The ASU Colorado River Visualization Enterprise
Colorado River Shortage: What it Means and What Comes Next
The first component of the ASU CuRVE Project is a Story Map that aims to help people understand and explain the Colorado River shortage. It examines what the shortage means for water conservation, residential water users, groundwater pumping, utility costs, urban growth, new water supplies, and water rights. This Story Map provides a detailed analysis of the shortage and offers interactive maps to help explain which communities face the most significant impacts as a result of the drought and the Colorado River's over-allocation.
Why do we need ASU CuRVE?
Colorado River: Central Arizona Entitlements and Access Tool
Most of the pain of Colorado River shortages will fall on those who are using the water, rather than on those who are entitled to it. Understanding this nuance may help water managers discover additional, innovative ways to lease, trade, and exchange water to mitigate shortage impacts.
This web tool visualizes Central Arizona contract entitlements to Colorado River water and also takes into account long-term leases and exchanges, showing who has access to that water.
Being clear about those entitled to water and those who actually have access to use it can help water policy leaders better frame complex Colorado River shortage issues, which will aid the general public's understanding of how their communities might be impacted.
What information is being used to create these visualizations?
For instance, we propose to visualize the risks of aridification of the river basin and the risks of the demand management decisions of California and Mexico, which have the right to withdraw significant amounts of water from Lake Mead above and beyond their annual allocations.
We’ll be producing a new, flexible, relational database platform that will allow users to quickly manipulate the assumptions underlying various hydrologic scenarios. The relational database will be connected to visualization tools and be accessible to the public through a web-based interface.
We will also integrate localized water information to translate Colorado River scenarios into local impacts on individual community water systems, agricultural districts, Indian communities, and industries across multiple years. An example of localized water information we plan to incorporate includes water supplies such as the Gila, Salt, Verde rivers, reclaimed water, and groundwater.