Assessing Climate Change Impacts on Yield of “Dual-Priority” Water Rights in Carryover Systems at Catchment Scale

Abstract

Future water availability is threatened by changes in both climate and water demand. Water rights with differing priorities are an important foundation of demand-side tools (e.g., buyback, water pricing, and water market) to improve water use efficiency and reduce water scarcity, especially in highly regulated river systems. This paper assesses the impact of climate change on water yields from carryover storage with dual-priority (high/low) water rights allocation systems using a simple and rapid analytical method. The method characterizes reservoir inflows using readily available flow characteristics (annual mean and Cv). We evaluate this method against a water resource simulation model in ..