Source: UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA AT MERCED submitted to NRP
INFEWS/T1: SUSTAINING CALIFORNIA'S FOOD PRODUCTION THROUGH INTEGRATED WATER AND ENERGY MANAGEMENT
Sponsoring Institution
National Institute of Food and Agriculture
Project Status
COMPLETE
Funding Source
AFRI COMPETITIVE GRANT
Reporting Frequency
Annual
Accession No.
1021639
Grant No.
2018-67004-27405
Cumulative Award Amt.
$2,476,400.00
Proposal No.
2017-07649
Multistate No.
(N/A)
Project Start Date
Jan 1, 2018
Project End Date
Dec 31, 2023
Grant Year
2020
Program Code
[A3151]- Interagency Climate Change
Recipient Organization
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA AT MERCED
5200 N LAKE RD
MERCED,CA 953435001
Performing Department
School of Engineering
Non Technical Summary
A. OverviewClimate-change driven shifts in precipitation and water storage in the Sierra Nevada, a mountain range that provides over 50% of California's (CA) water supply, are stressing one of the nation's main food-producing regions. California produces over a third of the nation's vegetables and two-thirds of the country's fruits and nuts in the Central Valley. California's water resources and energy infrastructure, developed during a climate regime that no longer exists, is now on the brink of not meeting the growing demands of agriculture and society. System stressors include reductions in seasonal surface-water storage, continued groundwater overdraft, reduced hydropower, more-intense storm runoff, and increasing demands for water and energy. Taken together, these stressors present a unique challenge for the future of irrigated agriculture. Recognizing the need for a sustainable future, California is advancing both requirements and incentives for improvement of water and energy management. Analyzing the food-energy-water system as coupled wildland-water storage-cropland subsystems, this research will assess how different climate-adaption pathways affect this system's resilience, vulnerability, and sustainability. Management and alternative future scenarios will be analyzed using a Coupled Human and Natural System (CHANS) framework that fully integrates biophysical, engineering, socioeconomic, and human decision-making processes and feedbacks.B. Intellectual MeritAligning agricultural growth, groundwater sustainability, carbon neutrality, and the basin-integrated management of water-resources systems is a critical need for our nation's critical food-producing areas. Transforming the traditionally disjointed decision-making in these separate sectors, using an integrated framework that takes advantage of interdependencies and promotes shared understanding, is both challenging and achievable. Transparent data and information, integrated through credible, management-focused modeling tools, provide a foundation for conducting alternative futures analyses, building decision support, and ultimately promoting more resilient California's food-energy-water system decision-making. Our proposed modeling framework will advance current California's food-energy-water system paradigm in three different ways:1. Quantify feedbacks among California's wildlands, water-storage, and croplands subsystems. Models of hydrology, energy, and agricultural subsystems will be integrated using Envision, a GIS-based, spatially explicit, multiparadigm modeling-framework for analysis of CHANS and alternative future scenarios. This will advance integrated process understanding by identifying: interactions, feedbacks, nonlinearities, and thresholds within these subsystems and CA's FEWS as a whole.2. Evaluate the degree to which these subsystems are vulnerable to climate change. The Envision model will simulate how agriculture can best adapt to the unprecedented changes in climate and water availability controlled, in part, by simultaneous changes in wildland and storage subsystems. This involves consideration of multiple climatic and non-climatic factors that influence vulnerability and resilience of coupled food-energy-water system.3. Identify the management and policy strategies that best adapt this coupled food-energy-water system to climate change. Through this coupled food-energy-water system modeling and climate vulnerability assessment, as well as stakeholder involvement via our facilitated knowledge-to-action network, we will identify stresses, risks, and effects of different management strategies for achieving co-benefits within this food-energy-water system.C. Broader ImpactsThe high value of water and agriculture in the region, the wide variety of stakeholders, the major projected impacts from climate change, and the recent regulatory pressures make this an ideal location. The modeling tool we develop will be applicable to other regions, particularly across the semi-arid western United States and worldwide where integrated wildland, storage, and cropland systems are facing similar issues. California is committed to transforming its economy to one based on renewable energy by 2030; important knowledge gaps remain regarding how that will be achieved for this region. The region also needs to adapt to the impacts of climate change. The proposed research will inform both contemporary decision-making on these issues and will contribute to educating the next generation of environmental and water professionals. Using available and credible data from the region, selective modeling to extend those data, and an active program of stakeholder engagement, this research will go far beyond just the development of tools. It will provide a foundation for broader analysis that can drive regional cooperation in planning and decision-making toward a more sustainable future, with consequential impacts for the nation and the world.
Animal Health Component
30%
Research Effort Categories
Basic
50%
Applied
30%
Developmental
20%
Classification

Knowledge Area (KA)Subject of Investigation (SOI)Field of Science (FOS)Percent
1120210202015%
1230399205030%
1310612301020%
6056199303020%
9037299310015%
Knowledge Area
605 - Natural Resource and Environmental Economics; 112 - Watershed Protection and Management; 903 - Communication, Education, and Information Delivery; 123 - Management and Sustainability of Forest Resources; 131 - Alternative Uses of Land;

Subject Of Investigation
6199 - Economy, general/other; 0612 - Conifer forests of the West; 0210 - Water resources; 0399 - Watersheds and river basins, general; 7299 - Research equipment and methods, general/other;

Field Of Science
2020 - Engineering; 2050 - Hydrology; 3010 - Economics; 3030 - Information and communication; 3100 - Management;
Goals / Objectives
The goal of this project is to develop a Coupled Human and Natural System (CHANS)modeling framework for analyzing California's food-energy-water system under current and future technologies, policies, management, and climate. We will work with stakeholders in developing a decision-support-system (DSS) for evaluating water management alternatives with goals to reduce system stress, increase resilience, and ensure sustainability. We have been engaged in examining both the overall functioning and impact of climate variability and other external drivers on food-energy-water system. In previous studies the focus has been limited in both scale and scope; developed knowledge on food-energy-water system nexus is often disconnected between wildlands, storage, and croplands. While most of the water in California originates on mountain wildlands and is used on valley croplands, the water management in these two systems typically decoupled. California is commited to transforming its economy to one based on renewable energy rather than fossil fuels, and hydropower is a major part of the renewable portfolio. California water storage has traditionally been in reservoirs (surface storage), we will explore trade-offs between various conjunctive management and use of surface and groundwater scenarios to optimize sustainability and cost. This study is timely as California reservoirs are operating under rules and management goals decades old that do not account for how a changing climate alters the timing and flow in Sierra Nevada rivers and an increasing population ramps up water and energy demands. Developing a comprehensive sustainable food-energy-water system framework for decision-making for California requires a multidisciplinary tool allowing us to critically analyze, evaluate, and model dynamic synergies at multiple spatial scales (local to regional) and temporal scales (from inter-annual to century). The work proposed here will link resource availability under current and future climate with contemporary and alternative resource management practices. It will do so through data integration and advanced modeling that investigates the functioning of coupled natural, engineered and social systems.
Project Methods
The proposed research will focus on the wildland-storage-cropland California's food-energy-water system. We have identified wildlands, storage, and hydropower production, and intensively managed croplands as the three major subsystems, each facing a different set of challenges. The California's food-energy-water system is an appropriate scale for examining the dominant processes, external drivers, and feedback mechanisms operating within and between these subsystems that are relevant for overall food-energy-water system resiliency and sustainability. We will use an integrated modeling approach to characterize andassess: (1) the critical interactions and feedbacks among the major subsystems, (2) the degree to which these subsystems are vulnerable to climate change, and (3) the management strategies and policy decisions that best adapt this food-energy-water system to a changing climate. First, we will use fine-scale detailed measurements and modeling in representative areas to better understand and test the representation of key food-energy-water system components across California's wildland, storage, and cropland subsystems.We will then develop a spatially explicit, integrated "alternative futures" Coupled Human and Natural System (CHANS)model that builds on the subsystems modeling. TheCoupled Human and Natural System allows for the identification and exploration of key system synergies. We will employ the Envision platform, a robust and mature set of modeling, data analysis, and visualization tools developed specifically to enable spatially and temporally explicit examination of strongly coupled human/natural systems using a model-based alternative future scenarios approach. Envision allows a rich description of human behaviors related to food-energy-water system decision-making through the three-way interactions between individuals or institutions that have decision-making authority regarding land and water use ("actors"), the biophysical and sociocultural processes that produce landscape change, and the regulations and policies that guide and constrain decisions. Actors within the model can both influence landscape dynamics and adaptively modify their behavior in response to these landscape signals. Envision provides support for one-way (i.e. offline) to two-way (i.e. online or full) coupling of a variety of modeling paradigms, including "conventional" biophysical process and statistical models, economic and sociocultural models, and multi-agent models for capturing human decision-making process on the landscape. Envision also contains process and decision modules relevant to modeling the California's food-energy-water system, including hydrology, reservoir management, water rights, vegetation dynamics and associated water use, wildfire dynamics, future climate scenarios, and a robust subsystem model for human decision-making around resource management. Building on the datasets, models, analysis, and scenarios generated during this project, we will develop a mobile friendly web portal specifically designed to promote more resilient food-energy-water system decision-making in California.

Progress 01/01/18 to 12/31/23

Outputs
Target Audience: Natural Resource Managers Farmers Utilities Policy Makers Research Community Science Communicators The UC Merced team has built dissemination into their research programs, Both collaborator Pathak and PI Safeeq were members of the UC Agriculture and Natural Resources and knowledge dissemination was part of their extension duties. Through various research products and presentations Dr. Medellin-Azuara's research group addressed stakeholders in the Central Valley on the matters of groundwater sustainability, land repurposing and environmental justice. Below is a list of some of our activities. As this project was centered in California, UC Merced took the lead in reaching out to NGOs, community leaders, academics, government agency staff and others. Changes/Problems: This project required significant model development which was to have been accomplished by postdocs with PhD students assisting and doing modelling experiments. We had trouble recruiting and keeping postdocs so the integrated model was never completed despite a concerted effort by the Oregon State team. Our team did, however, make significant changes to LPJ GUESS (fire modelling and increasing the depth from which trees obtain water) and CropSyst (adding management modules for perennial crops: nut crops and alfalfa). COVID limited travel and team interactions, which slowed progress and made annual in-person meetings impossible for three years. We lost a student (U Hawaii) and the PI to COVID complications. This delayed U Hawaii progress. Collaborator Pathak stopped participating in the project over the COVID period, due to shifting priorities. Student progress at UC Merced was slower than expected, so although M. Goulden (UC Irvine) was an active participant on the project, he was not supporting any students. He transferred his funds to UC Merced so we could finish the three PhD students at UC Merced. After meeting with stakeholders, UC Merced students developed an interest in the economic benefits of sustainable choices (i.e., the ecosystem services provided by forest management and groundwater recharge). That can be seen in the topics of two of the dissertations (H. Guo and L. Li). We received a year of no-cost extension. Products of this period are included in this report. What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided?(1)Our project made sure that all the students and postdocs attended professional meetings (bolded names are students and postdocs) A. Kandhway gave an oral presentation at the 2023 Fall Meeting of the American Geophysical Union (AGU) in San Francisco, CA. Title: Climate change impacts on consumptive water use and yield by almond and pistachio crops in the San Joaquin Valley, California. She received a Global Change Student Presentation Award. A. Kandhway attended the 2023 CUAHSI Biennial Colloquium. Tahoe City, California and presented the paper "Quantifying climate change impacts on crops growing in Merced, California." H. Guo gave a poster presentation at the 2023 Fall Meeting of the American Geophysical Union (AGU) in San Francisco, CA. Title: Monetizing forest restoration across the Sierra Nevada for increasing its pace and scale. AGU 2023. Guo, W., Bales, R. C., Safeeq, M., Cui, G., Guo, H., Goulden, M., ... & Emmett, K. (2023). Carbon storage vs. Wildfire risk in California's fire-prone mountain forests. AGU 2023. Liying Li gave an oral presentation at International Geoscience and Remote Sensing Symposium 2023. Title: Identifying the priority areas for shorebird habitat previsioning from managed agriculturall land in Central Valley, California: conserving water, biodiversity and agriculture Liying Li gave an oral presentation at AGU 2023 fall meeting in San Fransisco: Integrated modeling framework of Shorebird Population Change under land use and climate change in Central Valley, California, using remote-sensed and citizen science data. (2) Award: Han Guo received a Cal Fire Fellowship Project Title: Valuation of water and carbon benefits of forest restoration Sponsor: Forest Health Research Program, California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection - Cal Fire 8GG21812 Performance Period: Starts from 04/05/2022 - 12/31/2023 (3) Training workshops on an as needed basis: Kandhway continuted to meet virtually and in person as with developers and researchers at Washington State as she modified her stand-alone version of VIC-CropSyst. (4) Our PI's, students and postodcs have been successful in transitioning: UC Merced: Dr. Alexander Heeren (postdoc 2018), partly supported by INFEWS, is now a Research Scientist at the California Department of Fish and Wildlife (2018). Dr. Maribeth Kniffin (postdoc 2018-2019) became a postdoctoral fellow at University of California, Davis (2019) under Helen Dahlke and is now a Hydrologic Civil Engineer at Bureau of Reclamation (2023) Dr. Angel Fernandez-Bou (collaborator) is now the Western States Senior Climate Scientist at the Union of Concerned Scientists Dr. Norman Pelak (postdoc 2019-2022) became Hydroclimatologist at the Water Research Center (2022) Dr. Chandan Singh (postdoc 2019) became assistant professor at NIT Raipur, Department of Civil Engineering (2021) Dr. Weichao Guo (postoc 2020 - 2021) is now self-employed in Shanghai, China Dr. Han Guo completed his dissertation 2023 and is now a postdoctoral fellow at University of California, Merced under Dr. Brandi McKuin. (Dissertation: Valuing forest restoration for healthier and more resilient forests) Dr. Stefano Casirati (partially supported by INFEWS) defended his dissertation in 2023 and is now a postdoctoral fellow with Manuela Girotto at UC Berkeley. (Dissertation: Mountain Hydrologic Processes and Forest Ecosystems, Predicting the Effects of Climate Stressors and Forest Ecosystems). Liying Li defended her dissertation in 2024 and has been offered a postdoc at UC Santa Barbara. (Dissertation: Integrated agricultural water and land use management for conserving water, carbon, and avian biodiversity under climate change: a synthesis approach) Anshika Kandhway defended her dissertation in 2024 (Dissertation: Climate Change Impacts on Agriculture Water Dynamics and Conservation in San Joaquin Valley of California) PI Safeeq transitioned from ANR to an Associate Professor at UC Merced PI Conklin retired due to COVID complications U. Hawaii David Lewis had to leave due to COVID complications. Mia Comeros is defending her dissertation in 2024. How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest?The UC Merced team has built dissemination into their research programs, Both collaborator Pathak and PI Safeeq were members of the UC Agriculture and Natural Resources and knowledge dissemination was part of their extension duties. Through various research products and presentations Dr. Medellin-Azuara's research group addressed stakeholders in the Central Valley on the matters of groundwater sustainability, land repurposing and environmental justice. Below is a list of some of our activities. As this project was centered in California, UC Merced took the lead in reaching out to NGOs, community leaders, academics, government agency staff and others. PI's Bales and Conklin, CA Wildfire and Forest Resilience Task Force meeting, Calabassas, CA Feb 2-3, 2023. PI Safeeq, Panel for Sierra Nevada Research Institute screening of film California's Watershed Healing, Merced, CA Mar 7, 2023 Guo, H. Webinar (CAL FIRE's Forest Health Research Grant Program): presentation on valuing the multiple benefits of Sierra Nevada forest restoration treatments, Mar 29, 2023. PI Bales, Earth Day Screening of film California's Watershed Healing, Sacramento CA sponsored by the CA Depart of Natural Resources, Apr 21, 2023 PI Bales, outreach meeting with Southern California watershed stakeholders, May 1, 2023 PI Bales, Consortium of Universities for the Advancement of Hydrologic Science, Inc (CUAHSI) meeting in Tahoe City, CA. Screening of film California's Watershed Healing, Jun 11, 2023. PI's Safeeq and Bales, Field visit to French Meadows forest restoration project, Tahoe National Forest, June 29-30, 2023 PI Safeeq History of UC Cooperative Extension-Translating Research into Action. University of California Merced, July 7, 2023. INVITED. PI Bales and H. Guo, Field visit to Southern Sierra Regional Watershed Management Group Forest restoration project, Sierra National Forest, July 11-12, 2023 PI Bales and H. Guo, Field visit to North Yuba and Trapper Forest Restoration projects, Tahoe National Forest with Blue Forest, July 13-14, 2023 PI Safeeq, Assimilation of remotely sensed leaf area index into the SWAT river basin model: impacts on water budget in a Mediterranean climate. AWRA summer specialty Conference, Denver Co, Jul 17-19, 2023. PI's Bales and Conklin, Field visit to French Meadows forest restoration project, Tahoe National Forest, Aug. 21-22, 2023 PI. Bales, Meeting with California Department of Water Resources to discuss headwater water-balance research findings, Sept. 5, 2023 PI Safeeq, M. Effects of Forest Management & Changing Climate on Sediment Yield. Southern Sierra IRWM Meeting, Sep 14, 2023. INVITED. PI Safeeq. Integrated Management of Forests and Groundwater to Mitigate Climate Whiplash. UC Climate Stewards Course organized by the American River Conservancy, Oct 2, 2023. INVITED. PI's Bales and Safeeq and H. Guo. Watersheds & Water Security. Northern Region CA Wildfire and Forest Resilience Task Force Meeting, Oct 5, 2023. PI Safeeq INVITED PLENARY. PI's Bales and Conklin, and H. Guo .Field visit to plan forest restoration project with Blue Forest and stakeholders, Stanislaus National Forest October 13, 2025. PI Bales, Field visit to view watershed research and restoration at Pepperwood Reserve, Dec. 15, 2023. PI's Bales and Conklin, were on a panel with CA Secretary of Natural Resources Wade Crowfoot, Yuba County Water Manager Willie Whittlesey, and Tahoe National Forest Supervisor Eli Ilano, after the showing of California's Watersheds Healing at the 23rd Wild and Scenic Film Festival in Nevada City (Feb. 19, 2024). What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals? The project is over. As a continuation of the work, PI's Bales and Goulden have just secured a contract to extend Dr. Guo's economic evaluation of ecosystem services for restoring wildlands over the whole state of California. PI Safeeq is extending the numerical modeling work through other federal and state support

Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals? Our project work was focused on two environments: (1) forested watersheds and (2) agriculture systems. Our research team utilized strategic measurements, data synthesis, & modelling to address project objectives. Below, we provide more details about our two foci research directions. Forested Watersheds as Natural Climate Solutions: Together with colleagues at OSU, UH, and UCM, we led the formulation of regolith as the first order control on predicting future occurrence of water. Co-PI Roger Bales and team showed that the regolith properties also dictate forest's response to multi-year drought (Goulden and Bales, 2019). To further expand on this new direction, we designed a modelling study, using LPJ-GUESS, that further elucidates how forests under varying regolith might respond to climate change. This work showed that the patterns of ecosystem response to climate change is not only dependent on the extent of warming and plant's ability to acclimate with higher atmospheric CO2, but also on the amount of deeper root-accessible water storage). Indeed, differences in regolith can also explain hydrologic and biogeochemical responses to forest disturbances. We have improved fire module of LPJ-GUESS to better capture climate-ecosystem feedbacks (postdoc Weichao Guo, Guo et al. 2022). Casirati et al. were able to show hydrologic benefits from forest treatment using SWAT (a model without forest access to deep-root water storage), but it could not mimic the measured evapotranspiration patterns during the dry summer periods (graduate student Stefano Casirati).. Forests are viewed as natural climate solutions, and we have begun to use this framework to develop predictive models for restoration project prioritization, develop and refine prescriptions, and map resulting ecosystem services. Our team used these modelling results to provide a valuation of ecosystem services provided by (1) managed forests (graduate student Han Guo, Guo et al. 2021, Guo et al, 2023) and a multibenefit framework for funding forest management (Siepp et al. 2023). An evaluation of the role of forests in tourism visits was developed (graduate student Mia Comeros, Dugstad et al. 2024). Agriculture Systems: Addressing changes in water supply from source watersheds is only one side of the water security equation, agriculture systems must adapt and find ways to reduce demand through improved decision-making and farming practices. Smidt et al.(2023) have provided a framework for agricultural water management. To meet these ends, our graduate students, Anshika Kandhway and Liying Li, used VIC-CropSyst and CALVIN, respectively, to understand the impact of climate change on California's specialty crops and ways farmers can adapt to changing biophysical and policy settings. Anshika's work shows that alfalfa yield will likely benefit from a warmer climate, with the expense of needing more water, but it can also offer flexibility in agriculture water management in ways that perennial crops cannot. Liying's work showed compounding water management challenges emerging from climate change and water management policies. She focused on adequacy of water for meeting future needs and how to use improved water management to expand ecosystem services to bird populations (ecosystem services). Our postdoc, Chandan Singh, worked on improving crop evapotranspiration within SWAT by fusing remotely sensed crop-data for the purposes of land retirement scenario planning. Anshika has extended this analysis to include ground water recharge and solar farm as an alternate land use for repurposed land. Collaborator Fernandez Bou focused on environmental justice in disadvantaged (rural communities (Fernandez-Bou et al. 2021(a & b), Flores-Landeros et al. 2021). The report that follows is additions to our previous reports. Data already submitted to REEPORT is not repeated. Note that means the publication list has some duplicates, with articles submitted for review in prior years are recited with the correct publication data.

Publications

  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2023 Citation: Nyelele, C., Keske, C., Chung, M. G., Guo, H., & Egoh, B. N. (2023). Using social media data to estimate recreational travel costs: A case study from California. Ecological Indicators, 154, 110638. (Published)
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2024 Citation: A Dugstad, A Ceria, M Comeros, KLL Oleson (2024). Exploring the influence of activity participation on the economic value of nature-based recreation in the Sierra Nevada, Journal of Environmental Management 360, 121081 (Published, INFEWS acknowledged)
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2023 Citation: H Guo, M Goulden, MG Chung, C Nyelele, B Egoh, C Keske, M Conklin, Roger Bale (2023) Valuing the benefits of forest restoration on enhancing hydropower and water supply in California's Sierra Nevada. Science of The Total Environment 876, 162836 (Published, INFEWS acknowledged)
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2023 Citation: Nyelele, C., Keske, C., Chung, M. G., Guo, H., & Egoh, B. N. (2023). Using social media data and machine learning to map recreational ecosystem services. Ecological Indicators, 154, 110606. (Published)
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2023 Citation: Seipp, K.Q., Maurer, T., Elias, M., Saksa, P., Keske, C., Oleson,K., Egoh, B., Cleveland, R., Nyelele, C., Goncalves, N., Hemes, K., Wyrsch, P., Lewis, P., Chung, M.G., Guo, H., Conklin, M., Bales, R. (2023) A multi-benefit framework for funding forest management in fire-driven ecosystems across the Western US. Journal of Environmental Management 344, 118270 (Published, INFEWS acknowledged)
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2023 Citation: Casirati, S.; Conklin, M.; and Safeeq, M. (2023). Influence of snowpack on forest water stress in the Sierra Nevada. Front. For. Glob. Change. 6. 6/5/2023. https://doi.org/10.3389/ffgc.2023.1181819 (Published, INFEWS acknowledged)
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2023 Citation: Nanda, A.; and Safeeq, M. (2023). Threshold controlling runoff generation mechanisms in Mediterranean headwater catchments. Journal of Hydrology. 620:B. 5/1/2023. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jhydrol.2023.129532 (Published)
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2024 Citation: Nanda, A., & Safeeq, M. (2024). Nonlinear storagedischarge dynamics of forested headwater catchment: A hysteresis index approach. Hydrological Processes, 38(6), e15201 (Published).
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2023 Citation: Leathers, K., Herbst, D., Safeeq, M., & Ruhi, A. (2023). Dynamic, downstream-propagating thermal vulnerability in a mountain stream network: Implications for biodiversity in the face of climate change. Limnology and Oceanography, 68, S101S114. (Published).
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2023 Citation: Smidt, S., Haacker, E., Bai, X., Cherkauer, K., Choat, B., Crompton, O., Deines, J., Groh, J., Guzm�n, S., Hartman, S., et al. (2023). Forming the future of agrohydrology. Earths Future, 11(12), e2022EF003410. (Published).
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Under Review Year Published: 2024 Citation: Nandi, S., Safeeq, M., & Reddy, M. J. (n.d.). Advances in process-based hydrological modelling and applications for river basin management under climate change: A review. water resources management (under review, INFEWS acknowledged).
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Under Review Year Published: 2024 Citation: Guo, H., Goulden, M., Chung, M. G., Nyelele, C., Egoh, B., Keske, C., ... & Bales, R. (n.d.) Valuing co-benefits of fire regulation through forest restoration in wildfire-vulnerable forests. (Under review).
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Under Review Year Published: 2024 Citation: Kandhway, A., Scarpare, F, Liu M., Nelson R., Adam J. C., Anderson, R. G., Conklin. M. H, Safeeq M. (n.d.) Water Use Dynamics of Almond and Pistachio Crops in the Mediterranean Region Amid Climate Change. Agriculture Water Management (under review).
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Under Review Year Published: 2024 Citation: Liying Li, Mustafa Dogan, Mahesh Maskey, Jos� M. Rodriguez-Flores, Kellie Vache, Spencer Core, Martha Conklin, Sarah Null, Joshua Viers, Josue Medellin-Azuara, (n.d.). Optimized Water Allocation with Climate Change, Groundwater Overdraft Control, and Managed Environmental Water Use. Under Review.
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Other Year Published: 2024 Citation: Liying Li, Erin L. Hestir, Joshua Viers, Jose? M. Rodriguez-Flores, Spencer Cole, Martha Conklin, Josue Medellin-Azuara (n.d.). Shorebirds population change modeling and conservation planning under climate change in Central Valley, California using remote-sensed and citizen science data. Completed for submission to publication
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Other Year Published: 2024 Citation: Liying Li, Erin L. Hestir, Joshua Viers, John Abatzoglou, Jos� M. Rodriguez-Flores, Spencer Core, Josue Medellin-Azuara (n.d.). Nature-based Solution to Carbon Sequestration, Water Challenges, and Avian Biodiversity Conservation with Spatial and Temporal Systematic Conservation Planning. Completed for submission to publication
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Other Year Published: 2024 Citation: Zuber, C., & Safeeq, M. (n.d.). Response of selected soil physical and hydrological properties to applied and soil incorporated wood biomass in almonds (in-preparation)
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Other Year Published: 2024 Citation: LaFontaine, J., Vache, K., Jackson, C. (n.d). Effects of climate and streamflow uncertainty on the distribution of fitness indices of perfect models. Under Review.


Progress 01/01/22 to 12/31/22

Outputs
Target Audience: Natural Resource Managers Farmers Utilities Policy Makers Research Community Science Communicators Changes/Problems: This project required significant model development which was to have been accomplished by postdocs with PhD students assisting and doing modelling experiments. We had trouble recruiting and keeping postdocs so the integrated model was never completed despite a concerted effort by the Oregon State team. We will continue to look at sustainibilty of crops in the San Joaquin Valley using VIC-CropSyst. We will continue to work on an integrated uplands model with LPJ Guess as the core. COVID limited travel and team interactions, which slowed progress and made annual in-person meetings impossible for three years. We lost a student (U Hawaii) to COVID complications. This delayed U Hawaii progress. Student progress at UC Merced was slower than expected, so although M. Goulden (UC Irvine) was an active participant on the project, he was not supporting any students. He transferred his funds to UC Merced so we could finish the three PhD students at UC Merced. After meeting with stakeholders, 2 UC Merced students (Han and Li) developed an interest in the economic benefits of sustainable choices (i.e., the ecosystem services provided by forest management and groundwater recharge, respectively). We received a year of no-cost extension. What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided?Kandhway traveled to Washington State University in summer 2022 to train with the developers of the VIC-CropSyst model. She also attended various webinars and seminars related to crops grown in the SJV, as well as presented work and networked at regional agriculture conferences. Specifically, she made an oral presentation of preliminary outcomes of the research and discussion with farmers, agricultural companies, and researchers at an agriculture themed international conference, FIRA USA, in Fresno, CA. For the University of Hawaii team, the project has provided extensive opportunities for the graduate student (Mia Comeros) and data analyst (Alemarie Ceria) to develop their research, analytical, and project management skills, as well as expand their knowledge in the field. One of the key opportunities for professional development has been the chance to collaborate with a diverse group of experts (engineers, hydrologists, resource managers, ecological economists, ecologists) involved in the project. This has not only expanded their network but also provided an opportunity for them to learn from and contribute to the team. They have also been able to use the latest software and tools to process, analyze, and visualize large and complex datasets. Han Guo received a Cal Fire Fellowship for "The Valuation and carbon benefits for forest restoration" 04/05/22-12/31/23. He will continue to contribute to this project. Students presented at professional conferences (see next section). In addition Han Guo applied for a How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest?Bales, R. Bales attended the2022 Fall Meeting of the American Geophysical Union (AGU) in Chicago, IL, from December 12 to December 16, and presented the paperUsing stakeholder-based fuzzy cognitive mapping to assess benefits of restoration in wildfire-vulnerable forests. Bales, R. Bales was interviewed for the PBS program "American Grown: My Job Depends on Ag", for their episode entitled "Burn Scars", where they explore how wildfires and forest health affect groundwater recharge throughout the state. You can view the episodehere. Bales, R. On April 7, Roger Bales spoke as a panelist at the Seeing the Forest for the Water webinar hosted by Pacific Forest Trust, a nonprofit focused on forest conservation. On April 8 he spoke at the North Bay Water Association Conference, titledClimate Change(d): Weathering Extremes Together. On June 16 he spoke as part of a webinar for California Polytechnic University alumni. Bales, R. On June 14 to 15 Bales presented at the symposium,Reforestation Strategies for the Southern Sierra Nevada in an Era of Climate Change, hosted by the Sierra Nevada Conservancy, USDA California Climate Hub, and the US Forest Service. Bales, R. On March 18, Bales hosted a rough cut of the film "California's Watershed: Healing", which prominently features Bales alongside other researchers and several State and federal officials. The screening was hosted at UC Berkeley, and also shown virtually. Fan, Qin; Kandhway, Anshika et al. "California's Water for Farms: Irrigation Decisions and Climate Adaptation Strategy." Ag Robotics Forum. USA FIRA, 2022. Guo, H., Egoh, B., Eriksson, M., & Bales, R. C. (2022, June). Monetizing Water-related Ecosystem Services for Watershed Restoration. Frontiers in Hydrology Meeting, 2022. Guo, H., Goulden, M., Chung, M. G., Nyelele, C., Egoh, B., Keske, C., ... & Bales, R. C. (2022, December). Valuing the benefits of forest restoration on enhancing fire regulation. AGU 2022 Fall Meeting. Guo, H., Goulden, M., Chung, M. G., Nyelele, C., Egoh, B., Keske, C., ... & Bales, R. C. (2022, November). "Valuing the benefits of forest restoration on enhancing hydropower and water supply in California's Sierra Nevada". California Association of Resource Conservation Districts 77th Annual Conference. Kandhway, Anshika, et al. "Quantifying Climate Change Impacts on Water Use and Yield of Almond and Pistachio Crops in the San Joaquin Valley."Fall Meeting 2022. AGU, 2022. Nanda, A., and Safeeq, M., 2022. Thresholds Controlling Runoff Generation Processes of Mediterranean Headwater Catchments. AGU Frontiers in Hydrology Meeting, June 19-24. Pelak, N., Vache, K., Guo, W., Shukla, S., Safeeq, M., and Conklin, M. 'Understanding the Impacts of Coupled Dynamics Between Hydrology and Vegetation on the Sierra Nevada's Water Supply Under Future Climate Scenarios." 2022 Frontiers in Hydrology Meeting, San Juan, Puerto Rico. Safeeq, M. Assimilating Remotely Sensed Data into SWAT Model for Predicting Crop Evapotranspiration, Annual UC ANR Water Program Team Meeting. Mar 9, 2022 - Mar 10, 2022. Safeeq, M. Effects of Forest Management on Water and Sediment Yield, Hopland Research and Extension Center. Jan 3, 2022. Safeeq, M. General Circulation Models or GCMs: the basis of climate science, UC Climate Stewards course with ARC. Sep 29, 2022. Safeeq, M. History of UC Cooperative Extension-Translating Research into Action. University of California Merced, July 7, 2022. Safeeq, M. Integrated Management of Forests and Groundwater to Mitigate Climate Whiplash, SWF: Securing a Climate Resilient Water Future for the San Joaquin Valley meeting UC Merced. Mar 18, 2022. Safeeq, M. Management of water and watersheds: Learning from California's experience, Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur, March 24, 2022. Safeeq, M. Management of water and watersheds: Learning from the past, Self-Help Enterprise, California. September 24,2022. Safeeq, M. Reforestation in an Era of Climate Change in the So. Sierra Symposium, USDA Southwest Climate Hub. June 14-15/ 2022. Safeeq, M. Water management in a changing climate, PECC Annual meeting, Davis, CA. Mar 23, 2022. Safeeq, M., R., Bart, and J., Wagenbrenner 2022. Variations in streamflow and forest health response to forest management. AGU Frontiers in Hydrology Meeting, June 19-24. Safeeq, M. Safeeq participated in the 2022 Tulare Basin Watershed Network State of the Basin event. This event brought together stakeholders from the Tulare Basin for discussions and breakout groups, and resulted in a summary document synthesizing the discussion of various issues, such as what actions are needed for healthier watersheds, what strategies should be prioritized, and identifying potential beneficiaries for actions including agricultural resilience, multi-benefit recharge, watershed management, and alternative land use. The UH team (Oleson and Comeros) presented preliminary random forest results were shared at the INFEWS Annual Meeting held in Merced in September 2022. Additionally, Oleson shared project goals, methods, and expected results with regional USFS colleagues at a meeting in Washington DC in September 2022. What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals?Although the project was to have ended in 2022, we have a one-year no-cost extension to complete the project. Kandhway will validate the VIC-CropSyst model for more crops against observed or remotely sensed datasets, as well as quantify the changes in water use and yield under future climate scenarios. Using these results, she will analyze crop water use and yield outcomes, formulate adaptation strategies in agriculture in response to water scarcity, policy, and environmental changes, and continue to work on related manuscripts. Pelak's tenure with the project will end on February 28, 2022, but he will continue to support the team by contributing to manuscripts as he is able. Vache will continue the primary Envision/LPJ-GUESS modeling work, by first bringing together changes in the LPJ-GUESS snow model (led by Pelak) and management strategies (led by Weichao Guo), as well as any other coding needed to support the interdisciplinary modeling effort. At the beginning of the final year of the project, most of the coding is completed. We plan to continue to work with project collaborators to run the model and evaluate output. PI's Shukla, Conklin, and Safeeq will also contribute to these efforts, and Shukla will also facilitate access to CMIP6 downscaled projections to the team. During the next reporting period, the Hawaii team (Comeros, Oleson, and Ceria) will compare important drivers of recreation patterns within National Forest and between National Parks and National Forests, use random forest models to model change in visitation from future environmental changes modeled by Envision/LPJ-GUESS, build a cost model reflecting travel mode, distance, and time to estimate travel costs, and build an economic model expressing visitation (as the dependent variable) as a function of environmental variables (independent variables) and travel cost. The hydro-economic team (Li and Medellin-Azuara) will continue model run post analysis, generate publications to disseminate research results for broader scientific and policy implications, get feedback from utilities on water allocation results, and interview farmers regarding water shortage costs in order to validate the obtained results for the water scarcity cost. They have also submitted an abstract to International Geoscience and Remote Sensing Symposium 2023, to be held in June 2023 in Pasadena, CA, with the title: Identifying the priority areas for shorebird habitat previsioning from managed agricultural land in Central Valley, California: conserving water, biodiversity, and agriculture.

Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals? Project collaborators have identified a series of models that will be used within the coupled framework. The work of the Oregon State Team (led by Kellie Vache with input from John Bolte) in 2022 has continued to focus on developing strategies to link these models in the framework. There are 5 primary models that have been identified as necessary to develop a set of future scenarios that can adequately capture the potential impact of climate change on water and energy availability in California. (1) The modeling requires projections of future climate. During 2021, we used guidance from the State of California (https://cal-adapt.org/tools/) to select 4 climate models that are consistent with historical data in the state. Downscaled results from each of the models, for each of 2 scenarios were developed as input to the Envision modeling from https://climate.northwestknowledge.net/MACA/data_portal.php representing a set of climate trajectories from 1950-2100. In 2022, the snow modeling was expanded to include radiation and wind speed, which was led by postdoc Norman Pelak. Data from MACA was developed to represent each of these added variables. PI Shrad Shukla assisted the team with accessing climate change projections in the form which is most useful for them. In service of this goal, he shared downscaled CMIP5 projections as well as analyses of downscaled climate projections over California. (2) CALVIN model is a hydroeconomic model used to represent the allocation of water to agricultural, municipal, and environmental flow uses. The model is written in Python. We have developed an embedded version of Python in the modeling framework, and are running the CALVIN code as a framework plugin. Work during 2022 was focused on developing code linking Calvin to LPJGuess and SWAT. The LPJGuess connections are designed to provide reservoir inflows under climate scenarios to CALVIN. The SWAT connections, while still under development, will provide water availability from CALVIN to SWAT which SWAT uses to limit the application of irrigation water under scarcity. Related to this work, the hydroeconomic team (consisting of Liying Li and Josue Medellin-Azuara) has worked to analyze water supply and water allocation changes under climate change for the Central Valley. They are also working to estimate the economic costs of water shortages caused by climate change in the Central Valley, California. To do so, they have run the hydro-economic model CALVIN under future climate change scenarios, the inputs to which were generated by the combined ENVISION/LPJ-Guess Model (which were produced by Vache). They generated water allocation results across all CVPM regions in the Central Valley, and using these, performed an economic analysis for water scarcity in this region. (3) SWAT is a model that is being used to capture hydrology in the agricultural regions of the valley. During 2022 the facility for passing data between Envision and SWAT was completed, though through discussions with project collaborators, we have elected to forgo further use of SWAT in the integrated modeling. In addition, Stefano Casirati is using SWAT to simulate the role trees play in the hydrology of the Kings River (he is comparing managed and unmanaged forests) -- to see if SWAT can reproduce the effect of deep water in the critical zone during the dry summers in the Sierra Nevada. (4) The crop matrix model has been under continued discussion during 2022. One potential avenue was to use an economic model called OpenAG-CV. This model was developed as part of the project as Python code. During 2022, the Envision framework was expanded to include the python version of the crop model. Also related to crop modeling in the Central Valley, but separate from the Envision framework, Anshika Kandhway (graduate student, advised by PIs Safeeq Khan and Martha Conklin) worked with the VIC-CropSyst model to model the agriculture of the Central Valle under future climate scenarios. She trained and calibrated VIC-CropSyst using field observation data for perennial trees, hay, and other select crops for climate, soil, and management strategies in the San Joaquin Valley (SJV). She simulated almond and pistachio crops' water use, growth, and yield changes under various climate change scenarios, and analyzed changes in crop responses due to climatic warming. She is now focused on writing manuscripts based on these results. (5) LPJ-GUESS is an ecosystem model that simulates snow, canopy, and soil dynamics across the upland regions of the study area and allows trees access to deep root water in the critical zone. LPJ-Guess spatial units are then coupled to a set of spatially coincident Envision-Flow Hydrological Response Units, which store and release water that has moved through the LPJ-Guess soil compartments. That water moves into the upland stream network and is routed to the large Rim Reservoirs using a kinematic wave approach. The primary coding for the inclusion of LPJ-GUESS was accomplished during earlier phases of the project, with primary work in 2022 focused on the development of a radiation-driven snowmelt model (led by Norman Pelak) and the evaluation of the capacity of the model to capture the role of wildfire on the future landscape (led by Weichao Guo). In addition, work focused on expanding the originally developed model calibration to include the changes associated with code modification around the updated snow model. The goal of University of Hawaii (UH) team, consisting of Oleson, Comeros, and Ceria, is to model the relationship between recreational visitation in the High Sierra National Parks and National Forests and biophysical drivers, and evaluating how future climatic conditions will affect recreation use. For future projections, they use hydrological model outputs from the Sierra Nevada headwaters (developed using the Envision/LPJ-GUESS model), adding specificity to predictions of welfare impacts and the cost of future environmental change. In the 2022 reporting period, they have compiled and summarized visitation data from four National Forests (Stanislaus, Sierra, Inyo, and Sequoia) and three National Parks (Kings Canyon, Yosemite, and Sequoia), as well as compiled and summarized spatial and temporal datasets of social, climatic, and environmental variables to explain and predict patterns of recreational visitation. In doing so, they have built a project data repository, available publicy on Github (https://github.com/alemarieceria/high_sierras_rfm) that houses source data, reproducible code, references, and other relevant project information. This data repository enables increased efficiency and transparency and enhances knowledge exchange with partners and collaborators. They have also built single-site random forest models using visitation as the dependent variable as a function of historical and present environmental and climatic variables. PI Oleson also discussed methodology and anticipated results with regional USFS economists, setting up connections for broader dissemination of project outputs.

Publications

  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Submitted Year Published: 2022 Citation: Eriksson M, Safeeq M, Pathak T, Egoh B, Bales R. Using stakeholder?based fuzzy cognitive mapping to assess benefits of restoration in wildfire?vulnerable forests. Restoration Ecology. 2022 Dec 22:e13766. (submitted).
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Submitted Year Published: 2022 Citation: Guo, H., Goulden, M., Chung, M. G., Nyelele, C., Egoh, B., Keske, C., ... & Bales, R. C. Valuing the benefits of forest restoration on enhancing hydropower and water supply in Californias Sierra Nevada., Science of The Total Environment (submitted, unsure if INFEWS acknowledged).
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Submitted Year Published: 2022 Citation: LaFontaine, J., Vache, K., Jackson, C. 2022. Effects of climate and streamflow uncertainty on the distribution of fitness indices of perfect models. Journal of Hydrology (submitted, INFEWS acknowledged).
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2023 Citation: Pelak, N., Sohrabi, M., Safeeq, M. and Conklin, M., 2023. Improving snow water equivalent simulations in an alpine basin by blending precipitation gauge and snow pillow measurements. Hydrological Processes, 37(1), p.e14796. (INFEWS funding acknowledged)


Progress 01/01/21 to 12/31/21

Outputs
Target Audience:Our work during this reporting period reached a number of audiences. All teams on the project reached the research community in a variety of ways, in particular through published articles and conference presentations. Through a podcast appearance, webinar and panel discussions, and meetings with local stakeholders in the Central Valley, the Water Systems Management lab led by PI Josue Medellin-Azuara also reached farmers, science communicators, and educators. Graduate student Han Guo, PIs Roger Bales and Martha Conklin also reached natural resource managers, utilities, and policy makers through meetings with water agencies and other stakeholders. PI Safeeq Khan and graduate student Kandhway also reached natural resource managers, farmers, policy makers, and science communicators through their outreach efforts and presentations. PI Michael Goulden also reached natural resource managers through his efforts related to the Center for Ecosystem Solutions dataset. The Hawaii team led by PI Kirsten Oleson also reached natural resource managers through their work in obtaining public lands datasets. Changes/Problems: COVID-19 continued to impact the project, as in the previous reporting period. The Hawaii team (led by Kirsten Oleson) had a key personnel departure which was related to COVID-19, which caused a significant setback to their research efforts and required the hiring of a new employee to fill the gap. The impacts of COVID-19 have significantly hampered our efforts in the area of stakeholder outreach/development of the KTAN (Knowledge To Action Network), due to restrictions on in-person meetings over the past two years, and delays in hiring a stakeholder coordinator. We will be leveraging the stakeholder coordination in Goulden's CECS project in 2022. Previous work in this area involved preparing an online stakeholder survey and identifying an initial participant email list. Most of the interactive stakeholder events will be compressed in the next reporting period. During this reporting period, Medellin-Azuara broadened stakeholder activities for other projects to cover CA SieVa Infews interests. Khan presented talks to numerous stakeholders in the Central Valley. Bales and Conklin pivoted to work with filmmaker Jim Thebaut on a new documentary film "California's Watershed Healing" (also supported by CECS), showing solutions to California's problems. Some changes were required due to mismatches in the data input and output requirements of certain models, which made them challenging to integrate together as intended. For example, the crop matrix in the Central Valley is now being defined by OpenAg-CV, rather than the proprietary economic model as originally intended. The code had to be re-written in python to allow it to be incorporated into Envision. Also, inflexibility in the CALVIN model required some modifications to the models which are directly coupled, such as SWAT. These changes involved compromises from multiple team members. The loss of two postdocs in rapid succession to faculty positions has slowed down the SWAT modeling. We congratulate them on joining the professorate and are in process of hiring a new postdoc. What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided?Overall, COVID-19 has continued to delay certain aspects of the project. Many of the collaborator's institutions were remote-access only for most of 2021. Travel for the overall group was limited. The 2021 annual meeting was once again held virtually due to virus transmission concerns. A graduate student on the Hawaii team also had to step away from the project due to issues relating to COVID-19. Our whole team continued to have bi-weekly meetings where students and postdocs present their progress and practice presentation skills. Anshika Kandhway went on a multi-week visit to Washington State University-Pullman to get trained on using and preparing input data for the VIC-CropSyst model. Han Guo, Anshika Kandhway, Liyin Li and Stefano Casirati all advanced to PhD Candidacy in 2021. Before departing the project due to issue relating to COVID-19, David Lewis had opportunities for training in modeling, valuation, and public speaking. How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest?Results suported by this grant have been presented at the following academic conferences and symposia: Li, L., Medellín-Azuara, J. Co-benefits of Managed Aquifer Recharge in California: Integrated Assessment of Climate and Land Use Change Impacts on Agriculture with Spatially Explicit Ecosystem Service Analysis. AGU Fall Meeting, 2021, e-poster. Safeeq, M. Managing Sierra Nevada forests for multiple benefits: New insights from modeling the interactions between wildfire, carbon sequestration, and hydrology under a changing climate, Sierra Nevada Research Institute Research Symposium, Mar 1, 2021 Safeeq, M. Building Watershed Resilience to Drought through Forest Restoration, UC Wildfire Research Symposium, Jun 4, 2021. Singh, C. K., Safeeq, M., & Conklin, M. H. (2021, December). Modelling hydrologic response to strategic agricultural land repurposing in the Tulare Lake Basin California. InAGU Fall Meeting 2021. AGU. Trujillo, E., Hedrick, A.R., Havens, S., Marks, D.G., Pierson, F.B., and Conklin, M. H. (2021, December). Where is the snow and when does it melt? Using spatially distributed SWE time series to support decision making. In AGU Fall Meeting 2021. AGU This grant has supported the following outreach talks and activities: Conklin, M.H. CA Water, Sustainable Forests and Climate Challenges, Merced Rotary Club, May 19, 2021. Fernandez-Bou, A. led a webinar on July 21, 2021 for the Climate Hazards Center at UCSB, entitled: "Understanding U3: Underrepresented, Understudied, and Underserved Frontline Communities at the Onset of Climate Change." Medellin-Azuara, J. participated in an expert panel discussion during the 2021 Flood-MAR Public Forum on November 8th, 2021, hosted by the California Department of Water Resources. Safeeq, M. Landscape-scale Resilience Strategies for Tulare Basin. The Tulare Basin Watershed Partnership Network (TBWPN) Education and Outreach, July 20, 2021. Safeeq, M. Lower Watershed Resilience in the Tulare Basin through Advanced Water Strategies, The Tulare Basin Watershed Partnership Network (TBWPN) Education and Outreach, August 4, 2021. Safeeq, M. CA EDEN Community Resilience Listening Session (Tubbs Fire, Creek Fire, Montecito mudslides), Mar 30, 2021. Safeeq, M. Drought-Risk Tracking for California Watersheds Ideas for Tracking and Communication to Support Effective Water Rights Oversight, UC Berkeley Workshop on Drought-Risk Tracking for California Watersheds, Apr 27, 2021. Safeeq, M. Forest Climate Change Resiliency Research, 2021 Climate Change Resiliency Collaboration Forum organized by the California Wildfire Task Force. Sep 24, 2021. Safeeq, M. General Circulation Models or GCMs: the basis of climate science, UC Climate Stewards. Sep 30, 2021 Safeeq, M. History of UC Cooperative Extension-Translating Research into Action. University of California Merced, July 7, 2021. Safeeq, M. Wildfire and Water Supply in California: Workshopping an Initial Research and Action Agenda. California Institute for Water Resources, UC Agriculture and Natural Resources Luskin Center for Innovation, UCLA Workshop, Sep 29, 2021. Additional activities: PI Josue Medellin-Azuara's research group performed a number of outreach and information-gathering activities with local stakeholders. They i) met with farmers and decision-makers in San Joaquin Valley to better understand their challenges and achievements. This was done in order to improve the quantitative aspects of the study by integrating the qualitative information from these stakeholders, ii) conducted interviews with community leaders and residents, attorneys, local politicians and policymakers, educators to understand their challenges and the opportunities related to disadvantaged communities of the Central Valley of California, and iii) conducted a survey with farmers with the aim of knowing potential impacts of land retirement to comply with the California Sustainable Groundwater Management Act (Fernandez-Bou et al., 2021a&b and Flores-Landeros et al., 2021). PI Josue Medellin-Azuara research group has also, since 2019, been involved with the Groundwater Technical Assistance Network, a project of the Union of Concerned Scientists, since 2019, and continued to provide support to this project in the 2021 reporting period (Union of Concerned Scientists, 2021). PI Roger Bales continues to link the condition of the Sierra Nevada headwaters to California water issues for a broad audience (e.g. Bales 2021). What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals?The overarching goals during the 2022 reporting period are to 1) finalize the various model components (Central Valley hydrology, agriculture, and water allocation, and Sierra Nevada vegetation/hydrology and recreation valuation) and their coupling within the Envision framework, 2) run the coupled model with a common set of climate projections, and analyze the results in order to address the key research questions identified in the project proposal. The Oregon State University team (Vache and Bolte) will lead the integration into the Envision framework and 3) share the results with our stakeholder community. In the Central Valley-focused part of the project, Li and Medellin-Azuara will use an interdisciplinary hydro-economic modeling framework (based around the CALVIN model) to test their hypotheses about effective climate adaptation strategies, as well as analyze the impacts of droughts on agriculture and water allocation for Central Valley. Postdoc Vivek Gupta (advised by Khan) will finalize the SWAT model for the Central Valley hydrology so that it can be integrated into the Envision modeling framework by the OSU team. Gupta will be leaving the project in the first half of 2022 to begin a faculty position, but responsibility for the SWAT portion of the project will be handed off to a TBD postdoc. Manuscripts for both the hydro-economic and Central Valley water balance are in preparation. Kandhway and her advisors Khan and Conklin will finalize the calibration and validation of the VIC-CropSyst model for the Central Valley using field observation data of select major crops. They will then simulate crop water use and changes in growth under various climate change scenarios, analyze changes in crop responses to increases in average temperatures and CO2 concentration, and formulate agricultural adaptation strategies in response to water scarcity and environmental changes. Kandhway will also begin research manuscripts based on these model results. In the Sierra Nevada-focused part of the project, Pelak with Vache and Conklin will finalize the calibration and validation of the LPJ-GUESS ecosystem model which is incorporated in the Envision framework. The LPJ-GUESS module will be run for future climate scenarios and its results analyzed. Along with W. Guo, Khan, and Shukla, this team has begun discussions on initial research manuscripts based on these results, one of which will examine the impact of including dynamic vegetation modeling by contrasting it to a model with static vegetation parameterization, and another which will seek to use the coupled model to understand the projected hydrological trends in the Sierra Nevada. W. Guo, with Khan and Bales, will finalize the updates to the management and fire disturbance models in LPJ-GUESS, which will also be incorporated into the coupled Envision framework. H. Guo, advised by Bales and Conklin, will continue to work on valuing the benefits of forest restoration, and incorporate more benefits and beneficiaries into their analysis and the framework. Han is finalizing a manuscript on the response of hydropower production to forest management in the surrounding basin. The Hawaii team, led by Comeros and Oleson, will continue to compile and summarize visitation data from the Stanislaus, Sierra, and Inyo national forests and the Yosemite and Sequoia/Kings Canyon NP. This dataset will be used to build a cost model that reflects travel mode, distance, and time to estimate travel costs. They will also (with the assistance of Pelak) produce spatial and temporal datasets of potential explanatory environmental variables. These two datasets will be combined to build an economic model expressing visitation (the dependent variable) as a function of environmental variables (independent variables) and travel cost. Projections of the future values of the independent variables will be obtained from the LPJ-GUESS model outputs, and these will be used to estimate the change in travel from future environmental changes modeled by the wildlands model (LPJ-GUESS). The Hawaii team will also work with Vache to incorporate a version of the travel cost model into the Envision modeling framework. Goulden and graduate student Norlen will increase their focus on integrating datasets from the CECS project(https://cecs.ess.uci.edu/data-atlas/) into INFEWS project. For stakeholder engagement, we will follow through the development of KTAN ((Knowledge To Action Network) using some of the outreach tools that our team has developed. Previous effort in this area involved preparing an online stakeholder survey. The survey will be administered, and the results will be analyzed. We will use these results to design workshops (up to three) where we will present water availability under different climate scenarios (CA SieVa Envision results) to stakeholders. We will be leveraging the synergy between Goulden's CECS project to facilitate the workshops and data analysis. CA SieVa Infews will be coordinating with filmmaker Jim Thebaut to present screenings of California's Watershed Healing different stakeholder audiences in 2022 and will have discussions/panels afterwards.

Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals? CA SieVa (Sierra to Valley) Infews Project collaborators have identified a series of models that will be used within the Coupled Humans and Natural Systems (CHANS) framework, and our work in 2021 has continued to focus on linking these models. The overall framework, Envision, was previously developed by the Oregon State team (consisting of PI John Bolte and research faculty Kellie Vache). Five primary models have been identified as necessary to develop a set of future scenarios that can capture the potential impact of climate change on water and energy availability in California. A description of each model, related components and progress during 2021 is given below. The integration of the models into Envision was led by Vache and assisted by Bolte. Contributors to specific components are indicated where appropriate. (1) Climate projections: With guidance from the California 4th Climate Assessment, 4 climate models that are consistent with historical data in the state were selected. Downscaled results from each of the models, for each of 2 scenarios (RCP 4.5 and 8.5) were developed, representing 8 total climate trajectories from 1950-2100. PI Shraddhanand Shukla led these efforts. (2) Central Valley water allocation: The CALVIN model is a hydro-economic model that is being used to represent water allocation to agricultural, municipal, and environmental flow uses. Work during 2021 was focused on developing code linking CALVIN to LPJGuess (the vegetation/hydrology model for the Sierra Nevada region, described below) and SWAT (Soil Water Assessment Tool, the hydrology model for the Central Valley region). The LPJGuess connections are designed to provide reservoir inflows under climate scenarios to CALVIN. The SWAT connections, while still under development, will provide water availability from CALVIN to SWAT which SWAT uses to limit the application of irrigation water under scarcity. Graduate student Liying Li and PI Josue Medellin-Azuara led the CALVIN modeling work. Vache is connecting the models. (3) Central valley hydrology: SWAT is being used to capture hydrology in the agricultural regions of the Central Valley. During 2021, a coupling was developed to integrate SWAT into Envision. SWAT was also modified to represent California seasonality (crops are produced in the dry season); a manuscript is in preparartion. The SWAT portion of this project had previously been led by postdoc Chandan Singh, who departed UC Merced to take a faculty position in Fall 2021. Subsequently, this portion of the project has been led by postdoc Vivek Gupta, with PI Safeeq Khan advising this part of the project. (4) Central Valley agriculture: The crop matrix will be defined using an economic model called OpenAG-CV, which has been extended by the Medellin-Azuara research group. During 2021, the Envision framework was expanded to include this version of the crop model. As part of this element of the work, a process to disaggregates the coarse agricultural landscape cover estimates down to a finer spatial level, in order to be consistent with the inputs to the SWAT model, was developed. This component of the modeling is currently under testing, with a focus on evaluating how changes in water availability impact the simulated crop matrix over the period captured by the climate scenarios. In parallel, graduate student Anshika Kandhway (advised by PIs Safeeq Khan and Martha Conklin) has continued to work with VIC-CropSyst agriculture/hydrology model over the Central Valley region, and in 2021 she installed the model on a high-performance computing platform, prepared input files for the crop parameters, management, soil, and climate by using remote sensing, published data and reports, secondary data, and expert communications. The VIC-CropSyst model was trained and calibrated using field observation data for the select locations and crops specific to climate, soil, and management strategies in the Central Valley, and Kandhway has obtained preliminary results for annual crops experiencing changes in their growing seasons. (5) Sierra Nevada headwaters: LPJ-GUESS is an ecosystem model that simulates snow, canopy, and soil dynamics across the upland regions of the study area. The primary coding for the inclusion of LPJ-GUESS into Envision, including linking it to a hydrologic model (Vache et al. 2021), was accomplished during earlier phases of the project, with work in 2021 focused on the development of a radiation-driven snowmelt model (led by postdoc Norman Pelak and advised by PI Martha Conklin) and the evaluation of the capacity of the model to capture the role of wildfire and management on the future landscape (led by postdoc Weichao Guo and advised by PI Safeeq Khan). In addition, Vache developed an initial model calibration focused on the simulation of inflows to the primary Rim reservoirs throughout the state of California. Our team continues to improve understanding of upland processes (e.g. Safeeq et al. 2021 and Bart et al. 2021). Using STELLA to build hydropower system models, graduate student Han Guo advised by PIs Roger Bales and Martha Conklin worked on valuation of the benefits to hydropower revenues arising from (1) improved hydrologic data (Han et al. 2021) and 2) forest restoration and building a framework for implementation of forest restoration projects. Other complementary work included postdoc Pariya Pourmohammadi and PI Safeeq Khan downloading and processing LEMMA vegetation data in order to analyze forest structure with respect to climate and landscape features (which will help constrain our modeling efforts), and graduate student Stefano Casirati (advised by PIs Safeeq Khan and Martha Conklin) working on a predictive model for tree mortality (a draft manuscript has been prepared). PI Roger Bales is exploring the use of canals for solar power generation (McKuin et al. 2021 and Bales and McKuin 2021). Also in the Sierra Nevada headwater component of the project, the Hawaii team (led by PI Kirsten Oleson and postdoc Mia Comeros, and formerly by graduate student David Lewis) worked to evaluate the effect of ecosystem, management, and climate change on recreational users' welfare. Their work aims to quantify the changes in welfare due to environmental change using a non-market valuation technique, the travel cost model (TCM). During this reporting period, the team experienced a significant setback with the departure of Lewis due to issues related to COVID-19. Unfortunately, no data, code, nor products were handed over to the PI. However, a research fellow (Mia Comeros) was recently hired to take over this part of the project. The team has obtained public visitation datasets for several national forests that lie partly or entirely within the modeling region of the Sierra Nevada. These datasets will enable them to build an individual travel cost model to predict the welfare impacts of future environmental change. The UC Irvine team, led by PI Mike Goulden, has worked to improve understanding of the role of upland ecosystems in California's hydrology and biogeochemistry. They are contributing to the INFEWS project in three ways: 1) creating and sharing data sets that map California's water balance and biogeochemistry; this work is leveraged by the Center for Ecosystem Climate Solutions (CECS) and will be used to validate our models, 2) collaborating with other INFEWS researchers to improve representation of ecosystem function in their research, and 3) UCI Graduate student Carl Norlen advised by Goulden is conducting analyses of the ecological function of California's upland ecosystems.

Publications

  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2021 Citation: Bart, R.R., Ray, R.L., Conklin, M.H., Safeeq, M., Saksa, P.C., Tague, C.L., Bales, R.C. 2021). Assessing the effects of forest biomass reductions on forest health and streamflow. Hydrological Processes. 35:e14114. 2/25/2021
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2021 Citation: Fernandez-Bou, A., Ortiz-Partida, J.P., Classen-Rodr�guez, L.M., Pells, C., Dobbin, K.B., Espinoza, V., Rodr�guez-Flores, J.M., Thao, C., Hammond Wagner, C., Fencl, A., Flores-Landeros, H., Maskey, M.L., Cole, S.A., Azamian, S., Gami�o, E., Guzman, A., Alvarado, A.G.F., Campos-Martinez, M.S., Weintraub, C., Sandoval, E., Dahlquist-Willard, R., Bernacchi, L., Naughton, C.C., DeLugan, R.M., Medell�n-Azuara, J. 3 challenges, 3 errors, and 3 solutions to integrate frontline communities in climate change policy and research: Lessons from California. Frontiers in Climate, 2021. https://doi.org/10.3389/fclim.2021.717554
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2021 Citation: Fernandez-Bou, A., Ortiz-Partida, J.P., Dobbin, K.B., Flores-Landeros, H., Bernacchi, L., Medell�n-Azuara, J. Underrepresented, understudied, underserved: gaps and opportunities for advancing justice in disadvantaged communities. Environmental Science & Policy, 2021. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.envsci.2021.04.041
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2021 Citation: Flores-Landeros, H., Pells, C., Campos-Martinez, M.S., Fern�ndez-Bou, A., Ortiz-Partida, J.P., Medell�n-Azuara, J. Community perspectives and environmental justice in Californias San Joaquin Valley. Environmental Justice, 2021. https://doi.org/10.1089/env.2021.0005
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2021 Citation: Guo, H., Conklin, M., Maurer, T., Avanzi, F., Richards, K., Bales, R. Valuing Enhanced Hydrologic Data and Forecasting for Informing Hydropower Operations. Water 2021, 13, 2260.
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Under Review Year Published: 2022 Citation: Guo, W., Safeeq, M., Liu, H., Wu, X., Cui, G., Ma, Q., Goulden, M., Lindeskog, M., Bales, R. Mechanisms controlling carbon sinks in semi-arid mountain ecosystems. Global Biogeochemical Cycles
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Submitted Year Published: 2022 Citation: LaFontaine, J., Vache, K., Jackson, C. 2022. Effects of climate and streamflow uncertainty on the distribution of fitness indices of perfect models. Water Resources Research.
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Accepted Year Published: 2022 Citation: Maskey, M.L., Medellin-Azuara, J,. Dogan, M.S., Guzman, A., Li, L., Fern�ndez-Bou, A.S., Arnold, W., Goharian, E. Managing aquifer recharge to overcome overdraft in the Lower American River, California, USA. Water.
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2021 Citation: McKuin B., Zumkehr A., Ta J., Bales R., Viers J.H., Pathak T., Campbell J.E. Energy and water co-benefits from covering canals with solar panels. Nature Sustainability. 2021 Jul; 4(7):609-17.
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Submitted Year Published: 2022 Citation: Norlen, C. and Goulden, M. Recent tree mortality inoculates semi-arid conifer forests against subsequent drought exposure. Communications Earth and Environment.
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Under Review Year Published: 2022 Citation: Pelak, N., Sohrabi, M., Safeeq, M., Conklin, M. Improving snow water equivalent simulations in an alpine basin by blending precipitation gauge and snow pillow measurements. Hydrological Processes
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2021 Citation: Safeeq, M., Bart, R. R., Pelak, N. F., Singh, C. K., Dralle, D. N., Hartsough, P., & Wagenbrenner, J. W. 2021. How realistic are water balance closure assumptions? A demonstration from the southern Sierra Critical Zone Observatory and Kings River Experimental Watersheds. Hydrological Processes, 35(5), e14199
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2021 Citation: Vache, K., Meles, M.B., Griffiths, N.A. and Jackson, C.R., 2021. Ensemble modeling of watershed-scale hydrologic effects of short-rotation woody crop production. Biofuels, Bioproducts and Biorefining, 15(5), pp.1345-1359.
  • Type: Other Status: Published Year Published: 2021 Citation: Union of Concerned Scientists, 2021. Climate Change in the San Joaquin Valley: A Household and Community Guide to Taking Action was published in English and Spanish by the Union of Concerned Scientists in collaboration with Angel Santiago Fernandez-Bou and Mahesh Maskey.
  • Type: Other Status: Published Year Published: 2021 Citation: Bales, R. and McGuin, B. Installing solar panels over Californias canals could yield water, land, air and climate payoffs. The Conversation. May 3rd, 2021.
  • Type: Other Status: Published Year Published: 2021 Citation: Bales, R. California's water supplies are in trouble as climate change worsens natural dry spells, especially in the Sierra Nevada. The Conversation. December 7th, 2021.
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Under Review Year Published: 2022 Citation: Spatial and temporal features of snow water equivalent across a headwater catchment in the Sierra Nevada. Water Resources Research


Progress 01/01/20 to 12/31/20

Outputs
Target Audience:Our efforts during this reporting period reached the research community through the research papers and conference presentations which are discussed further in the rest of the report. PhD student Guo collaborated with utilities and natural resource managers in his hydropower work. The survey work and resulting reports conducted by postdoc Fernandez-Bou and the Medellin-Azuara research group reached a wide variety of stakeholders, including farmers, policy makers, science communicators, and educators. Presentations by PIs Bales, Conklin, and Safeeq reached policymakers, natural resouce managers, and other stakeholders. Changes/Problems:This has been further discussed in the project accomplishments and future plans section, but a brief summary follows. Several delays have occurred in this project as a result of the ongoing coronavirus pandemic. These included the inability to hold meetings, such as the 2020 Annual Meeting and planned stakeholder meetings in person, as well as the inability of individual team members to travel between institutions to collaborate more closely, due to stay-at-home order and other public health restrictions, and the general disruption to work routines and schedules resulting from switching to work-from-home and abiding by stay-at-home orders. As many components of the project are linked and interdependent, delays in one part of the project inevitably result in delays to the next component. Additionally, while this project initially envisioned a coupled model for the entire Sierra Nevada-Central Valley uplands-storage-croplands system, most of the modeling groups have decided to limit this spatial extent, for a variety of reasons. Most of the project subgroups are planning to focus on the San Joaquin Valley and Tulare Basin, which still comprises two of the three major river basins in the Central Valley. The primary obstacle to including the third basin, the Sacramento, is the complexity of the water transfer system in this basin and the difficulty of projecting it into the future scenarios with the CALVIN hydro-economic model. What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided?This project has provided a number of opportunities for training and professional development. PI Medellin-Azuara's research group hosted a CALVIN modeling workshop, taught by Dr. Mustafa S. Dogan, from August 10-21, 2020. This workshop covered the fundamentals of the CALVIN model and provided opportunities for attendees to obtain guidance on their specific uses of the model. It was attended by Medellin-Azuara, Fernandez-Bou, Maskey, Singh, and Vache. Several members of the group (Singh, Pelak, Kandhway, Safeeq, Conklin, Bales) attended a software carpentry workshop on the Python-based JuPyter notebook, presented by UC Merced Library to the UC Merced Mountain Hydrology Research Group on March 31, 2020. Fernandez-Bou and Maskey both attended various Flood-MAR (Flood-Managed Aquifer Recharge) workshops held throughout 2020, as well as participating in the short course "Introduction to Groundwater, Watersheds, and Groundwater Sustainability Plans" presented by UC Davis in May 2020. Fernandez-Bou has participated in the Groundwater Technical Assistance Network, organized by the Union of Concerned Scientists, since 2019. Maskey participated in trainings on using hyperspectral remote sensing imagery hosted by UC ANR. Kandhway met virtually with developers of and researchers who are using the CropSyst cropping model at Washington State University at various points throughout 2020 in order to receive training on setting up a stand-alone version of the model. Singh attended the Open-source GIS workshop, hosted by the UC Merced Spatial Analysis and Research Center (SpARC) on April 20th, 2020. The primary training from the integrated modeling team has been focused on group collaborators and has included initial training with the CHANS model for the uplands subgroup. Guo, whose portion of the project is concerned with reservoir operation, has engaged with stakeholders of this project to understand their concerns and relevant information, which primarily consisted of meeting with reservoir operators from PCWA and PG&E. Lewis completed a SESYNC (National Socio-Economic Synthesis Center) course on Agent Based Modeling. Several members of the team from various subgroups, including PIs Tapan Pathak, Conklin, and Medellin-Azuara, postdocs Pelak, Maskey, and Singh, and PhD students Kandhway, Guo, and Lewis have also formed a working group on stakeholder engagement, which has thus far focused on identifying key stakeholders and their main concerns and challenges, and which will form the basis for future meetings with stakeholders to receive feedback on the project and to direct the overall project so that it can best address the needs of stakeholders. Methods and insights developed for stakeholder engagement in Shukla et al. 2020 have assisted the group in its work. Additionally, the annual project meeting was held virtually on October 30th, 2020. The meeting began with a series of brief overviews of the current state of the project from the main subgroups as well as a presentation from PI Mike Goulden on the complementary CECS (California Ecosystem Climate Solutions) project. Part of Goulden's complementary work involved building various data layers for California and was also supported by PhD student Carl Norlen. The meeting then divided into breakout groups with more focused topics, followed by a final discussion on the findings of the breakout groups and the overall direction of the project. The inability of team members to travel due to the ongoing coronavirus pandemic delayed some professional development opportunities that would have otherwise occurred during this reporting period. In particular, Kandhway intended to travel to Washington State University for a period to work with the CropSyst development team in-person. A similar exchange was planned between the Oregon State and UC Merced groups to work on the coupled Envision model development, which would have facilitated faster progress, and instead had to occur remotely. How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest?The results of this project have been disseminated to communities of interest via a variety of presentations, from technical conference presentations to webinars given to water agencies. The citations of these presentations are given below: Bales, R. (2020). Economic Drivers of Sustainable Forest Management Matter for California's Headwaters, Association of California Water Agencies webinar, October 2020. Bales, R. (2020). How California's geography & climate shape our water security,California Water Environmental Association webinar, August 2020. Bales, R. (2020). Predicting mountain-ecosystem response to disturbance through scaling subsurface water-storage capacity. UC Davis Hydrologic Sciences Graduate Group Seminar Series. Davis, CA. April 2020. Bales, R. (2020). Predicting mountain-ecosystem response to disturbance through scaling subsurface water-storage capacity. 2020 CZO Webinar Series on Sustainability. April 2020 Bales, R., Conklin, M.H., (2020). Water Impact assessment & scaling, French Meadows Project Partners Science Symposium, zoom, August 2020. Bart, R. and Safeeq, M. (2020). Evaluating the effects of forest fuel treatments on forest health and streamflow. 2020 CARCD Annual Conference. Bart, R. R., Tague, C. N., Burke, W., Kennedy, M. C., Wagenbrenner, J., & Safeeq, M. (2020). Evaluating how climate-induced changes in wildfire regimes affect forest hydrology in the Sierra Nevada. AGU Fall Meeting, 2020. Conklin, M. H. (2020). Calforest 2020: "Science-based watershed perspectives," California Forest Association, Panel: Forest Health and Water Management, Sacramento, California, February 2020. Conklin, M.H., (2020). "Environmental Engineering for the 21st Century: Addressing Grand Challenges", International Conference on Advances in Civil Engineering Visvesvaraya National Institute of Technology (VNIT), Nagpur, India, zoom, November 2020 (invited). Conklin, M.H., Bart, R., Guo, W. (2020). Building local capacity to restore forest resiliency to drought and high-intensity wildfire, PGE 2017 Better Together Resilient Communities Roundtable, zoom, December 2020. Conklin, M.H., Enstice, N., Reintjes, D. (2020). Healthy Forests for All, Sacramento Water Forum II. Zoom, November 2020. Fernandez-Bou, Ortiz-Partida, Flores-Landeros, Dobbin, Bernacchi, Medellín-Azuara. (2020). Underrepresented, underserved, understudied: why efforts to help disadvantaged communities are too little, too late. AGU Fall Meeting, 2020. Leathers, K., Safeeq, M., Herbst, D., & Ruhi, A. (2020). Low-flow driven temperature variation in headwater streams: insights from spatial and long?term temporal data in the Sierra Nevada. AGU Fall Meeting, 2020. Lugg, J.; Safeeq, M. (2020). Mitigating the Lasting Effects of Wildfire. Tulare Basin Watershed Partnership Network eNewsletter. Fall 2020. 11/18/2020. https://www.tularebasinwatershedpartnership.org/ Maskey, M. L., Medellin-Azuara, J., Dogan, M. S., Guzman, A., Fernandez-Bou, A. S., & Goharian, E. Investigating benefits from additional recharge facilities within the American River Basin. AGU Fall Meeting, 2020. Pelak, N.F., Safeeq, M., Sohrabi, M., Conklin, M.H. (2020). Improving Snowpack Simulations in an Alpine Basin by Blending Precipitation Gauge and Snow Pillow Measurements, Yosemite Hydroclimate Meeting 2020. Safeeq, M. (2020) Addressing Climate Change for the Region and the World, SNRI Research Week Seminar 3/2/2020. Safeeq, M. (2020). Effects of Forest Management on Water and Sediment Yield, webinar to Sierra Club Conservation Committee (CCC) State Forests Issues Sub-Committee. 11/9/2020. Safeeq, M. (2020). Watershed Management, Silver Solutions Webinar Series, UC ANR. http://ciwr.ucanr.edu/Silver_Solutions/ Safeeq, M. and Guo, W. (2020). Hydrologic Vulnerability to Climate Change in the Sierra Nevada. 2020 CARCD Annual Conference. Safeeq, M., (2020). Climate change impact and adaptive management of California's source watersheds, a presentation to Olam Spices Group. Serano, D.J., Maskey, M. L., Sivakumar, B., Medellin-Azuara, & Puente, C. E. (2020) Revisiting the Fractal-Multifractal method in describing geometries of precipitation and temperature: Case of global circulation models outputs. AGU Fall Meeting, 2020. What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals?The primary coding goal for the integrated modeling team during the next reporting period is the incorporation of the SWAP model into the framework. This should complete the framework development, in that it will then include all key sub-models. Once that occurs, the next task is to work to ensure that the coupled models, each of which will have been calibrated independently, produce acceptable results. In addition, data resources that will be shared by different models will be identified, and the code necessary to facilitate the sharing will be developed. Both model linking, and subsequent calibration/verification will require detailed discussion with sub-model experts who will need to define how each model is parameterized within the coupled system. In addition, in 2021 the research team will begin to develop model scenarios, which will be evaluated through analysis of results produced by the coupled model. This component of the project will be led by the Oregon State team, Vache and Bolte. Other project team members will contribute to work related to their relevant sub-models: Pelak will work on the Uplands modeling (LPJ-GUESS), improving the hydrological representation in the model to better capture the impacts of vegetation dynamics on snowpack accumulation and canopy interception, and running the model under future climate scenarios in order to provide the water supply for the downstream modeling teams. Guo will deepen the STELLA hydropower model and incorporate it into the water supply and allocation model for the upland hydropower system in the Central Valley, continue to engage with stakeholders in terms of water supply and allocation to detail the research objectives (primarily with water agencies from Central Valley area), and map the water-related ecosystem services, including hydropower, municipal, and agriculture, in order to support ecosystem-water-food-energy nexus. Maskey will contribute to the hydroeconomic modeling (CALVIN), integrating the SWAT, SWAP, and CALVIN models, and will perform an economic and environmental assessment of existing hydropower facilities in the Central Valley of the California. Singh will contribute to the integration of surface water and groundwater models using SWAT-MODFLOW model, and run this model under different climate scenarios. Kandhway will focus on calibrating the CropSyst model using field observation data for more crops in the Central Valley's specific climate, soils and management strategies. She will run the VIC-CropSyst model under various future climate scenarios, analyzing changes in crop responses to increase in average minimum and maximum temperatures as well as CO2 concentration in the atmosphere, as well as changes in water use and yield by crops under various climate change scenarios. She will also formulate adaptation strategies in agriculture in response to water scarcity and environmental changes, and work on a manuscript research paper consisting of these results. The recreation and ecosystem services group, led by Lewis and Oleson, aims to evaluate the effect of ecosystem, management, and climate change on recreational users' welfare, and will quantify the changes in value using the non-market valuation technique of a travel cost model (TCM). Historical ecological, climate, and management data will be coupled with historical visitation and tourism data to identify changes in recreational value and user's behavior. These values and behavioral trends will be input into a willingness to pay model with INFEWS climate and scenario forecasts to predict recreational welfare implications. Due to the previously mentioned delays in the uplands modeling as well as delays relating to the pandemic, the willingness to pay model may not be completed until later in the project than indicated in the proposal. The specificity of the travel cost model employed will be determined by the data available and collected during the next reporting period. The main research questions will be: 1) What is the welfare change to recreationalists from ecosystem changes related to alternative forest management and climate change scenarios?, 2) What is the welfare change to recreational users from environmental changes such as fire, drought, and air quality?, and 3) Are there differences in welfare changes between user groups based on demographics, locality, or socioeconomic status? The stakeholder-focused subgroup has set a target of holding a first stakeholder meeting in Spring 2021. In preparation for this, they plan to send out a survey in early 2021 to a broad group of stakeholders in order to gather more information about their concerns and interests and to identify those who are interested in engaging further with the project. The coronavirus pandemic will continue to impact our progress during the next reporting period. In particular, the planned stakeholder meeting in Spring 2021 will be held virtually. We are optimistic that this format will still be effective, but it will present additional challenges, and will likely require us to engage with fewer stakeholders at a time in order to not overwhelm the attendees with a large virtual meeting. Other in-person meetings will also be delayed indefinitely. If travel is permissible under governmental and institutional restrictions, Kandhway will travel to Washington State to meet with the CropSyst team, and there will be an exchange between the Oregon State and UC Merced-based teams (either Vache will travel to Merced or others will visit Corvallis). While this project initially envisioned a coupled model for the entire Sierra Nevada-Central Valley uplands-storage-croplands system, most of the modeling groups have decided to limit this spatial extent, for a variety of reasons. Most of the project subgroups are planning to focus on the San Joaquin Valley and Tulare Basin, which still comprises two of the three major river basins in the Central Valley. The primary obstacle to including the third basin, the Sacramento, is the complexity of the water transfer system in this basin and the difficulty of projecting it into the future scenarios with the CALVIN hydro-economic model. Narrowing the spatial extent of this project will also allow us to produce a more targeted final product. Additionally, the innovations developed in this project for the general modeling framework as well as the decision-support tool which is being developed can still be extended to other basins, possibly even those outside of California, in the future.

Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals? The development and application of a Coupled Human and Natural Systems (CHANS) model, which consists of a number of hydrological and agricultural models linked together under the Envision modeling framework, has continued under the leadership of the OSU team, consisting of PI John Bolte and Kellie Vache, and will be used to help evaluate a set of questions proposed by the project. Project collaborators have identified a series of models that will be used within the coupled framework. This work has focused on developing strategies to link these models in the framework. There are 4 primary models that have been identified as necessary. (1) CALVIN is a hydroeconomic model that is being used to represent the allocation of water to agricultural, municipal, and environmental flow uses, and is being run as a framework plugin. (2) SWAT is a model that captures hydrology in the agricultural regions of the valley. A facility for passing data between Envision and SWAT has been developed. (3) The crop matrix will be defined using an economic model called SWAP, and an initial wrapper for the upcoming SWAP code was developed during 2020. (4) LPJ-GUESS is an ecosystem model that simulates vegetation and hydrology across the upland regions. The primary coding for the inclusion of LPJ-GUESS was accomplished during earlier phases of the project, though continued refinements were made during 2020. Additionally, Vache and postdoc Norman Pelak have worked to examine the effectiveness of the snow submodel of LPJ-GUESS. Pelak has learned how to use the LPJ-GUESS model to support the headwater response under different scenarios that will be performed in the next phase of the project. The results will be compared to snow modeling results for the Kings River Basin, which Pelak is performing as a separate analysis that is complementary to this INFEWS project (Pelak et al.). Pelak was co-supervised by PIs Conklin and Safeeq. Data and insights from complementary work involving PIs on this project was also utilized (Avanzi et al. 2020, Bart et al. 2020, Ma et al. 2020, Safeeq et al., Saksa et al. 2020, Vache et al., Wagenbrenner et al., Wlostowski et al. 2020. PI Shraddhanand Shukla assisted the uplands working group, as well as other groups, with obtaining and analyzing downscaled climate projection data, which will be used to drive the modeling runs for future climate scenarios. He also carried out related work in Williams et al. 2020. Postdoc Mahesh Maskey has also worked with the team from OSU to prepare the preliminary framework to integrate climate, economics, environmental, and hydrology in a single computational platform (Maskey et al.). PhD student Han Guo has worked to analyze and the water-related ecosystem services to support the ecosystem-water-food-energy nexus in the Central Valley. This work has included (1) a literature reviews to analyze the ecosystem services, (2) building a model of the hydropower system to simulate the reservoir operation's impact on the power generation revenue using the STELLA modeling tool on the Middle Fork American Project owned by Placer County Water Agency, and (3) analyzing the economic benefits of using an improved hydrologic model to the hydropower system in the Feather River Basin with the collaboration with PG&E. Postdoc Angel Fernandez-Bou has worked primarily in stakeholder outreach during this reporting period (Fernandez-Bou et al., Ortiz-Partida et al.). He and his team have conducted interviews related to disadvantaged communities of the Central Valley to understand their challenges. The interviews included community leaders and residents, attorneys, local politicians and policymakers, educators, and personnel from nonprofit organizations working. A survey was also conducted with farmers with the aim of knowing potential impacts of policy changes. These surveys and interviews were partially supported by complementary grants, and related works include Garza-Diaz et al., Maskey et al., and Ortiz-Partida et al. 2020. Maskey, Guo, and Fernandez-Bou have performed their work under the supervision of PI Josue Medellin-Azuara (Guo is also supervised by PI Roger Bales). PhD student Anshika Kandhway is working to study the impact of climate change on the main crops grown in the San Joaquin Valley. This included (1) a literature survey, (2) gathering field data and communicating with crop experts, and (3) calibrating the CropSyst model for the main crops using field observation data that is specific to Central Valley (complementary to Kandhway's work is Pathak et al. 2020). Postdoc Chandan Singh is working to develop a coupled groundwater-surface water model (related to his previous work in Singh et al. 2020). The goal is to develop an integrated hydrological model of the Central Valley. One of the major aspects of this research is to prepare the model of Central Valley under various land/crop and water management scenarios. This is being done using SWAT-MODFLOW, a hydrological model that combines SWAT with spatially explicit groundwater flow for the Central Valley. The ongoing hydrological framework envisages that an integrated model provides a better platform for policy, operations, and other related issues. The evapotranspiration and other water balance estimates of Tulare Lake basin were improved, and management and hydrological parameters that strongly influence evapotranspiration estimates were identified (Singh et al.). Kandhway and Singh were both supervised by PIs Conklin and Safeeq in this work. PhD student David Lewis, supervised by PI Kirsten Oleson, has focused on conducting a valuation of the key ecosystem services to provide information about the economic costs and benefits of alternative land management and climate scenarios. During this period, they have scoped the valuation area to three National Forests: Stanislaus, Sierra, and Inyo; and two National Parks: Yosemite, and Sequoia/Kings Canyon. Additionally, they conducted a literature review, identified a travel cost model as a valuation method, identified and acquired preliminary data sources, contacted park and forest managers, and collaborated with the wildlands modeling team. Overall, the progress on many of the project goals was hampered by the coronavirus pandemic. Aside from the general disruptions to normal work life which affected everyone involved in this project, the inability to hold meetings in person slowed progress the most. This is a large, multi-university project, which in ordinary times would have involved team members traveling between their respective institutions to collaborate more closely on project goals, such as integrating different models into the coupled Envision modeling framework. Specifically, this slowing down of collaboration impacted Tasks 3.1a-3.1c (Wildland Methods - Better understand climate-vegetation interactions in wildlands, Storage Methods - Develop reservoir-hydropower system model, Cropland Methods - Improve central valley hydrologic and crop modeling system) and therefore also 3.1d (Systemwide Methods - Dynamic model integration), as the dynamic model integration, such as the economic/recreation modeling, which depends directly on the Wildlands modeling. The completion of these tasks will likely be pushed later into the 2021 and 2022 reporting periods than originally planned. The pandemic also required that the 2020 Annual Meeting be held virtually, which, while it achieved its purpose of communicating the results between different components of the project and planning for the future, was not as effective as an in-person meeting would have been. The original project plan called for three stakeholder meetings (referred to in the project proposal as KTAN--Knowledge To Action Networks). While we still aim to have multiple meetings, the first meeting is scheduled to take place in Spring 2021 (this is due not only to the pandemic delay but also to an earlier delay in securing the project funding).

Publications

  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2020 Citation: Avanzi, F., Maurer, T., Glaser, S.D., Bales, R.C., Conklin, M.H. (2020). Information content of spatially distributed ground-based measurements for hydrologic-parameter calibration in mixed rain-snow mountain headwaters, Journal of Hydrology, 582, 10.1016/j.jhydrol.2019.124478, 2020.
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2020 Citation: Bart, R. R., Safeeq, M., Wagenbrenner, J. W., & Hunsaker, C. T. (2020). Do fuel treatments decrease forest mortality or increase streamflow? A case study from the Sierra Nevada (USA). Ecohydrology, e2254.
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2020 Citation: Ma, Q., Bales, R.C., Rungee, J., Conklin, M.H., Collins, B.M., Goulden, M. (2020). Wildfire controls on evapotranspiration in Californias Sierra Nevada, Journal of Hydrology, 590, 10.1016/j.jhydrol.2020.125364.
  • Type: Book Chapters Status: Published Year Published: 2020 Citation: Ortiz-Partida, J. P., Maskey, M. L., & Virgen-Urcelay, A. (2020). Recent Approaches to Robust Water Resources Management under Hydroclimatic Uncertainty. In Managing Water Resources and Hydrological Systems (pp. 511-517). CRC Press.
  • Type: Other Status: Published Year Published: 2020 Citation: Ortiz-Partida, J.P., Weintraub, Fernandez-Bou, A.S., Maskey, M.L. (2020) Climate Change in the San Joaquin Valley. A Household and Community Guide to Taking Action. Union of Concerned Scientists. Published on October 29, 2020.
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Accepted Year Published: 2020 Citation: Pathak, T. B., Maskey, M. L., & Rijal, J. P. (2020). Impact of climate change on navel Orangeworm, a Major Pest of tree nuts in California. Science of The Total Environment, 142657.
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2020 Citation: Saksa, P., Bales, R.C., Tague, C.L., Battles, J., Tobin, B., Conklin, M.H. Fuels treatment and wildfire effects on runoff from Sierra Nevada mixed-conifer forests, Ecohydrology, 10.1002/eco.2151, 2020.
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2020 Citation: Saksa, P., Conklin, M.H., Tague, C.L., Bales, R.C. (2020). Hydrologic Response of Sierra Nevada Mixed-Conifer Headwater Catchments to Vegetation Treatments and Wildfire in a Warming Climate, Frontiers in Forests and Global Change, doi.org/10.3389/ffgc.2020.539429
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2020 Citation: Singh, C., & Katpatal, Y. (2020). A Review of the Historical Background, Needs, Design approaches and Future Challenges in Groundwater Level Monitoring Networks. Journal of Engineering Science and Technology Review, 13, 135153.
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2020 Citation: Shukla, S., Arsenault, K. R., Hazra, A., Peters-Lidard, C., Koster, R. D., Davenport, F., ... & Getirana, A. (2020). Improving early warning of drought-driven food insecurity in southern Africa using operational hydrological monitoring and forecasting products. Natural Hazards & Earth System Sciences, 20(4).
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2020 Citation: Williams E., Funk, C., Shukla, S. and McEvoy, D. (2020). Quantifying human-induced temperature impacts on the 2018 United States Four Corners hydrologic and agro-pastoral drought, Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society Vol. 101, No. 1, S11S16, DOI: 10.1175/BAMS-D-19-0187.1
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2020 Citation: Wlostowski, N. A.; Molotch, N.; Anderson, P. S.; Brantley, S.; Chorover, J.; Dralle, D.; Kumar, P.; Li, L.; Lohse, K.; Mallard, M. J.; McIntosh, C. J.; Murphy, F. S.; Parrish, E.; Safeeq, M.; Seyfried, M.; Shi, Y.; and Harman, C. (2020). Signatures of Hydrologic Function Across the Critical Zone Observatory Network. Water Resources Research. WRCR24937.
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Under Review Year Published: 2021 Citation: Fernandez-Bou, A.S., Ortiz-Partida, J.P., Flores-Landeros, H., Dobbin, K.B., Bernacchi, L.A., Medell�n-Azuara, J. Underrepresented, underserved, understudied: gaps and opportunities for advancing solutions for disadvantaged communities.
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Under Review Year Published: 2021 Citation: Flores-Landeros, H., Fernandez-Bou, A.S., Ortiz-Partida, J.P. Understanding the Environmental and Socioeconomic Outlook of the Central Valley of California: Interviews with Community Members and their Allies.
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Other Year Published: 2021 Citation: Garza-D�az, L. E., Arroyo-Esquivel, J. E., Maskey, M. L., P�rez-Vite, S., Sandoval-Solis, S., Puente, C. E. Encoding the functional flow components of a river basins natural flow regime using the Fractal Multifractal approach.
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Other Year Published: 2021 Citation: Pelak, N.F., Sohrabi, M., Safeeq, M., and Conklin, M. Improving snow water equivalent simulations in an alpine basin by blending precipitation gauge and snow pillow measurements.
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Under Review Year Published: 2021 Citation: Safeeq, M., Bart, R., Pelak, N., Singh, C.K., Dralle, D., Wagenbrenner, J. How realistic are water-balance closure assumptions? A demonstration from the southern Sierra Critical Zone Observatory and Kings River Experimental Watersheds.
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Other Year Published: 2021 Citation: Singh, C., Safeeq, M., and Conklin, M. Evapotranspiration predictability of hydrologic model improves using remotely sensed leaf area index. In preparation.
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Other Year Published: 2021 Citation: Lewis, D.D., Pelak, N.F., Bales, R.C., Oleson, K.L.L. Historic Impacts of Ecosystem Changes on Recreational Ecosystem Services in the Sierra Nevadas.
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Other Year Published: 2021 Citation: Maskey, M. L., Medellin-Azuara, J., Dogan, M. S., Guzman, A., Landores, H. F., Gonzales, E., & Goharian, E. Investigating hydroeconomic impacts from additional recharge facilities on water delivery.
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Other Year Published: 2021 Citation: Maskey, M. L., Singh, C., Fernandez-Bou, A. S., Conklin, M., Vache, K. B., Khan, S., and Medellin-Azuara, J. A framework for integrating groundwater hydrology and irrigation demand in a regional hydro economic model.
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Other Year Published: 2021 Citation: Ortiz-Partida, J.P., Fernandez-Bou, A.S., Rodriguez-Flores, J.M., Maskey, M.L., Sandoval-Sol�s, Medell�n-Azuara, J. Hydro-economic modeling of water resources management challenges: current applications and future directions.
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Under Review Year Published: 2021 Citation: Vache, K, M. Bitew, N Griffiths, C Jackson. Ensemble modeling of watershed-scale hydrologic effects of short-rotation woody crop production. Under review (Biomass and Bioenergy).
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Under Review Year Published: 2021 Citation: Wagenbrenner, J. W., Dralle, D.; Safeeq M., & Hunsaker, C. T. 2020 "The Kings River Experimental Watersheds: Infrastructure and data. Under review (Hydrological processes).
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Other Year Published: 2021 Citation: Fernandez-Bou, A.S., Rodr�guez-Flores, J.M., Guzman, A., Ortiz-Partida, J.P., Medell�n-Azuara, J. Transforming disadvantage in opportunity: How to bring environmental justice and socioeconomic performance to disadvantaged communities.
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Other Year Published: 2021 Citation: Fernandez-Bou, A.S., J. Pablo Ortiz-Partida, J.P., Classen-Rodriguez, L.M., Dobbin, K.B., Espinoza, V., Rodr�guez-Flores, J.M., Maskey, M.L., Fencl, A., Cole, S., Flores-Landeros, H., Thao, C., Pells, C., Bernacchi, L., Naughton, C.C., DeLugan, R.M., Medell�n-Azuara, J. Integrating disadvantaged community needs in climate change and technical research. In preparation.
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Other Year Published: 2021 Citation: Maskey, M.L.,Medell�n-Azuara, J, Dogan, M.S., Guzman, A., Santos, N., Fernandez-Bou, A.S., and Goharian, E. Investigating hydro-economic impacts from additional recharge facilities on water delivery.
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Other Year Published: 2021 Citation: Maskey, M.L., Viers, J.H., Medell�n-Azuara, J, Rallings, A., Wills, A., Durado, G.F., Rheinheimer, D. Investing hydrological alterations due to hydropower facilities.


Progress 01/01/19 to 12/31/19

Outputs
Target Audience:Our efforts during this reporting period reached the research community through the research papers and conferencepresentations which are discussed further in the rest of the report. Via screenings of the Beyond the Brink and California Watersheds documentaries, we reached a wide audience, including farmers, science communicators, educators, and likely others. Presentations by Pis Bales and Conklin at the California-United Water Conference reached water agencies, natural resource managers, and policymakers. PI Conklin and co-PI Medellin-Azuara, at the Contemporary Groundwater Issues Council Meeting, reached natural resourcemanagers, utilities representatives, city managers and urban planners, and policymakers. Changes/Problems: Nothing Reported What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided?In June 2019, Co-PI Safeeq and postdoc Maribeth Kniffin attended a WRF-Hydro workshop in Boulder, CO. This model was under consideration for use as the hydrologic model to use in the Envision modeling framework. Ultimately, this model was not chosen, but their attendance was useful in helping the team make a final decision. How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest?Scientific results funded wholly or partly by this project were presented at a number of conferences, listed below: · Guo, W., Safeeq, M., Bales, R. C., Cui, G., & Ma, Q. Simulating water-carbon interactions in a Mediterranean mountain ecosystem using a dynamic global vegetation model. AGU Fall Meeting 2019. · Safeeq, M., Livneh, B., Bart, R., Singh, C.K., and Shukla, S. Assessment of hydrologic impacts of climate change in the Sierra Nevada: comparisons between radiative change and CO2fertilization. AGU Fall Meeting 2019. · Bales, Roger C., Conklin, M.H., et al. "Understanding and valuing sustainability in the critical zone." AGU Fall Meeting 2019. · Ma, Qin, et al. "Wildfire Controls on Water and Carbon Balance in California's Sierra Nevada." AGU Fall Meeting 2019. · Norlen, Carl August, and Michael Goulden. "Self-thinning decreases the effect of subsequent drought on forest dieback." AGU Fall Meeting 2019. PI Conklin and Co-PI Bales participated in developing the scope and content of, and were featured in, the documentary "Beyond the Brink," which was released in April 2018 and covers the challenges facing California from climate change, aging infrastructure, and population growth. The documentary is currently available on Amazon Prime. In September 2019, a screening of the documentary "Beyond the Brink" was held on the UC Merced campus, featuring a post-movie panel including PI Conklin. PI Conklin and Co-PI Bales participated in a similar way in a follow-up short documentary film entitled "California's Watersheds," which covers the importance of watershed management under a changing climate. INFEWS PIs have given talks to a variety of audiences on topics relating to the INFEWS project, summarized below: · Conklin, M (2019). Current vs historical situation, potential runoff changes, water impacts, and opportunities for storage. California-United Water Conference. Auburn, CA. · Bales, R. (2019). Evaluating and partitioning the multi-sectoral benefits of forest restoration; including wildfire risk, erosion, air quality, forest health & resilience, and carbon storage. California-United Water Conference. Auburn, CA. · Pathak, T.B. 2019. Integrating climate change in California Cooperative Extension. Capacity building workshop for UC ANR academics on climate change. UC Merced. · PI Conklin was on a panel at the 2019 Spring Conference and Exhibition Association of California Water Agencies in Monterrey, CA from May 7-9. The panel was called "Water Industry Trends: How the Forest Resilience Bond Can Protect California's Critical Water Resources." The audience was California Water Agencies. PI Conklin and Co-PI Medellin-Azuara attended the 2019 Contemporary Groundwater Issues Council meeting at the UC Davis campus. · Co-PI Goulden participated in a workshop convened by the California Natural Resources Agency (CNRA) in Sacramento on November 15, 2019 to facilitate connections between CA state agencies and university researchers working on managing CA forests for climate change. A project website has been developed (https://infews.ucmerced.edu) as well as a Twitter handle (@UCM_INFEWS). Co-PI Bales also co-wrote a letter on behalf of the UC Water Initiative to the California Governor's Water Portfolio Program on the topic of building resilient water systems in California. What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals?The effort to better understand climate-vegetation interactions in wildlands will involve a number of components. The previous work on wildlands hydrology and vegetation interaction will be synthesized, and postdoc Norman Pelak will make improvements to the wildlands vegetation and hydrology models (LPJ-GUESS and Flow). These improvements will allow for models which more accurately reflect the response of the wildlands system to climatic forcing and thereby providing improved water supply impacts for downstream reservoirs and crop-lands. PhD student Han Guo will continue his work on reservoir-hydropower system modelling by combining his previous results, discussed in the accomplishments section, with the PLEXOS reservoir modeling system (this is partly funded by a complementary project with PG&E). The effort to improve the hydrologic and crop modeling system for the Central Valley will primarily involve postdoc Chandan Singh for the hydrologic component and PhD student Anshika Kandhway for the agricultural component. Singh will calibrate and validate the SWAT model using the monthly model ET obtained from a surface energy balance model (e.g. BESS-ET). The ongoing hydrological framework envisages that an effective integrated model with the inclusion of a hydro-economic model (CALVIN) provides a better platform for policy, operations, and other related issues. The findings of this research will provide important input data for ENVISON, a GIS-based tool for landscape-based community and regional integrated planning and environmental assessments. Kandhway will continue to work with the CropSyst agricultural model, and will implement it for the Central Valley. The three objectives of the project related to cropland subsystem enlists: estimation of current demands, quantification impacts of climate change on crop productivity and proposing viable adaptation strategies. For achieving these objectives, the initial step is to gather data related to climate and diverse cropping system in the Central Valley (for example: yields, crop water demand, irrigation water use, and management strategies). Then, an integrated VIC-CropSyst model, which is combination of a hydrological and a bio-physically based crop model, will be used to simulate the effects of climate change (rising temperature and elevated atmospheric CO2level) on yields of the main crops grown in Central Valley. This output will be useful in predicting future scenarios for agriculture productivity, water demand, and water deficit under stress conditions like drought, heat waves etc. These results, in conjunction with consulting farmers by holding workshops and estimating economic trade-offs for all possible adaptation strategies, can provide an inventory of pragmatic solutions that can be proposed to decision makers and stakeholders for adaption to climate change. The plan of work for the integration of the various model components is on schedule and moving towards a completely coupled integrated model of the Upland and Cropland subsystems. In 2020, the final two pieces of the modeling system will be incorporated: SWAT-MODFLOW and SWAP (Soil, Water, Atmosphere, and Plant). The bulk of the coding work will likely focus on the SWAT-MODFLOW coupling as that is the more complicated model of the two remaining. SWAP has been used alongside CALVIN in a variety of other projects and given the group's previous success with the coupling of CALVIN within Envision, no complications are expected. Once SWAT-MODFLOW and SWAP have been incorporated, the research team will work to ensure that the coupled models, each of which will have been calibrated independently, produce acceptable results. In addition, the research team will begin to develop model scenarios, which will be evaluated through analysis of results produced by the coupled model. The primary goal of the activities planned for the coming year in the area of end-of-century climate and management scenario generation is to support modeling of the impact of CC on agriculture, water and energy sectors in California. Co-PI Shukla will work closely with the ENVISION modeling framework team from OSU to coordinate processing and transfer of CC projections to support their modeling experiments. Shukla will also conduct any CC projection downscaling activities as needed by the modeling sub-groups. Additionally, Shukla will work closely with other modeling sub-groups to understand their CC projection data and analysis needs, and based on this, he will continue analyzing projections of the climate characteristics that have direct impact on the agriculture, water and energy sectors. Those include but not limited to: Number of dry vs. wet days, changes in precipitation intensity, and number of heating and cooling degree days. Co-PI Medellin-Azuara's group will study the adaptation of cropping decisions given new regulatory constraints for groundwater sustainability in the Central Valley. Dr. Fernandez-Bou will run the CALVIN hydro-economic model for water supply and Dr. Maskey to collaborate in producing model runs and connecting that to the CHVM model and the crop choice decision model for the Central Valley in coordination with Dr. Singh. Two workshops on the CALVIN model open to all UC Merced and OSU modelers and other project participants are scheduled for 2020. Professor Mustafa Dogan (formerly at UC Davis) will collaborate with the project by offering a 2 hour CALVIN tutorial in February as well as a week-long workshop over the summer to the INFEWS group. Co-PI Medellin will support this new collaboration from other projects involving similar modeling tools. Co-PI Oleson's role in the ecological economics component of the project will begin in earnest in project year three. This component will focus on valuing ecosystem services under different scenarios. Depending upon the modeling, various possible valuation studies are possible. Over the coming year, as the models mature and it becomes clear what specific outputs of concern to people will be estimated by the modelers, the valuation study will gain focus. Possibilities include the value of groundwater recharge; flood regulation; recreation; fire control; etc. Various methods are being explored, including non-market valuation using stated and revealed choice methods; environmental accounting; and integration of valuation with decision analysis. Dr. Oleson has also hired a PhD student, David Lewis, who will begin work on this component of the project in 2020. Lewis will be assisting with the valuation of ecosystem services and decision analysis. Team members Safeeq, Bales, Singh, and Shukla will submit for publication the results which they are presenting at the 2019 AGU Fall Meeting, and postdoc Kniffin will publish her results on projected changes in snowpack storage under future climate scenarios. Due in part to the delayed access to the project funds, a KTAN meeting has not yet been held as per the original project timeline. However, a KTAN meeting is currently being planned for 2020, and will focus on project updates, feedback on current work, and assessment of needs. Additionally, team members will continue to engage stakeholders through seminars and public forum talks as opportunities arise.

Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals? Work in 2019 on the ENVISION framework, which will be used to develop the future projections to underpin the research, was primarily performed by the team at Oregon State University. The first area of work was the development of the initial components of the Envision model that will serve as the primary modeling platform for the project. An initial version of the primary spatial data set was produced that will serve as the basis for the model projections. The second key component of the work developed during 2019 was the identification and evaluation of potential sub-models. These sub-models include LPJ-GUESS for the upland system, Envision-Flow to define upland streamflow and reservoir recharge, the CALVIN allocation model to estimate water deliveries to valley users, the SWAP model to define the evolving cropping system, and a combination of SWAT and MODFLOW to capture crop water dynamics. The last component of the completed work is the linking of the identified sub-models within the Envision framework. In 2019 Co-PIs Goulden and Bales published a study on the recent widespread forest die-off in California's Southern Sierra in Nature GeoSciences. Co-PIs Goulden, Bales, and Conklin, along with postdoc Qin Ma (funded on a complementary project) investigated how Sierra Nevada forests were disturbed and recovered from wildfires using remote sensing observation combined with eddy covariance flux tower measurements. They found that wildfires in the past three decades have reduced evapotranspiration by 16.3 billion m3 over the first 15 years following fire. This study illustrates the large potential to increase runoff through forest restoration and prescribed fire. Co-PI Safeeq was also co-author on a manuscript, currently under review in Water Resources Research, entitled "Signatures of Hydrologic Function and Coevolution Across the Critical Zone Observatory Network". This work examines the dynamics of water storage in mountain ecosystems and how it varies across regolith architecture and hydroclimatic gradient. Co-PI Safeeq, along with INFEWS team members Singh and Shukla, have conducted a study comparing the relative importance and feedbacks between radiative change and CO2fertilization on hydrology. In this study, the authors used VIC with the goal of quantifying changes in water availability under "business as usual" radiative change alone and joint perturbation of CO2fertilization and radiative change across the Sierra Nevada. Initial findings from this analysis show that CO2driven stomatal conductance reductions may considerably offset the effects of warming on annual water availability in the Sierra Nevada. Another study, led by the lead author Weichao Guo (funded through a complementary project), is further extending the CO2 fertilization study using a dynamic vegetation model (LPJ-GUESS) with an aim to fully capture the effects of climate warming and CO2 fertilization on ecosystems, including growth, competitions, and disturbance. Increases in temperature and extreme weather, together with management actions, are altering the intertwined water and carbon cycles in sensitive mountain ecosystems. Initial results show a significant increase in NPP under warmer climate and elevated atmospheric CO2 but a decline in below ground carbon due to increased soil respiration. Co-PI Medellin-Azuara has expertise in hydro-economic modeling and the use of the CALVIN model, which will form a key part of the cropland modeling component of this project. The connection between an agricultural production model and hydrologic models for water supply and infrastructure will be useful for policy evaluation of water management alternatives in response to climate change, environmental regulations, and sustainable water management. He has hired two postdoctoral scholars to work on this component of the project, Drs. Angel Fernandez Bou and Mahesh Maskey, both partly funded under this project, who will begin work on the project in 2020. Fernandez Bou will work on the Central Valley hydro-economic component of the project, and Maskey will work on hydro-economic models for water supply, and agricultural cropping choice decisions in the Central Valley. The team is pursuing a collaborative agreement to obtain a CVHM2 beta modeling tool for the project. Co-PI Shukla is working to provide climate scenario projections. California's 4th Climate Change (CC) assessment identified 4 out of the 10 "best" models which show the most extreme ends of climate change scenarios. Shukla has obtained key CC projections and formatted them in a way that is compatible with the Envision model. Additionally, downscaled CC projections from the models have been analyzed to obtain the following key results, with direct implications on the FEW nexus in CA. In general CC projections indicate warming across all seasons, models and scenarios, and warming is higher for spring and summer seasons than winter and fall seasons. Dr. Chandan Singh was hired as a postdoc on the INFEWS project and began work in March 2019. He is developing an integrated hydrological model of California's Central Valley. One of the major aspects of this research is to prepare the model for various land/crop and water management scenarios. He is using the Soil and Water Assessment Tool- modular finite-difference flow model (SWAT-MODFLOW), a model that combines SWAT land surface processes with spatially-explicit groundwater flow processes for the Central Valley. Dr. Norman Pelak was hired as a postdoc on the INFEWS project and began work in June 2019. He will work on improving model representation of water and vegetation dynamics in the wildlands. Specifically, he will make improvements to the wildlands vegetation and hydrology models (LPJ-GUESS and Flow). These improvements will allow for models which more accurately reflect the response of the wildlands system to climatic forcing and thereby providing improved water supply impacts for downstream reservoirs and crop-lands. PhD student Anshika Kandhway was hired on the INFEWS project in August 2019, and will focus on agricultural modeling in the Central Valley. Kandhway and co-PI Safeeq have met with the developers of CropSyst and a more recent version of CropSyst coupled with the VIC model (VIC-CropSyst) at Washington State University. We have obtained the model source code and planned a training session for Kandhway in early 2020. Kandhway is currently learning the VIC model and Unix environment while also performing a literature review to collect model parameters and learn the CropSyst model. PhD student Han Guo was hired in August 2019. Guo will work on the reservoir and hydroeconomic modeling component of the project and is partly funded by a complementary project with PG&E. To provide electricity when it is needed, planning and operation of hydropower systems will require more informed decision support than in the past. He is investigating the flexibility in existing reservoir operation rules for maximizing water storage and hydropower generation, and use the inflow from wildlands from various climate and management scenarios to quantify the extent to which water storage and hydropower will be affected under existing operation rules and objectives. Dr. Maribeth Kniffin worked as a postdoc on the INFEWS project for the majority of 2019. To investigate the projected changes in headwater storage under two different future emission scenarios (RCP 4.5 and RCP 8.5), she analyzed output from the VIC model forced with statistically downscaled global climate projections for two Sierra Nevada basins: the American and King's River Basins. Preliminary results show that the total headwater storage (SWE + soil moisture) is declining over most months in the American River Basin under both emissions scenarios and is more variable throughout the year in the King's River Basin, results which will be helpful for informing implications for downstream water management.

Publications

  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2019 Citation: Heeren, Alexander, Pathak, Tapan, Matlock, Teenie, and Martha Conklin. "Public Perceptions of California's Exceptional Drought." JAWRA Journal of the American Water Resources Association (2019).
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2019 Citation: Goulden, M. L., and R. C. Bales. "California forest die-off linked to multi-year deep soil drying in 20122015 drought." Nature Geoscience 12.8 (2019): 632-637.
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2019 Citation: Fan, Ying&Safeeq, M, et al. "Hillslope hydrology in global change research and Earth system modeling." Water Resources Research 55.2 (2019): 1737-1772.
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Under Review Year Published: 2020 Citation: Wlostowski, A.,&Safeeq, M. et al., Signatures of Hydrologic Function and Coevolution Across the Critical Zone Observatory Network, under review in Water Resources Research.
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Submitted Year Published: 2020 Citation: Vache, K.B., M. Bitew, R. Jackson, N. Griffiths. Ensemble Analysis of Watershed-scale hydrologic effects of short rotation woody crop production. For submission to the Journal of Forest Ecology and Management. Summer 2019.
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Submitted Year Published: 2020 Citation: Vache, K.B., J. Koch, J. Bolte. Envision: A dynamically-coupled land-use change and hydrological modeling framework. For submission to Land. Summer 2019.
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Under Review Year Published: 2020 Citation: Wildfire Controls on Evapotranspiration in California's Sierra Nevada, Qin Ma, Roger C. Bales, Joseph Rungee, Michael L. Goulden, Martha H. Conklin, Brandon M. Collins. In revision, Journal of Hydrology.


Progress 01/01/18 to 12/31/18

Outputs
Target Audience: Our efforts during this reporting period reached the research community through the research papers and conference presentations which are discussed further in the rest of the report. Via screenings of the Beyond the Brink documentary, we reached a wide audience, including farmers, science communicators, educators, and likely others. Via numerous outreach lectures, Co-PI Pathak reached audiences including educators, science communicators, and farmers. Finally, the activities of PI Conklin and co-PI Medellin at the Contemporary Groundwater Issues Council Meeting reached natural resource managers, utilities representatives, city maangers and urban planners, and policymakers. Changes/Problems: Nothing Reported What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided?In addition to funding attendances at the conference discussed in the following section, Dr. Alexander Heeren, partly supported by INFEWS, is now a Research Scientist at the California Department of Fish and Wildlife. How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest?The results have been disseminated to the communities of interest via conference presentations and outreach talks. See citations below: Kniffin, M., et al. "Constraining annual water balance estimates with spatial calibration of evapotranspiration."AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts. 2018. Conklin, M. H., Heeren A., et al. "Strategies for Communicating about Climate Change, Drought and Agriculture in California."AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts. 2018. Pathak, T.B. 2018. Integrating climate change in California Cooperative Extension. Capacity building workshop for UC ANR academics on climate change. Fresno, CA. Pathak, T.B. 2018. Impacts of climate change and potential adaptations for California Agriculture. Field Day, El Centro, CA Pathak, T.B., 2018. Climate change impacts on California Agriculture and climate information for agricultural decision making. Workshop for winegrape growers. Bakersfield, CA. Pathak, T.B. 2018. Climate change and agriculture in the Central Valley. Blum Center Summer Institute. UC Merced. Pathak, T.B. 2018. Climate change and California's Agriculture. Aquarium of the Pacific Invited Lecture. Long Beach, CA. What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals?For the 2019 calendar year, Co-PI Medellin-Azuara will hire a postdoctoral scholar to work on the INFEWS project developing the agricultural production model and its connection with other project components including surface and groundwater simulation (or optimization) models. The connection between an agricultural production model and hydrologic models for water supply and infrastructure will be useful for policy evaluation of water management alternatives in response to climate change, environmental regulations, and sustainable water management. The Oregon State team, consisting of Co-PI Bolte and Kellie Vache, will continue the development of the Envision modeling framework for the Central Valley and the Sierra Nevada, including the choice of a hydrological model. They will begin by developing a working Envision model for a subset of the Sierra Nevada, the Kings River Basin. They will also work to integrate Envision with the dynamic vegetation model LPJ-GUESS, to represent the vegetation dynamics in the wildlands component of the model. In June 2019, Co-PI Safeeq and postdoc Maribeth Kniffin will attend a WRF-Hydro workshop in Boulder, CO, which will help the team make a final decision on which hydrological model to use in the Envision modeling framework. PI Conklin and Co-PIs Bales and Safeeq will hire two postdocs at UC Merced on the INFEWS project, one focusing on groundwater modeling in the Central Valley and the other on improving model representation of water and vegetation dynamics in the wildlands. They will also hire one PhD student, who will focus on agricultural modeling in the Central Valley. The work of these new hires will be integrated with the Envision CHANS modeling framework which is a major goal of this project.

Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals? The work during the first year of the project of the Oregon State University INFEWS team, consisting of Co-PI Bolte and Kellie Vache, has focused on 3 key elements, laying groundwork that will be needed as the project progresses. 1. Envision model development Exploration of the Central Valley FEW System is being developed under the Envision Coupled Human and Natural System modeling framework. Envision is a robust and mature set of modeling, data analysis, and visualization tools developed to enable spatially and temporally explicit examination of strongly couple human/natural systems. A first step in the development of an Envision model is the identification of spatial datasets that are relevant to the project at hand. The team has evaluated and developed the needed spatial data. The work has led to an initial version of an integrated spatial data set that includes subwatersheds, soil data, vegetation data. 2. Initial evaluation of WRF-Hydro A key step in the early stages of the work is the identification and development of relevant models that will be used to qualify the key subsystems that modulate the wildland-storage-cropland FEWS of CA. During the first year, work was focused on the evaluation of a particular hydrological model, WRF-Hydro, which is developed and support by NCAR. While the analysis of the potential for WRF-Hydro to serve as the hydrological backbone for the simulations is ongoing, clear progress has been made. Key issues are that it is developed and supported for the UNIX environment only. Envision is Windows based software and the translation is non-trivial. Secondarily, communication between the FORTRAN-based WRF-Hydro and Envision requires the development of a relatively complex wrapper around the WRF-Hydro code. Representatives from the project team will attend a June 2019 WRF-Hydro training in Boulder, CO and a final decision will be made at that time. The alternative to WRF-Hydro is the FLOW framework, a currently developed and supported hydrological modeling framework that is native to Envision. In the event that we use the native framework, we will incorporate key algorithms and the spatial context as defined for CA by the existing versions of the WRF-Hydro model. 3. Fire modeling Modeling of historic and potential future forest fire regimes is a key element of the FEWs projections. In the first year of the project, the OSU team has hired a set of undergraduate student workers to identify and develop datasets used to support the fire modeling. Key datasets include vegetation maps and historical fire perimeters and intensities. In 2018 Co-PIs Goulden and Bales conducted a study on the recent widespread forest die-off in California's Southern Sierra, which had been tied to the effect of warming drought during 2012-2015, but the underlying mechanisms remained uncertain. They explored the links between drought, warmth, vegetation density and forest dieback in California's mountains using combined in situ and remote sensing observations. They found that forest die-off was closely linked to multi-year deep-rooting-zone drying. Extremely dense vegetation and warm temperatures accelerated southern Sierran evapotranspiration, intensified drought and forest die-off. The climate change is expected to further amplify the drought and potentially increasing Sierran tree death by ~15-20% °C−1. Their study provides the framework to diagnose and predict the impacts of droughts on forests, which is an important part of the wildlands component of the INFEWS modeling framework and Decision Support System. They submitted a manuscript to Nature Geosciences entitled, "In California forest die-off linked to multi-year deep soil drying in 2012-2015 drought." Co-PI Safeeq was a co-author on a commissioned manuscript for the journal Water Resources Research, submitted in 2018. This manuscript, a synthesis paper entitled "Hillslope Hydrology in Global Change Research and Earth System Modeling," explores the connection between earth system models and hillslope-scale hydrology, which controls water and energy fluxes. This work supports the project goals because in order to develop the CHANS modeling framework, we will need to resolve many of the same issues of hydrological processes across model scales. Co-PI Oleson's role in the ecological economics component of the project will begin in earnest in project year three per the proposal and project timeline. In the past year Co-PI Medellin-Azuara got involved in various activities related to the two INFEWS projects he is on, this one and INFEWS-UC Water. A workshop was organized on the CALVIN water supply model in collaboration with Professors Jonathan Herman at UC Davis. Co-PI Safeeq, as well as graduate and undergraduate students received training on the use of the CALVIN hydro-economic model for California. The CALVIN model will form a key part of the cropland modeling component of this project. Professor Medellin also posted an advertisement for a postdoctoral scholar to work on the project, the pool of candidates is nearly complete and interviews will occur during the winter of 2018 to start in the summer of 2019. Co-PI Pathak published a review paper entitled "Climate change trends and impacts on California Agriculture: A detailed review" in the Journal Agronomy in 2018. The review presented in this paper provides sufficient evidence that the climate in California has changed significantly and is expected to continue changing in the future and justifies the urgency and importance of enhancing the adaptive capacity of agriculture and reducing vulnerability to climate change. In another published study in Modeling Earth Systems and Environment, Pathak studied shifts in the phenology of processing tomatoes in central valley under the future climate change. These studies contribute to the food component of the INFEWS project and relevance to water. Co-PI Shukla obtained projections identified by the CA 4th Climate Assessment as the most extreme cases. He worked with the OSU team to put them into a format compatible with the Envision model framework, and shared sample climate change projections with the Envision team. Initial analysis of the projections has focused on changes in mean annual temperature and precipitation, number of rainy days, and temperature-elevation gradients. These projections form a key component of the CHANS modeling framework as they allow for the study of the impact of management actions under possible future climate scenarios. Dr. Alexander Heeren (a postdoc partly funded under this project) assisted in the planning and early phases of this project. In 2018, he also submitted a manuscript (with PI Conklin and co-PI Pathak) entitled "Public Perceptions of California's Exceptional Drought." This study surveyed respondents across the state and found that there were few differences in concern about drought but several differences in how they thought that drought should be managed. This study will contribute to the project goals relating to stakeholder engagement, as the perspectives of stakeholders will be key in the design of a Decision Support System (DSS) for water management. PI Conklin also presented these results at the 2018 AGU meeting. Dr. Maribeth Kniffin was hired as an INFEWS postdoc in 2018. She worked with PI Conklin and co_PI Bales on a project which involved combining the snowpack evolution model SnowModel with the USGS-developed hydrological model known as the Precipitation-Runoff Modeling System (PRMS). This project contributed to the goals of the project by improving our ability to model snow dynamics in the wildlands, which will aid in the development of the CHANS modeling framework which is the centerpiece of this INFEWS project, as snowmelt is a key part of the water supply which supports the agricultural production of California's croplands. She presented these results at the 2018 AGU meeting.

Publications

  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Accepted Year Published: 2019 Citation: Fan, Ying, &Khan, Safeeq, et al. "Hillslope hydrology in global change research and Earth system modeling." Water Resources Research 55.2 (2019): 1737-1772.
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Submitted Year Published: 2019 Citation: Heeren, Alexander, Pathak, Tapan, Matlock, Teenie, and Martha Conklin. "Public Perceptions of California's Exceptional Drought." JAWRA Journal of the American Water Resources Association (2019).
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Submitted Year Published: 2019 Citation: Goulden, M.L., & Bales, R.C. (2019). California forest die-off linked to multi-year deep soil drying in 20122015 drought. Nature Geoscience (2019).
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2018 Citation: Pathak, Tapan B., and C. Scott Stoddard. "Climate change effects on the processing tomato growing season in California using growing degree day model." Modeling Earth Systems and Environment 4.2 (2018): 765-775.
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2018 Citation: Pathak, Tapan B., et al. "Climate change trends and impacts on California agriculture: a detailed review." Agronomy 8.3 (2018): 25.