Connie Woodhouse,Kiyomi Morino,Jeffrey J. Lukas, University of Arizona, School of Geography and Development, conniew1@email.arizona.edu
Surface water supplies in many basins are becoming strained due to increasing demand, drought, and climate change impacts, particularly elevated temperatures. Now more than ever, water management requires information about hydroclimatic conditions beyond those recorded in the instrumental record, including the variability over past centuries, and the conditions that are expected in the future. In the Colorado River basin, tree-ring data are being applied in a variety of ways to understand the range of hydrologic variability possible. Paleohydrologic reconstructions of Colorado River flow are being used to assess the sensitivity of reservoir levels to sequences of flow during pre-historic droughts, evaluate the range of hydrologic variability being simulated from downscaled GCM output, and incorporate realistic frequency domain information into projected flows. These applications of paleohydrologic data from the Colorado River basin may be useful in other river basins experiencing similar stresses.
Key words: paleohydrology, Colorado River, water resource management