Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

Water Supply, Demand, And Quality Indicators For Assessing The Spatial Distribution Of Water Resource Vulnerability In The Columbia River Basin, Heejun Chang, Il-Won Jung, Angela L. Strecker, Daniel Wise, Martin Lafrenz, Vivek Shandas, Hamid Moradkhani, J. Alan Yeakley, Yangdong Pan, Robert Allen Bean, Gunnar Johnson, Mike Psaris

Geography Faculty Publications and Presentations

We investigated water resource vulnerability in the US portion of the Columbia River basin (CRB) using multiple indicators representing water supply, water demand, and water quality. Based on the US county scale, spatial analysis was conducted using various biophysical and socio-economic indicators that control water vulnerability. Water supply vulnerability and water demand vulnerability exhibited a similar spatial clustering of hotspots in areas where agricultural lands and variability of precipitation were high but dam storage capacity was low. The hotspots of water quality vulnerability were clustered around the main stem of the Columbia River where major population and agricultural centres are …