Climate Change Impacts on Runoff, Soil Moisture and Erosion Within the New York City Water Supply System

Problems

What impacts (runoff, soil moisture, erosion rates, sediment loads) may climate change have on key study sites within New York City's Water Supply System? How will these impacts affect the water supply, forestry, agriculture and aquaculture within the region? What mitigation and adaptation strategies may be employed? How do we communicate climate change assessments to stakeholders? How can the science help to reshape policy decisions?

Research Objectives

Conduct a thorough, comprehensive, hydro-meteorological, climate change impact assessment for the Allaben watershed - a key watershed within the New York City Water Supply System. The study will involve - (a) hydro-meteorological, vegetation, soil and land use/land cover data collection (b) the assembly and link of a suite of models - Hydrological models (WATBAL, PDSI, WEPP and NASA/GISS land surface model) and General Circulation Models, GCMs, (GISS, CCCM, HC - all run with and without sulphate forcings) (c) the calibration and verification of the hydrological models (d) the watershed's land use/land cover changes and their correlation to deviations in runoff (g) control, transient and doubled CO₂ climate change scenarios for the GCMs (h) appropriate scaling of GCM outputs for regional applications.

Use the study methodology above as a prototype and extended it to another major watershed within New York State - the Oswego watershed.

Apply the United States Department of Agriculture's (USDA) Water Erosion Prediction Project (WEPP) model m conjunction with the suite of GCMs to assess the possible changes in erosion rates and sediment loads due to climate and land use/land cover changes and their impacts on the forestry, agriculture and aquaculture of the New York States' counties of Oswego and Liberty.

Tasks and Responsibilities

Our two students will share the load of the project. Edie will be responsible the climate change studies on runoff and soil moisture while Sam will conduct the climate change assessments on erosion and sediment loads. However, in the spirit of teamwork, their duties will over-lap as they assist each other.

Site visits are planned for Liberty, New York. There the team will meet and discuss our research with stakeholders from the agriculture, forestry, aquaculture and water supply sectors of the County.

Team Product

A comprehensive report of our findings. The report will include:

• A methodology to conduct state-of-the-art regional scale climate change impact assessments.
• Climate Change Impacts Results

A prototype of how to include stakeholders in climate change impact assessments as an attempt to use the science to influence policy.