Thomas Stephen Lowry

Climate and Energy-Water-Land System Interactions Technical Report to the U.S. Department of Energy in Support of the National Climate Assessment

This report provides a framework to characterize and understand the important elements of climate and energy-water-land (EWL) system interactions. It identifies many of the important issues, discusses our understanding of those issues, and presents a long-term research program research needs to address the priority scientific challenges and gaps in our understanding. Much of the discussion is organized around two discrete case studies with the broad themes of (1) extreme events and (2) regional intercomparisons. These case studies help demonstrate unique ways in which energy-water-land interactions can occur and be influenced by climate.

Management gaps analysis: a case study of groundwater resource management in New Zealand

The primary objective of this project is to identify gaps, whether real or perceived, that hinder effective groundwater management in New Zealand. These gaps show as gaps in information, gaps in implementation, gaps in technological and management tools, and gaps in understanding of fundamental processes. The secondary objective is to propose a management strategy to close the identified gaps. Several methods are used to meet these objectives: surveys distributed to selected staff in each regional council; the review of various written reports; the analysis of land-use databases; and private consultation within each regional council. Results show that groundwater management in New Zealand is generally reactionary with the main gaps being in strategic planning and national guidelines. Most gaps appear to be predominantly information and implementation issues. In some cases there are gaps in the understanding of fundamental processes within an aquifer system, including the long-term effects of land-use on groundwater quality. An adaptive management approach is suggested as a means of closing these gaps.

Applications of fractured continuum model to enhanced geothermal system heat extraction problems

This paper describes the applications of the fractured continuum model to the different enhanced geothermal systems reservoir conditions. The capability of the fractured continuum model to generate fracture characteristics expected in enhanced geothermal systems reservoir environments are demonstrated for single and multiple sets of fractures. Fracture characteristics are defined by fracture strike, dip, spacing, and aperture. The paper demonstrates how the fractured continuum model can be extended to represent continuous fractured features, such as long fractures, and the conditions in which the fracture density varies within the different depth intervals. Simulations of heat transport using different fracture settings were compared with regard to their heat extraction effectiveness. The best heat extraction was obtained in the case when fractures were horizontal. A conventional heat extraction scheme with vertical wells was compared to an alternative scheme with horizontal wells. The heat extraction with the horizontal wells was significantly better than with the vertical wells when the injector was at the bottom.

Evaluating Reservoir Operations and Other Remediation Strategies to meet Temperature TMDL's in the Willamette Basin, Oregon

Water managers in the Willamette River Basin face a number of difficult and closely interrelated challenges associated with the Endangered Species Act (ESA), the Clean Water Act (CWA), and other associated concerns. For example, under the CWA, the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality (ODEQ) has recently released a total Maximum Daily Load (TMDL) for temperature in the Willamette Basin. Some of the major factors impacting temperature in the Willamette include operation of the multiple reservoirs, permitted industrial and municipal discharges, land-use types, and irrigation practices. Possible mitigation strategies include changes in land-use to increase shading along streams, installations to cool or store point-source discharges, changes in how and when water is released from the reservoirs, installation of multiport withdrawal structures on the reservoirs, and remediation of riparian and hyporheic zones. Each of these strategies comes with ecological, economic, and/or social costs and/or benefits that must be weighed and understood before meaningful dialogue about how to best manage the basin can occur. To address this problem a collaborative team from Sandia National Laboratories, the Institute for Water Resources, David Evans and Associates, and the Portland District of the Corps of Engineers have been working with stakeholders in the basin to design and collaboratively develop an integrated systems model of the basin to examine the linkages between the various strategies and their tradeoffs. The model domain includes the main stem of the Willamette, 7 major tributaries, and 12 USACE operated reservoirs. It is built as a series of system dynamics lumped parameter models, and provides real-time feedback and scenario testing capabilities. Outputs from the model include changes in temperature at key monitoring points and costs per kcal of energy saved due to different remediation strategies, relative changes in nutrient loading and CO2 emissions due to riparian shade planting, impacts on recreational opportunities and the economic impacts of those changes, and salmonid habitat suitability as it relates to temperature. This presentation will describe the technical collaborative processes in which the model was developed and how it will be used to inform reservoir operation and other policy decisions in the basin.

Framework for Shared Drinking Water Risk Assessment.

Abstract Risk assessment plays a vital role in protecting our nations critical infrastructure. Traditionally, such assessments have been conducted as a singular activity confined to the boarders of a particular asset or utility with little external sharing of information. In contrast other domains, e.g., disaster preparedness, cyber security, food-borne hazards, have demonstrated the benefits of sharing data, experiences and lessons learned in assessing and managing risk. Here we explore the concept of a Shared Risk Framework (SRF) in the context of critical infrastructure assessments. In this exploration, key elements of an SRF are introduced and initial instantiations demonstrated by way of three water utility assessments. Results from these three demonstrations were then combined with results from four other risk assessments developed using a different risk assessment application by a different set of analysts. Through this comparison we were able to explore potential challenges and benefits from implementation of a SRF. Challenges included both the capacity and interest of local utilities to conduct a shared risk assessment; particularly, wide scale adoption of any SRF will require a clear demonstration that such an effort supports the basic mission of the utility, adds benefit to the utility, and protects utility data from unintended access or misuse. In terms of benefits, anonymous sharing of results among utilities could provide the added benefits of recognizing and correcting bias; identifying ‘unknown, unknowns’; assisting self-assessment and benchmarking for the local utility; and providing a basis for treating shared assets and/or threats across multiple utilities.

Viability report for the ByWater Lakes project.

This report presents the results from the hydrological, ecological, and renewable energy assessments conducted by Sandia National Laboratories at the ByWater Lakes site in Espanola, New Mexico for ByWater Recreation LLC and Avanyu Energy Services through the New Mexico small business assistance (NMSBA) program. Sandias role was to assess the viability and provide perspective for enhancing the site to take advantage of renewable energy resources, improve and sustain the natural systems, develop a profitable operation, and provide an asset for the local community. Integral to this work was the identification the pertinent data and data gaps as well as making general observations about the potential issues and concerns that may arise from further developing the site. This report is informational only with no consideration with regards to the business feasibility of the various options that ByWater and Avanyu may be pursuing.

Risk assessment of climate systems for national security.

Climate change, through drought, flooding, storms, heat waves, and melting Arctic ice, affects the production and flow of resource within and among geographical regions. The interactions among governments, populations, and sectors of the economy require integrated assessment based on risk, through uncertainty quantification (UQ). This project evaluated the capabilities with Sandia National Laboratories to perform such integrated analyses, as they relate to (inter)national security. The combining of the UQ results from climate models with hydrological and economic/infrastructure impact modeling appears to offer the best capability for national security risk assessments.

Executive Summary for Assessing the Near-Term Risk of Climate Uncertainty: Interdependencies among the U.S. States

Policy makers will most likely need to make decisions about climate policy before climate scientists have resolved all relevant uncertainties about the impacts of climate change. This study demonstrates a risk-assessment methodology for evaluating uncertain future climatic conditions. We estimate the impacts of climate change on U.S. state- and national-level economic activity from 2010 to 2050. To understand the implications of uncertainty on risk and to provide a near-term rationale for policy interventions to mitigate the course of climate change, we focus on precipitation, one of the most uncertain aspects of future climate change. We use results of the climate-model ensemble from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Changes (IPCC) Fourth Assessment Report 4 (AR4) as a proxy for representing climate uncertainty over the next 40 years, map the simulated weather from the climate models hydrologically to the county level to determine the physical consequences on economic activity at the state level, and perform a detailed 70-industry analysis of economic impacts among the interacting lower-48 states. We determine the industry-level contribution to the gross domestic product and employment impacts at the state level, as well as interstate population migration, effects on personal income, and consequences for the U.S. trade balance. We show that the mean or average risk of damage to the U.S. economy from climate change, at the national level, is on the order of

Multi-Platform Decision Support System

1 trillion over the next 40 years, with losses in employment equivalent to nearly 7 million full-time jobs.

Merging Spatially Variant Physical Process Models Under an Optimized Systems Dynamics Framework

The Edwards aquifer is a karstic aquifer which discharges naturally to springs that support a number of endangered aquatic species. Past and projected rates of development and urbanization are high as are the political stakes in managing regional growth and water resources in a sustainable manner. Key issues involve how can development occur or what type of development is acceptable to maintain critical spring flows, water quality, maximum pumping from the aquifer, and environmental quality with intergenerational equity. We are developing a decision support system (DSS) that links scientific and management models that incorporate community stakeholder input, optimization algorithms, and decision analysis tools. The Texas Water Development Boards groundwater availability model is the basis for the DSS. We scale the distributed parameter model (MODFLOW) into a systems dynamics model (POWERSIM