Tag: flow requirements
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The search for flow metrics that support fish success – case study in Scott River, Siskiyou County, California
By Claire Kouba, Sarah Yarnell, Leland Scantlebury, and Thomas Harter How much water do fish really need, and is it possible to ask the fish? One approach to answering this question is to monitor the abundance of a local fish population over many years, and determine the degree to which observed streamflow correlates with fishery…
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Representing interannual variability for environmental flow operations: the functional flow regime
By Lindsay Murdoch, Sarah Yarnell, and Jay Lund California’s local communities and native ecosystems alike have adapted to cycles of flood, drought, and a healthy portion of everything in between. Our river management, on the other hand, has fallen out of natural balance and tends to oscillate between insufficient minimum flows and emergency flood responses,…
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Minimum Flow Laws in California and Chile
By Camila Boettiger, Karrigan Börk, Roberto Ponce Oliva, Diego Rivera, Jay Lund, and Sarah Yarnell California and Chile share a history of water allocation with little regard for instream uses of water, especially environmental uses. In California, for example, many water rights were obtained with no consideration of the environmental impacts of the water use,…
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Water—Who uses how much?
Whereas agriculture used to consume 80 percent of the state’s water supply, today 46 percent of captured and stored water goes to environmental purposes, such as rebuilding wetlands. Meanwhile 43 percent goes to farming and 11 percent to municipal uses. — The Economist, October 2009 By Jeffrey Mount This excerpt is from an article that…