Publications

As is much of the world, California increasingly is challenged by water scarcity. A recent multiyear drought depleted surface reservoir and groundwater storage in many places of the state. The Sustainable Groundwater Management Act (SGMA), passed in 2014, promises sustainable groundwater management in California and suggests managed aquifer recharge (MAR) as one of the key practices to eliminate groundwater overdraft by groundwater sustainability agencies. Questions remain, however, about the amount of water available for MAR. Conjunctive management provides the opportunity to modify reservoir operations and enhance recharge long before any drought occurs. However, the amount by which reoperation of surface reservoirs can increase the available water for MAR has not been thoroughly investigated. Folsom reservoir is operated to meet a variety of objectives, including flood control, water supply, hydropower, and environmental flow. The inclusion of water discharge for groundwater recharge adds another objective for the operation of the reservoir and complicates the decision-making. Various management strategies were developed and applied to evaluate performance of the system during a historical period, and a new objective was added to maximize the available water for recharge from Folsom reservoir. Although the reoperation strategy offers additional storage in the system and increases the expected value of recharge from 280 to 430 million cubic meter (mcm) per year, trade-offs between different objectives showed that new operating rules perform quite satisfactorily, with nonsignificant deficits and violations of …

Low lying coastal cities are under high risk of the compound flood with frequent storm surge occurrence and sea-level rise. This study attempted to develop a hybrid modeling framework to simulate various physical process of the compound flood. In this regard, first, the storm surge process is simulated using a wave-flow coupled model ie, Delft3D-FLOW and simulated wave nearshore (SWAN). The meteorological forcing for the hydrodynamic model has been done by integrating a parametric Holland cyclone model in this framework. The urban flood process in compound flood is also simulated using a rainfall-runoff model, the storm water management model (SWMM). The case study to evaluate the performance of the modeling framework is selected as the northern Bay of Bengal and extends to surge affected areas of Chittagong coast of Bangladesh. The modeling system is employed to simulate compound flood …

Iran is dealing with various water resources challenges. Drying lakes and rivers, declining groundwater resources, water supply rationing and disruptions, agricultural losses, and ecosystem damages are just few of the challenges. This chapter introduces how current management of water resources in Iran led to water crisis in the country, which was formerly renowned as a pioneer of sustainable water management. Iran is located in an arid and semi-arid region, and the combined actions of natural and human factors caused the modern water-related crisis. Although there is no control over natural factors, sustainable water resources planning and management could be achieved by implementing integrated water resources management strategies. This chapter particularly focuses on two of the most vital challenges the country is dealing with: one is mismanagement of the Zayandehrud River basin and the other one is the tragic drying of Lake Urmia. After reviewing the causing problems for each case, we briefly introduce some of the opportunities offered by IWRM practices and identify possible main strategies for the future perspective of management of water resources in Iran.