities in water access across interests represented at different regions and scales of the Rio Rocha Basin, we implemented two innovations in the RDS process: first, a set of 24 quantitative indices that can operate at several nested scales of planning sub-units (i.e. from independent irrigation units or household water supply service areas, to the entire river basin), and second the use of an interactive “hard-coupled” decision dashboard to the Water Evaluation and Planning System (WEAP). In combination, this innovations enabled a diverse audience of actors to: i) explore the positive and negative interactions of water management, production systems, hazards and risks management, and ecosystem functions ii) identify disparities in the performance of a proposed plan between scales and ii) analyze and compare different management strategies interactively to improve outcomes and identify and mitigate emerging regional or sectorial conflicts.As a result, the PDCR established a set of regional and intersectoral actions for 2025 and 2040, which integrate infrastructure, efficiency, pollution control, and territorial and productive planning actions, accompanied by institutional strengthening and capacity development measures. The plan expects to increase access and coverage of the demand for safe water, improve irrigation access, enable long term sustainable exploitation of groundwater and establish synergies with the existing sanitation plan to achieve additional improvements in the environmental quality of the Rio Rocha.

supplemental_data_wr.1943-5452.0001159_ritter.pdf (492 KB) This study explores the ways to introduce physical interpretability into the process of optimizing operating rules for multireservoir systems with multiple objectives. Prior studies applied the concept of direct policy search (DPS), in which the release policy is expressed as a set of parameterized functions (e.g., neural networks) that are optimized by simulating the performance of different parameter value combinations over a testing period. The problem with this approach is that the operators generally avoid adopting such artificial black-box functions for the direct real-time control of their systems, preferring simpler tools with a clear connection to the system physics. This study addresses this mismatch by replacing the black-box functions in DPS with physically based parameterized operating rules, for example by directly using target levels in dams as decision variables. This leads to results that are physically interpretable and may be more acceptable to operators. The methodology proposed in this work is applied to a network of five reservoirs and four power plants in the Nechi catchment in Colombia, with four interests involved: average energy generation, firm energy generation, flood hazard, and flow regime alteration. The release policy is expressed depending on only 12 parameters, which significantly reduces the computational complexity compared to existing approaches of multiobjective DPS. The resulting four-dimensional Pareto-approximate set offers a variety of operational strategies from which operators may choose one that corresponds best to their preferences. For demonstration purposes, one particular optimized policy is selected and its parameter values are analyzed to illustrate how the physically based operating rules can be directly interpreted by the operators.

A number of large hydropower dams are currently under development or in an advanced stage of planning in the Magdalena River basin, Colombia, spelling uncertainty for the Mompós Depression wetlands, one of the largest wetland systems in South America at 3400 km2. Annual large-scale inundation of floodplains and their associated wetlands regulates water, nutrient, and sediment cycles, which in turn sustain a wealth of ecological processes and ecosystem services, including critical food supplies. In this study, we implemented an integrated approach focused on key attributes of ecologically functional floodplains: (1) hydrologic connectivity between the river and the floodplain, and between upstream and downstream sections; (2) hydrologic variability patterns and their links to local and regional processes; and (3) the spatial scale required to sustain floodplain-associated processes and benefits, like migratory fish biodiversity. The implemented framework provides an explicit quantification of the nonlinear or direct response relationship of those considerations with hydropower development. The proposed framework was used to develop a comparative analysis of the potential effects of the hydropower expansion necessary to meet projected 2050 electricity requirements. As part of this study, we developed an enhancement of the Water Evaluation and Planning system (WEAP) that allows resolution of the floodplains water balance at a medium scale (∼ 1000 to 10 000 km2) and evaluation of the potential impacts of upstream water management practices. In the case of the Mompós Depression wetlands, our results indicate that the potential additional impacts of new hydropower infrastructure with respect to baseline conditions can range up to one order of magnitude between scenarios that are comparable in terms of energy capacity. Fragmentation of connectivity corridors between lowland floodplains and upstream spawning habitats and reduction of sediment loads show the greatest impacts, with potential reductions of up to 97.6 and 80 %, respectively, from pre-dam conditions. In some development scenarios, the amount of water regulated and withheld by upstream infrastructure is of similar magnitude to existing fluxes involved in the episodic inundation of the floodplain during dry years and, thus, can also induce substantial changes in floodplain seasonal dynamics of average-to-dry years in some areas of the Mompós Depression.

Numerous hydropower facilities are under construction or planned in tropical and subtropical rivers worldwide. While dams are typically designed considering historic river discharge regimes, climate change is likely to induce large-scale alterations in river hydrology. Here we analyze how future climate change will affect river hydrology, electricity generation, and economic viability of > 350 potential hydropower dams across the Amazon, Earth’s largest river basin and a global hotspot for future hydropower development. Midcentury projections for the RCP 4.5 and 8.5 climate change scenarios show basin-wide reductions of river discharge (means, 13 and 16%, respectively) and hydropower generation (19 and 27%). Declines are sharper for dams in Brazil, which harbors 60% of the proposed projects. Climate change will cause more frequent low-discharge interruption of hydropower generation and less frequent full-capacity operation. Consequently, the minimum electricity sale price for projects to break even more than doubles at many proposed dams, rendering much of future Amazon hydropower less competitive than increasingly lower cost renewable sources such as wind and solar. Climate-smart power systems will be fundamental to support environmentally and financially sustainable energy development in hydropower-dependent regions.

Sustainable basin management is important for both people and ecosystems. Increasing science-policy and inter-sectoral dialogue is recommended as a means to balance competing demands and achieve this; however, this dialogue is not necessarily easy to achieve. Here, we present a serious game aimed at communicating the complex relationships present in river basins and enabling dialogue between policy-makers and scientists in the Magdalena-Cauca basin, Colombia. Players guide the development of a fictional river basin over 30 years and the impacts of their decisions are simulated using WEAP water resources modelling software. The game has been used in various contexts. Here, experiences with stakeholders at a national forum in Bogota and with water professionals in Bangkok are discussed. The experience shows that the game is attractive to stakeholders, stimulates dialogue and provides interesting insights into the way computer models and stakeholders mental models can interact with and enrich each other. Display Omitted A serious game was developed based on water resources modelling software.The game was evaluated in sessions with stakeholders and modellers.It has been popular and successfully used in various contexts.In the game, both computer models and players' mental models play central roles.

River basin planning in Bolivia is a relatively new endeavor that is primed for innovation and learning. One important learning opportunity relates to connecting watershed planning to processes within other planning units (e.g., municipalities) that have water management implications. A second opportunity relates to integrating watershed management, with a focus on land-based interventions, and water resources management, with a focus on the use and control of surface and groundwater resources. Bolivia&rsquo, s River Basin Policy and its primary planning instrument, the River Basin Master Plan (PDC in Spanish), provide the relevant innovation and learning context. Official guidance related to PDC development lacks explicit instructions related to the use of analytical tools, the definition of spatially and temporally dis-aggregated indicators to evaluate specific watershed and water management interventions, and a description of the exact way stakeholders engage in the evaluation process. This paper describes an effort to adapt the tenets of a novel planning support practice, Robust Decision Support (RDS), to the official guidelines of PDC development. The work enabled stakeholders to discern positive and negative interactions among water management interventions related to overall system performance, hydrologic risk management, and ecosystem functions, use indicators across varying spatial and temporal reference frames, and identify management strategies to improve outcomes and mitigate cross-regional or inter-sectorial conflicts.

Water management is a complex problem that relates to human and physical variables that are very hard to predict, there is a cultural and social and human driven variables (Agricultural practices, Cities growth and others) that are hard to capture into the complex interactions of the water allocation and the hydrological system.This research presents a new novel yet simple system that integrates information from river basin social and hydrological variables in an online system for decision support. The concept developed so far represents the Magdalena river system in Colombia, and allows to simulate and to share ideas. A communication bar includes a score of goodness provided by decision makers such that a level of agreement between actors can be achieved. Aside of this, the system is made open source such that other river basin can be set up and even other hydrological modelling systems can be plugged in.

Although forest succession has traditionally been approached as a deterministic process, successional trajectories of vegetation change vary widely, even among nearby stands with similar environmental conditions and disturbance histories. Here, we provide the first attempt, to our knowledge, to quantify predictability and uncertainty during succession based on the most extensive long-term datasets ever assembled for Neotropical forests. We develop a novel approach that integrates deterministic and stochastic components into different candidate models describing the dynamical interactions among three widely used and interrelated forest attributes - stem density, basal area, and species density. Within each of the seven study sites, successional trajectories were highly idiosyncratic, even when controlling for prior land use, environment, and initial conditions in these attributes. Plot factors were far more important than stand age in explaining successional trajectories. For each site, the best-fit model was able to capture the complete set of time series in certain attributes only when both the deterministic and stochastic components were set to similar magnitudes. Surprisingly, predictability of stem density, basal area, and species density did not show consistent trends across attributes, study sites, or land use history, and was independent of plot size and time series length. The model developed here represents the best approach, to date, for characterizing autogenic successional dynamics and demonstrates the low predictability of successional trajectories. These high levels of uncertainty suggest that the impacts of allogenic factors on rates of change during tropical forest succession are far more pervasive than previously thought, challenging the way ecologists view and investigate forest regeneration. © 2015, National Academy of Sciences. All rights reserved.

The aim of this work is to identify and quantify physical and environmental explanatory variables for the structural state of urban drainage networks in a pilot study located in Bogota, Colombia. The analysis used information from 2291 CCTV inspections collected by the Water and Sewerage Company of Bogota (EAAB, from its Spanish initials) using tele-operated equipment during 2008-2010. Linear regression models were established to identify the environmental and physical characteristics of the pipes that are significantly associated with the occurrence, magnitude and type of the failures commonly found. Despite the fact that the correlation levels show that the developed model has a very low predictive capacity, it was found that the process of selecting assets for CCTV inspection can be optimized, increasing the success rate in failure detection. Este artículo presenta los resultados de un estudio piloto realizado en la ciudad de Bogotá para identificar y cuantificar factores de riesgo físicos y/o ambientales de las redes de drenaje urbano, en el marco de un enfoque proactivo de gestión patrimonial de la infraestructura de servicios públicos. El análisis utiliza información de 2291 inspecciones de CCTV recopiladas por la Empresa de Acueducto y Alcantarillado de Bogotá (EAAB) mediante equipos tele-operados durante los años 2008 a 2010. Mediante modelos de regresión lineal se establecieron entre el conjunto de variables recopiladas mediante procesos de inspección por CCTV, aquellas que muestran una asociación estadísticamente significativa con la ocurrencia, magnitud y/o tipo de fallos que típicamente se encuentran en las conducciones, entre otras, material (Gres y P.V.C) y diámetro de la tubería. Los resultados muestran que es posible optimizar los recursos para la inspección de las redes con fines de mejorar la tasa de éxito en la detección de fallos.

El presente artículo analiza y concluye sobre la viabilidad de pronósticos hidrológicos de niveles diarios, semanales y decadales en 20 estaciones hidrológicas de la red de monitoreo hidrometeorológico que soporta al Servicio de Alertas del Instituto de Hidrología, Meteorología y Estudios Ambientales - Ideam en Colombia (http://www.ideam.gov.co). Esta viabilidad se determina a través de un conjunto de criterios de desempeño ortogonales y para el presente estudio recomienda la aplicación de combinaciones lineales adaptativamente óptimas (CLAO) como operador viable para la configuración de un sistema de pronóstico hidrológico en tiempo real de niveles diarios, semanales y decadales. En conclusión, se muestra que los pronósticos de niveles diarios, semanales y decadales tienen una viabilidad de pronóstico satisfactoria para el 70% de los casos estudiados. This paper analyses the feasibility of forecasting daily, weekly and ten-day water-levels at 20 hydrological stations forming part of the monitoring network supporting the Institute of Hydrology, Meteorology and Environmental Studies' (IDEAM) Alert Service in Colombia (http://www.ideam.gov.co). Such viability was determined by a set of orthogonal performance criteria and implementing optimally adaptive linear combinations (OALC) was recommended for this study as a viable operator for configuring a real-time hydrological forecast system. It is shown that the forecast for daily, weekly and ten-day levels had satisfactory viability for 70% of the cases studied.