Nicholas Chin, David Kaplan, Maitane Olabarrieta, Viyaktha Hithaishi Hewageegana, Luming Shi
{"title":"Quantifying the Effects of National Water Model Freshwater Flux Predictions on Estuarine Hydrodynamic Forecasts","authors":"Nicholas Chin, David Kaplan, Maitane Olabarrieta, Viyaktha Hithaishi Hewageegana, Luming Shi","doi":"10.1111/1752-1688.70033","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/1752-1688.70033","url":null,"abstract":"<div>\u0000 \u0000 <p>Accurate streamflow forecasts are critical for modeling and managing estuarine water quality, as freshwater fluxes significantly influence coastal dynamics. The National Water Model (NWM) provides high-resolution streamflow predictions, which are valuable for hydrodynamic modeling in poorly gauged coastal regions. However, inaccuracies in NWM forecasts can limit our ability to predict estuarine and nearshore water quality effectively. First, this study evaluates the accuracy of NWM predictions for 14 coastal reaches in southwest Florida's Charlotte Harbor and Caloosahatchee River estuaries from 2018 to 2024, where hydrologic management has impacted water quality. NWM forecasts showed varying bias and variance, with Nash-Sutcliffe efficiencies (NSE) ranging from −2.26 to 0.77. Next, hydrodynamic simulations for the flow-managed Caloosahatchee River Estuary (CRE) were performed using both NWM forecasts and observed streamflows, revealing that errors in NWM predictions during high-flow events caused significant deviations in the position of ecologically relevant isohalines, lasting weeks. Finally, to address these issues, a Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM) network was developed to bias-correct NWM forecasts, improving NSE from 0.41 to 0.53. However, the LSTM's inability to “learn” managed discharge schedules highlights the need for advanced data assimilation and simulation techniques in flow-managed coastal systems.</p>\u0000 </div>","PeriodicalId":17234,"journal":{"name":"Journal of The American Water Resources Association","volume":"61 3","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.6,"publicationDate":"2025-06-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144289299","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"环境科学与生态学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Impact of the Water Resource Tax on Efficiency of Industrial Water Resources Use: Evidence From Hebei Province, China","authors":"Ming Chen, Qin Wang, Yifan Li, Yutong Zhao","doi":"10.1111/1752-1688.70024","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/1752-1688.70024","url":null,"abstract":"<div>\u0000 \u0000 <p>China is facing a serious water shortage. The government's implementation of a water resource tax policy is an important step in the ecological protection of water resources. This paper constructs a stochastic frontier production function model to measure the industrial water resource utilization efficiency in Hebei Province under the consideration of water resource tax. Then, this paper constructs a model of the impact of water resource tax policy on industrial water resource utilization efficiency using the double difference method to evaluate the causal effect of the policy. The research findings of this article are: (1) Through discontinuity regression, it was found that the water resources tax policy has a significant positive correlation with the improvement of water resource utilization efficiency in Hebei Province. The implementation of the water resources tax policy has successfully improved the industrial water resource utilization in Hebei Province. (2) Although the implementation of the water resources tax policy has improved the efficiency of industrial water use in Hebei Province, the overall efficiency of industrial water use in Hebei Province is still low, and many problems have arisen during the advancement of the water resources tax policy. In response to the problems that occurred during the pilot period in Hebei Province, this article proposes some policy solutions to accelerate the advancement of water resource tax policies across the country.</p>\u0000 </div>","PeriodicalId":17234,"journal":{"name":"Journal of The American Water Resources Association","volume":"61 3","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.6,"publicationDate":"2025-06-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144214080","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"环境科学与生态学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Andrea Albright, Alisa W. Coffin, Oliva Pisani, David D. Bosch, Timothy C. Strickland
{"title":"A Pilot Study for Water Storage and Carbon Variability in an Irrigation Pond of the Southeastern Plains, USA","authors":"Andrea Albright, Alisa W. Coffin, Oliva Pisani, David D. Bosch, Timothy C. Strickland","doi":"10.1111/1752-1688.70026","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/1752-1688.70026","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Farm ponds are a common feature of agricultural landscapes for irrigation of crops. Yet small water bodies have been ignored as reservoirs and carbon balance features despite their ubiquity in the global landscape. These ponds contain surface water from precipitation and runoff, but in South Georgia, USA, groundwater supplementation is required to maintain a supply for irrigation. Key characteristics of these ponds, such as capacity and dynamics describing fluxes in quantity and quality, are not well known. In this area, irrigation ponds supplemented by groundwater have water quality issues that affect producers. In a pilot study to address this knowledge gap, storage dynamics and water quality, that is, dissolved organic carbon (DOC), were characterized from measurements of a regionally typical irrigation pond in 2022. Field surveys of pond depth and terrain were fused to create a topobathymetric elevation model of the pond and its environs. The pond has a volume of 5.06 +/- 0.29 ha-m that was used for irrigation during the growing season and was mostly replaced with groundwater. Concentrations of DOC ranged from 1.77 to 19.9 mg/L. Dissolved organic matter (DOM) indices reveal a shift from terrestrial-derived DOM earlier in the year to more microbial-derived DOM later. Together this integrated analysis of an irrigation pond in South Georgia analyzes water inflows and outflows, quantifies DOC, characterizes DOM, and models pond storage volumes.</p>","PeriodicalId":17234,"journal":{"name":"Journal of The American Water Resources Association","volume":"61 3","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.6,"publicationDate":"2025-06-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/1752-1688.70026","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144214081","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"环境科学与生态学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Erich T. Hester, Nathalie Voisin, Natalie A. Griffiths, Shih-Chieh Kao
{"title":"Intersection of Hydrologic Change and Hydropower in the United States: Needs for Future Research and Practice","authors":"Erich T. Hester, Nathalie Voisin, Natalie A. Griffiths, Shih-Chieh Kao","doi":"10.1111/1752-1688.70020","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/1752-1688.70020","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Hydropower is crucial for electric-grid stability in the context of variable renewables but faces threats from changing hydrology. Here, we summarize the state of the science at the intersection of hydropower operations and planning, hydrologic science, and climate. We focus on the United States, outlining research, development, and training needs. Key knowledge gaps include the risk that intensification of compound extreme events poses to future generation, as well as uncertainties surrounding greenhouse gas emissions from hydropower reservoirs with relevance to hydropower's role in energy decarbonization. Quantifying such impacts and reducing uncertainty are critical where possible, but remaining irreducible or deep uncertainty will require new approaches. Future monitoring and modeling methods must provide a better understanding of the complexity inherent in large watersheds that is critical to managing both hydropower and watersheds in the context of hydrologic change. Yet, research and development will have little impact if they do not inform practice. Standardization and consolidation of platforms are essential for data, modeling, and tool translation to local scales and small operators. An enhanced industry-academia dialog is pivotal for fostering a robust pipeline of hydropower professionals. Collaboration among researchers, policymakers, authorities, and industry stakeholders emerges as a recurring theme, highlighting the imperative for collective efforts.</p>","PeriodicalId":17234,"journal":{"name":"Journal of The American Water Resources Association","volume":"61 3","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.6,"publicationDate":"2025-06-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/1752-1688.70020","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144213880","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"环境科学与生态学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"A Distributed Unit Hydrograph Modeling for Flood Simulation in the Plain River Network Regions","authors":"Gang Chen, Yue Yu, Tianshu Zhang, Chuanhai Wang, Shen Yang, Pengxuan Zhao","doi":"10.1111/1752-1688.70029","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/1752-1688.70029","url":null,"abstract":"<div>\u0000 \u0000 <p>This study proposes a distributed unit hydrograph (DUH) method to address the challenge of simulating overland flow concentration in plain river network regions. The DUH framework defines generalized river network polygons (RNPs) to represent flow convergence zones and estimates runoff travel times based on a calibrated confluence velocity parameter, circumventing the need for high-resolution topographic data. The method was applied to the Taihu Basin, where 16 subregions were analyzed under different spatial scales and overland flow velocities. Results show that the DUH method significantly enhances model performance compared to the traditionally used proposed unit hydrograph (PUH) approach. Specifically, DUH reduced the root mean square error (RMSE) of simulated water levels by up to 40%, improved the coefficient of determination (<i>R</i><sup>2</sup>) by 0.1–0.2, and reduced the average flood peak lag from 2.1 days to 0.7 days. The model exhibited optimal accuracy at a grid scale of 200 × 200 m, achieving a balance between smooth hydrograph formation and computational efficiency. These findings underscore the DUH method's applicability for flood simulation and decision-making in low-relief, hydraulically complex regions with limited microtopographic data availability.</p>\u0000 </div>","PeriodicalId":17234,"journal":{"name":"Journal of The American Water Resources Association","volume":"61 3","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.6,"publicationDate":"2025-06-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144197062","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"环境科学与生态学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Zachary M. Easton, Jeremy Hanson, Emily Bock, Binyam Workeye Asfaw
{"title":"A Review of Chesapeake Bay Climate Change: Potential Impacts on Watershed Hydrology and Nutrient and Sediment Cycling and Export","authors":"Zachary M. Easton, Jeremy Hanson, Emily Bock, Binyam Workeye Asfaw","doi":"10.1111/1752-1688.70030","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/1752-1688.70030","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Climate change in the Chesapeake Bay watershed will affect the effort to achieve nutrient and sediment reductions called for in the total maximum daily load (TMDL) regulations. To determine how nutrient and sediment loads may change in response to climate, a systematic review evaluated research literature related to the impacts of climate change and variability on hydrologic fluxes and nutrient and sediment cycling and transport. Climate change impacts hydrologic fluxes, nutrient and sediment cycling, and export in the Chesapeake Bay region via several factors, including changes in precipitation volume and intensity, rising temperatures, and increased atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations. Increased precipitation volume is expected to increase the water budget expressed via greater runoff, streamflow, and freshwater flows to the estuary, but seasonal changes, such as increased winter and spring precipitation and hotter, drier summers, increase the variability of these responses. Climate change will also alter the cycling and transport of nutrients and sediment, with higher temperatures increasing the rate of nutrient cycling, and increased precipitation, expressed as wetter soils, increasing losses. While there was considerable variability among studies, there was common ground that suggests the Chesapeake Bay watershed will experience greater nonpoint source nutrient and sediment loads. Ultimately, this information informs how climate change may impact efforts to meet the TMDL.</p>","PeriodicalId":17234,"journal":{"name":"Journal of The American Water Resources Association","volume":"61 3","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.6,"publicationDate":"2025-06-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/1752-1688.70030","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144197063","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"环境科学与生态学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
M. Sarmiento Martínez, S. G. Leibowitz, M. L. Otte, R. Pineda López, D. P. García Tello, H. Luna Soria, L. I. Medina Pacheco, E. Hernández Pérez, V. H. Cambrón Sandoval
{"title":"Index of Watershed Integrity (IWI) of a Central Mexican Plateau Microwatershed: An Instrument of Environmental Governance","authors":"M. Sarmiento Martínez, S. G. Leibowitz, M. L. Otte, R. Pineda López, D. P. García Tello, H. Luna Soria, L. I. Medina Pacheco, E. Hernández Pérez, V. H. Cambrón Sandoval","doi":"10.1111/1752-1688.70028","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/1752-1688.70028","url":null,"abstract":"<div>\u0000 \u0000 <p>Watershed management must be prioritized in Mexico due to environmental degradation. To address the issue, an instrument to assess watershed functional status and specific governance conditions is needed. We assessed the functional conditions of a microwatershed (a watershed of less than 5000 ha) located in the headwater of the Querétaro River watershed using the Index of Catchment Integrity (ICI) to evaluate local conditions and the Index of Watershed Integrity (IWI) to evaluate the cumulative conditions. Implementing the IWI in La Laborcilla Microwatershed (LMW) required some adaptations to the available information. We integrated data generated through two indices: The Environmental Water Quality Index (EWQ(i)), which evaluates the physicochemical conditions of water from an ecosystem perspective, and the Hydrogeomorphological Index (IHG), which assesses the conditions of naturalness or alteration of riparian ecosystems. These complementary indices generated detailed information on the stressors that affect the six functional components of the watershed. To complete the assessment, we evaluated the LMW management process within local decision-making and policy instruments. The watershed had medium-low integrity (IWI = 0.43). The integrity of the catchments (ICI) spanned from 0.27 to 0.58. Watershed integrity is a relevant perspective for effective watershed management in operational forms within the territorial planning process and environmental policy instruments.</p>\u0000 </div>","PeriodicalId":17234,"journal":{"name":"Journal of The American Water Resources Association","volume":"61 3","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.6,"publicationDate":"2025-05-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144135661","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"环境科学与生态学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Kimberly LeMonde Fewless, Olga V. Wilhelmi, Mari Tye
{"title":"Resilient and Sustainable Water Resources Management in the United States: The Role of Water-Use Data and Interagency Knowledge Exchange","authors":"Kimberly LeMonde Fewless, Olga V. Wilhelmi, Mari Tye","doi":"10.1111/1752-1688.70027","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/1752-1688.70027","url":null,"abstract":"<div>\u0000 \u0000 <p>The United States SECURE Water Act states that a study of water use is critical for assessing impacts on water and ecological resources and forecasting whether or not available surface and groundwater supplies will meet future needs. The United States Geological Survey (USGS) plays a key role in the SECURE Water Act by providing nationally consistent information on water quantity, quality, and use. Water-use data maintained by States and Territories are critical for the USGS water-use estimation and modeling techniques that underlie these efforts. However, water-use data availability has not been systematically assessed. This study addresses this gap through a survey of USGS Water Science Centers (WSCs). The results indicate that water-use information varies in its content and level of detail across the United States. Spatially discrete and comprehensive information about water use, such as site-specific consumptive use, withdrawals, diversions, return flows, and interbasin transfers, is not widely available to and/or shared between State and Territory water-resource agencies and USGS WSCs. This article presents the survey results and discusses reported barriers to water-use data availability and sharing, as well as potential implications of limited water-use information. This study advances understanding of water-use data availability and sharing and contributes to broader research on US water data governance.</p>\u0000 </div>","PeriodicalId":17234,"journal":{"name":"Journal of The American Water Resources Association","volume":"61 3","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.6,"publicationDate":"2025-05-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144074267","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"环境科学与生态学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Improving Evaporative Loss Forecasts in Arid Climates by Integrating Machine Learning Models With Feature Selection Algorithms","authors":"Abdullah A. Alsumaiei","doi":"10.1111/1752-1688.70025","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/1752-1688.70025","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Evaporation is a major water-loss process that significantly disrupts the hydrological cycle; therefore, reliable and continuous evaporation monitoring is essential for decision-makers in water resource management. However, hyper-arid climates exhibit accelerated evaporation rates, complicating hydrological modeling. This study represents the first attempt to integrate the RReliefF algorithm for meteorological feature selection with machine learning models for pan evaporation prediction in hyper-arid climates. This approach overcomes the arbitrary selection of features for ML model input. Daily average pan evaporation rates at the examined stations exceed 8 mm/day. Such extremely high evaporative losses have been shown to hinder ML model performance. Extreme gradient boosting (XGBoost), random forest model, and k-nearest neighbors were used. Meteorological datasets were preprocessed using the RReliefF algorithm to rank their influence on pan evaporation variability. Depending on the weather station, shortwave radiation, wind speed, and average diurnal temperature emerged as the best predictors of pan evaporation rates. During the validation period, the Nash–Sutcliffe efficiency coefficient (NS), root mean squared error (RMSE), and mean absolute error (MAE) were 0.85–0.94, 1.152–1.833, and 0.863–1.147 mm/day, respectively. The findings of this study offer a robust and efficient computational approach for forecasting evaporative losses in hyper-arid environments.</p>","PeriodicalId":17234,"journal":{"name":"Journal of The American Water Resources Association","volume":"61 3","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.6,"publicationDate":"2025-05-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/1752-1688.70025","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143926053","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"环境科学与生态学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Lei Wu, Qi Zhu, Lili Zhang, Leizhi Wang, Youpeng Xu
{"title":"Interaction Between Urbanization and River System in a Plain River Network Region","authors":"Lei Wu, Qi Zhu, Lili Zhang, Leizhi Wang, Youpeng Xu","doi":"10.1111/1752-1688.70012","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/1752-1688.70012","url":null,"abstract":"<div>\u0000 \u0000 <p>River system changes are widely observed in urbanization areas, but the relationship between urbanization and river system is poorly understood. We investigate the interaction between urbanization and river system in a plain river network region. Results show that the structure and morphology of the river system became simplified. In most areas, the higher the initial river density, the more river channel loss occurs. The interaction between urbanization and river system consists of three stages: (1) with the development of urbanization, a large amount of low-order channels were encroached, filled, and transformed into construction land, (2) urban expansion and channel loss change the process of runoff generation and concentration and increase the risk of rainstorm and flood disasters, and (3) to relieve these negative effects, humans add main channels by widening and excavating. Low-order channels fall victim to urbanization. Effective measures, including legislation, must be taken to protect low-order channels in the process of urbanization.</p>\u0000 </div>","PeriodicalId":17234,"journal":{"name":"Journal of The American Water Resources Association","volume":"61 3","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.6,"publicationDate":"2025-05-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143919819","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"环境科学与生态学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}