Aaron Benson

Cost of early snowmelt in terms of reduced irrigation deliveries

Climate change and windborne dust are expected to change snowmelt timing. Dust from agricultural activities is estimated to cause snow to melt two to four weeks earlier in some regions. Early snowmelt may decrease deliveries of irrigation water when reservoirs provide flood protection and irrigation water. To date, the quantity decrease has not been determined. We identify when early snowmelt causes earlier water release, and calculate the quantity decrease in water deliveries downstream. Irrigation reductions are negligible unless the dam capacity is less than twice the quantity of annual runoff, and unless snowmelt occurs more than four weeks early.

Feasibility of an Adaptable Biorefinery Platform: Addressing the Delivery Scale Dilemma under Drought Risk

Conversion of biomass to electricity is often not economically feasible as a result of large transportation costs and low output prices. We build a model of an adaptable biorefinery situated at an agri-processing facility that already has biomass on-site and consider the optimal scale of the plant to achieve a price premium by selling peaking power given uncertain biomass deliveries year over year as a result of climatic variability. We find that, for conservative electricity prices, a plant situated near cotton gins in Texas could operate with positive expected net revenue while converting on average only 38% of available biomass for peak electricity prices.

Towards disaster risk reduction: a policy-focused approach to natural hazards and disasters, edited by J. Levy and C. Gopalakrishnan, London, Routledge Publishing, 2013, 104 pp., US

wish to focus first on Chapters 9 and 10. Readers who seek an introduction to marketbased approaches to water management may benefit the most from reading Chapters 2 and 8 before turning to other sections of the book. Ultimately, the overall tone of Water Policy Reform is one of pessimism; the various authors seem to agree that recent policy developments have moved the Murray-Darling Basin farther away from an efficient and sustainable path. However, readers should keep in mind that Australia has followed a much more proactive and experimental approach to water policy than most other countries, making the Murray-Darling Basin a great setting to learn from past successes and failures. It seems to me that the most valuable feature of this book is the balance it strikes between the discussion of advanced water management concepts and the assessment of practical applications of water policy in the real world. Readers can learn about water policy tools (e.g., buybacks, carry-over rules), environmental valuation methods (e.g., stated preference, revealed preference, and benefits transfer methods), and the social implications of water policy (e.g., impacts on unemployment and changes in family composition in local communities), and at the same time take home with them lessons from the Murray-Darling Basin experience with all of these aspects of water policy reform.