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Spring 4-30-2020
Resilience Engineering: Theory and Practice
Resilience Engineering: Theory and Practice
Michaela JonesUniversity of New Mexico
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i Michaela Jones
Candidate
Civil, Environmental, and Construction Engineering Department
This thesis is approved, and it is acceptable in quality and form for publication. Approved by the thesis committee:
Mark Stone, Chairperson Benjamin Warner
ii
Resilience Engineering: Theory and Practice
BY
MICHAELA JONES
B.S., SUSTAINABILITY, ARIZONA STATE UNIVERSITY, 2017
THESIS
Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of
MASTER OF SCIENCE
CIVIL ENGINEERING
The University of New Mexico
Albuquerque, New Mexico
iii DEDICATION
To my family, because fighting for water is in our blood, and to Cabras, for making me jump into the river to pull him out.
iv ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Mark Stone taught me about water on three different continents and pushed me to create
meaningful work. Ben Warner and Kerry Howe pushed this paper from theoretical to practical. The entire Stone Team put so much time and attention into refining the finished product,
especially PhDs Smriti Chaulagain, Ryan Webb, Betsy Summers, and Jake Collison. Aljaz Pražnik, Adrian Marziliano, and Dora Bean provided original graphics and research. Cassy McClintock sat with me for almost every meeting and every class through this entire process. From the bottom of my heart, thank you all.
This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under grant number DEB-1826709, Transect of the Americas, and grant number 1345169, Center for Water and the Environment.
v
RESILIENCE ENGINEERING: THEORY AND PRACTICE
by
Michaela Jones
B.S., Sustainability, Arizona State University, 2017 M.S., Civil Engineering, University of New Mexico, 2020
ABSTRACT
Civil and environmental engineering works at the interface of humans and the natural environment, making the environment hospitable for people and limiting adverse anthropogenic impacts on the ecosystem. Such socioecological systems are often complex and highly
interconnected, and traditional engineering interventions focused on optimizing system elements result in unanticipated consequences. Resilience engineering utilizes a holistic methodology grounded in systems analysis and adaptation. This work broadly explores the concept of resilience engineering and contextualizes the approach using the case study of the Rio Chama. The resilience of the watershed is characterized in terms of its response to both traditional and resilience engineering interventions. As compared to traditional civil and environmental engineering approaches, resilience engineering can better support social and ecological well-being in complex systems over the long term.
vi
TABLE OF CONTENTS
LIST OF FIGURES ... VII LIST OF TABLES ... VIII
INTRODUCTION ... 1
METHODS ... 2
LITERATURE REVIEW: TRADITIONAL AND RESILIENT CEE ... 4
CASE STUDY: RIO CHAMA WATERSHED CHARACTERIZATION ... 9
... 10 CLIMATE ... 11 POPULATIONS SERVED ... 14 ECONOMIC IMPACT ... 15 WATER GOVERNANCE ... 16 CHANGING CONDITIONS ... 18
ADAPTATIONS AND OPPORTUNITIES ... 20
DISCUSSION ... 23
CONCLUSION: IMPLICATIONS FOR THE FUTURE OF CEE ... 27
vii
List of Figures
Figure 1. The Rio Chama and its watershed, basin, and region. ... 9 Figure 2. Total annual precipitation at 3 measurement sites from 1950-2019. ... 11 Figure 3. Total annual precipitation between 1950-2019 at El Vado (measured on the left axis) and phases of ENSO and PDO in the same period (measured on the right axis). Data points for ENSO represent annual averages of the NOAA Multivariate ENSO Index; the trendline for PDO represents a moving 10-year average of the NCEI PDO Index. ... 12 Figure 4. 30-year averages of daily maximum temperature at the Chama gauge in spring (March-May) from 1936-2019. ... 13 Figure 5. Map of acequias below Abiquiu Dam. (Adrian Marziliano, 2018) ... 16 Figure 6. Conceptual model of the Rio Chama system showing watershed, basin, region, and global scales. ... 24 Box 1. Rio Chama Watershed ... Error! Bookmark not defined. Box 2. The flood controlled hydrograph ... 20
viii
List of Tables
Table 1. Climate characteristics at 3 measurement sites. Air temperature decreases and
1
Introduction
The mounting cost of human modifications to the natural environment worldwide makes plain the need for a paradigm shift in engineering. Traditional engineering approaches—
identifying a specific problem and designing its solution—are too narrow in spatial and temporal scope to address complex, multiscale challenges in highly interconnected systems. Civil and environmental engineering (CEE) has a critical responsibility to allow people to live safely in their environments, and the CEE framework should expand beyond traditional engineering approaches to consider human and ecological well-being over larger spatial and temporal scales.
Among the environments most crucial to human survival are headwater systems, where water is stored at higher altitude, which provide water to billions of people worldwide. Despite their importance, headwater systems are among the least studied ecosystems. The Transect of the Americas project seeks to close this knowledge gap by investigating socioecological
adaptations to hydro-climatic changes throughout North and South America, and this project will contribute to that aim with an in-depth analysis of the Rio Chama watershed, one of the original research sites.
This work proposes a resilience engineering perspective to more effectively address challenges in socioecohydrologic (SEH) systems. A broad description of resilience engineering will be contextualized in a case study of the Rio Chama watershed, a complex and multiscale headwater system that has been subject to both traditional and resilient engineering interventions. The impacts of both types of interventions demonstrates the difference in traditional engineering, which seeks to optimize a limited number of parameters, and resilience engineering, which assesses systems holistically and at multiple scales.
2
Methods
This work broadly defines traditional and resilient engineering approaches and specifically analyzes them through the case study of the Rio Chama watershed. Literature review was utilized to establish the definition of engineering, specifically civil and
environmental engineering, the primary focus of the study. Resilience is defined here as the ability of a system to adapt to changing conditions while maintaining core structure and
function.1 This work is focused on resilience of headwater dependent hydrologic systems as well
as the people and ecosystems that depend on them, together termed socioecohydrologic (SEH) resilience. The SEH lens provides a framework for exploring relationships between social changes, social water demand, ecosystem health, and hydrology.2 It also aligns with resilience
principles, emphasizing the need to shift from assuming stability in hydrologic systems to understanding them as dynamic and interconnected with social and ecological systems.3
The majority of the novel contribution of this work is the characterization of the Rio Chama watershed, one of the initial products of the Transect of the Americas project. The watershed is studied at multiple spatial and temporal scales as part of a larger headwater system. Watershed, basin, and region scales are determined using USGS hydrologic unit codes (HUCs). The Rio Chama watershed is almost completely within Rio Arriba county, comprising 50% of its spatial area. Much of the population within the county is clustered in towns and villages along the Rio Chama, so demographic and economic data for the county may be considered
representative of the watershed.
1 Adapted from Walker & Salt, 2006 2 Cabello et al, 2015
3
In order to characterize the SEH resilience of the system, parameters describing social, ecological, and hydrologic characteristics are measured to describe system conditions, core structure and function, and adaptations. Hydrologic parameters were chosen to describe the quantity, quality, timing, sources, variability, and uses of water in the Rio Chama based on watershed characterizations by the EPA and others.4 Social parameters describe stakeholder
demographics and water governance. Ecological parameters are primarily described in terms of their relation to ecosystem services and climate. Taken together, these characteristics describe SEH relationships such as water availability and demand.5 The characterization is intended to
allow a variety of decision makers and stakeholders along the Rio Chama better understand the SEH system, particularly upstream vulnerabilities and downstream impacts. It relies on publicly available data, making this characterization easily replicable in other watersheds. Accurately characterizing different watersheds requires different indicators and different scales; just as this work encourages water managers to adapt to changing conditions, it also encourages users of this framework to adapt it to measure parameters relevant to the watershed being studied.
By describing resilience and engineering both in broad terms and in the context of the case study, this analysis will address two core research questions: how socioecohydrologically resilient is the Rio Chama watershed, and why should CEE adopt a resilience framework?
4 e.g. Gibbs & Bierwagen, 2017, Hoenicke et. al. 1997 5 Cabello et al, 2015
4
Literature Review: traditional and resilient CEE
Engineering is the application of science to solve problems. A theoretical expression of this definition is using science, defined as “discovering the truth of our understanding of nature,” for “beneficial purposes.”6 Civil and environmental (CE) engineers modify the physical
environment to make it safe, accessible, and hospitable for people. Columbia School of Engineering describes civil engineering as beginning with “the first roof someone raised overhead or the first log laid across a river to be able to cross it more easily.”7
CE engineers have a responsibility to balance the needs of the built and natural
environments. The American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) articulates the mission of civil engineers to “design, build, and maintain the foundation for our modern society” and further details their responsibilities as “stewards of the natural environment,” “innovators and integrators of ideas and technology” and “managers of risk and uncertainty.”8 The concept of stewardship
denotes the mutual dependence of human and natural well-being—humans are constantly subject to the conditions of their environment, and most terrestrial environments are subject to human modification.9,10 Civil and environmental engineers accordingly work to minimize damage to
the environment while ensuring that humans can safely navigate it.
A complicating factor in assessing tradeoffs between human and ecological well-being is that CEE has advanced dramatically from the first roof raised overhead and log laid across a river, both in extent and intensity of environmental alterations. As of 2009, over three-fourths of the Earth’s land surface (excluding Antarctica) had been modified by humans through resource
6 Alaksen, 2013
7 Columbia School of Engineering, 2019 8 ASCE, 2019
9 Hansen et. al., 2013 10 Venter et. al., 2016
5
extraction, infrastructure, and/or productive land uses.11 Anthropogenic carbon emissions
continue to drive global climate warming, altering even remote Antarctic and ocean
environments.12 Ecosystem changes, such as CEE works, often disrupt essential ecosystem
services such as provision of natural resources, protection from natural hazards, and cultural benefits.13 In order to cope with disruptions in ecosystem services, humans modify the natural
system further, which in turn creates more unanticipated consequences that need to be addressed—a dangerous amplifying feedback loop.14
Feedback loops are characteristic of wicked problems.15 Wicked problems are complex
and interconnected such that fixing one element of the problem causes other problems
elsewhere—there can be “no final solution, since any resolution generates further issues.”16 The
term was first defined by Churchman in 1967 as a problem that is “ill-formulated, where the information is confusing, where there are many clients and decision makers with conflicting values, and where the ramifications in the whole system are thoroughly confusing.” CEE challenges are traditionally framed as specific, solvable problems: providing transportation infrastructure, mitigating flood risks, constructing buildings that can survive natural disasters. However, the full extent of impacts on human and ecological well-being often reveal those problems to be more wicked and the solutions more problematic than a traditional CEE perspective would belie.
Resilience approaches focus on the ability of the system to persist through disturbances, and systems thinking similarly values the system as a whole rather than viewing it through the
11 ibid 12 IPCC, 2014
13 Finlayson et. al., 2005
14 e.g. Tisovec-Dufner et. al., 2019 15 Zhang & Posch, 2014
6
lens of a specific purpose, goal, or function.17 Many CEE projects focus almost completely on
optimizing a certain system element, only nominally considering the system as a whole.
Resilience and systems thinking principles emphasize maintaining the integrity of the system as a whole to support desired elements.18,19 Traditional natural sciences evaluate isolated system
elements; systems approaches focus on dynamic “interdependencies and nonlinear relationships” such that changes in the system often have “unforeseen and long-term consequences.”20 The
principles behind the underlying science impact its application: “complex problems are better addressed when decision makers understand subsystems and their interdependencies.”21 Systems
thinking is an essential element of resilience because it allows for evaluation of the full scope of the impacts and vulnerabilities of a certain course of action.
Resilience is promising as an engineering framework because many engineering disciplines already utilize resilient practices. Nuclear engineers, for example, need to plan for every possible contingency from natural disasters to multiple equipment failures. Because cascading equipment failures at a nuclear plant have the potential to cause tremendous damage to people and the environment, nuclear facilities are designed with diversity and redundancy. If one part of the system fails, a different system element with the same redundant function can serve the missing function and prevent total system failure. Diversity within the system ensures that a single threat cannot incapacitate all system elements, and that the system is resilient to diverse stresses.22,23 By embedding multiple possible responses to threats, including multiple
occurrences of the same type of response and multiple types of responses, nuclear systems are
17 Checkland, 1999 18 Walker & Salt, 2006 19 Rebs et. al. 2019 20 Senge, 1987 21 Grohs et. al., 2018 22 Chowdhury et al 2018 23 Volkanovski et al 2016
7
able to react to threats or failure of system elements by adapting system function to changing conditions.
Adaptability is the core of resilience and is particularly essential to CEE. The systems considered in CEE are far more open, far less controlled, and far less precisely understood than nuclear systems. Many important environmental parameters, such as the amount of flow through a river required to sustain the local ecosystem, cannot be accurately quantified using current techniques.24,25 Our limited understanding of socioecological system dynamics means that CEE
interventions almost always result in unforeseen consequences, both positive and negative. Continual monitoring of and adaptation to changing conditions is therefore a key element of resilience engineering.
One of the keys to ensuring adaptability in CEE structures is to make them able to adapt even to their own failure. Under ever-increasing risk of extreme events such as flood and fire,26
however, severe natural disasters that could cause infrastructure failure are increasingly likely. “Safe-to-fail” and “fail-operational” structures are designed to remain partly operational if damaged or to incur minimal damage to the surrounding social and environmental system if it completely fails.27 Planning for structural failure is antithetical to many traditional engineering
design principles, and structures are often difficult to modify once built. Resilient engineering may instead utilize “graceful failure” methods such as using several small structures rather than one large one and designing a range of potential operating states including under partial structure failure to prevent cascading failures. Using green infrastructure and building with nature is another resilient option, fortifying natural processes that are much more adaptable and
24 McKay, 2015 25 Webb et al, 2018 26 IPCC, 2014 27 Kim et al, 2019
8
operational under varying degrees of failure than traditional manmade structures.28 Rather than
banking on the system functioning as planned, resilient engineering plans for system safety under any conditions.
9
Case Study: Rio Chama Watershed Characterization
The Rio Chama watershed, defined by USGS hydrologic unit code (HUC) 13020102, stretches from the San Juan mountains in southern Colorado to its confluence with the Rio Grande near Española in northern New Mexico, USA. The watershed lies almost completely within northern New Mexico, with approximately 5% of its area in Colorado. The system is headwater dependent and snowmelt driven;
in other words, the Rio Chama’s flow is primarily derived from spring runoff from melting mountain snowpack.
Crucial to evaluating the structure and function of the Rio Chama watershed as a system is understanding the role of the river in other larger systems. The Rio Chama is the primary hydrologic unit of the Rio Chama watershed, directly supporting people, ecosystems, and the local economy. It also plays a major role at the basin scale as a primary tributary to the Rio Grande. In the larger Rio Grande region, the Rio Chama receives water from across the Continental Divide from the
Upper Colorado basin to the Rio Grande basin via the San Juan Chama Project (SJCP). Selected physical watershed parameters are provided in the box below.
11
Climate
The Chama gauge (USGS gauge ID 08281400), El Vado gauge (08285500), and Abiquiu gauge (08287000) have very different values for precipitation and air temperature, but trends in both are consistent across the three sites, indicating that climate in the watershed is driven by large-scale factors. Among the possible drivers are teleconnections and global climate change. Average values for air temperature and annual precipitation as well as trends in precipitation are shown below.
Table 1. Climate characteristics at 3 measurement sites. Air temperature decreases and precipitation increases with elevation.
Elevation Average annual precipitation Average annual maximum temperature Average annual minimum temperature Chama 8,110 ft / 2,470 m 21 in / 55 cm 58 °F / 15 °C 26 °F / -3 °C El Vado 6,845 ft / 2085 m 14 in / 36 cm 63 °F / 17 °C 27 °F / -3 °C Abiquiu 6,200 ft / 1890 m 10 in / 24 cm 66 °F / 19 °C 27 °F / -3 °C 0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 1950 1960 1970 1980 1990 2000 2010 2020 Tot al a nnua l pr ec ipi ta ti on ( in.)
Chama El Vado Abiquiu
T ot al a nnua lpr ec ipi ta ti on ( cm )
Figure 2. Total annual precipitation at 3 measurement sites from 1950-2019. Dots represent data points for a given year while the dashed lines represent a
12
Teleconnections are climate patterns large enough to impact global air currents and modify the climate of other places worldwide.29 One such phenomenon is the El Niño Southern
Oscillation (ENSO). The Multivariate ENSO Index is calculated using measurements of temperature and pressure in the central Pacific Ocean, which alternate between high (positive index) and low (negative index) phases approximately every 3-7 years. The regularity of the ENSO cycle makes it a useful tool in modeling future precipitation. The Pacific Ocean is so expansive that these changes influence global air currents, pushing storm systems in different directions. In the El Niño phase, when temperatures are higher and the ENSO index is positive, more storm systems reach the southwestern US and rainfall is more intense.30 The negative
phase, La Niña, is associated with drought and diminished snowpack in the southwestern US.31,32
29 NOAA, 2008 30 Brunelle et. al., 2018 31 Wang & Kumar, 2015 32 Adams et. al., 1999
Figure 3. Total annual precipitation between 1950-2019 at El Vado (measured on the left axis) and phases of ENSO and PDO in the same period (measured on the right axis). Data points for ENSO represent annual averages of the NOAA Multivariate ENSO Index; the trendline for PDO
represents a moving 10-year average of the NCEI PDO Index.
-2.0 -1.0 0.0 1.0 2.0 0 5 10 15 20 25 30 1950 1960 1970 1980 1990 2000 2010 2020 Tot al a nnua l pr ec ipi ta ti on ( in.)
13
The strength of the ENSO signal is regulated by another teleconnection, the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO), which measures temperature in the north Pacific.33 Precipitation is
most strongly correlated with ENSO when ENSO and PDO phases align: the most pluvial El Niño phases occurred during positive PDO phases between 1987-1999 and the driest La Niña phases occurred during negative PDO phases between 1948-1977.34
Global climate change also drives climate patterns in the watershed. Thirty-year means of annual average temperature show no clear pattern, but seasonal averages show a distinct upward trend in spring (March-May) daily maximum temperatures (see Figure 4). This has serious implications for a snowmelt driven system. Warm temperatures early in the season cause more precipitation to fall as rain rather than snow, diminishing the volume of mountain
snowpack.35,36 High spring temperatures also cause snow to melt sooner. A higher proportion of
33 Willis et. al., 2018 34 Wang & Kumar, 2015 35 Mote et. al., 2005 36 Mote et. al., 2016
12 12.5 13 13.5 14 14.5 15 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 1930 1940 1950 1960 1970 1980 1990 2000 2010 2020 M ea n s pr ing hi gh t em epr at ur e ( °F ) M ea n s pr ing hi gh t em pe ra tur e (° C )
Figure 4. 30-year averages of daily maximum temperature at the Chama gauge in spring (March-May) from 1936-2019.
14
precipitation falling as rain and earlier snowmelt result in a smaller runoff peak in late spring and early summer. Modeling by the Bureau of Reclamation indicates that this pattern will continue throughout the Rio Grande region through the 2070s, with declining seasonal runoff and more consistent flow throughout the year.37
Populations served
Rio Arriba County has a population of approximately 39,000 people, 71% of whom identify as Hispanic/Latino and 19% of whom identify as Native American. Seventy-seven percent of county residents identify as white, indicative of the large proportion of New Mexican residents of Spanish descent. Most homes in the county (77%) are owner-occupied despite a high poverty rate (29%), one of many indicators that the Rio Chama community has deep roots.38
Demographic challenges in the region include a migration of young people to larger cities with better economic opportunities, resulting in a higher median age in the watershed than in New Mexico as a whole.39 Domestic water consumption in the county is supplied by approximately
2,150 acre-feet per year (AFY) of groundwater, which is recharged by the river.40
The Rio Chama also serves two major indigenous communities. The Jicarilla Apache Nation, whose reservation lies to the west of the Rio Chama, is allocated 45,000 AFY of Rio Chama water below Willow Creek. Ohkay Owingeh Pueblo, located east of the Rio Grande, is still engaged in litigation to determine its specific water allocation. New Mexico water rights follow the doctrine of prior appropriation, prioritizing beneficial water uses that historically
37 Gangopadhyay & Pruitt, 2011 38 US Census Bureau, 2019 39 ibid
15
precede others. Indigenous people have been using the waters of the Rio Chama since time immemorial and are entitled to a significant proportion of its flows.41
Economic impact
Throughout the watershed and throughout the world, water is mostly used for agriculture. Farm and ranch land occupy nearly 1.4 million acres in Rio Arriba County, over a third of the total land area. Livestock represents the most profitable agriculture product in the county, generating slightly under 2/
3 of agricultural revenue. Apples and alfalfa are two other main
profitable crops.42 Farming in the county is far from lucrative—half of all farms in Rio Arriba
County earn less than $2,500 per year. Rather, agriculture along the Rio Chama is deeply cultural. The Rio Arriba County plan describes local agriculture as “informal and traditional, reminiscent of historical subsistence practices”, and 95% of farms in the county are family-owned.43 The Rio Chama also supports industrial agriculture as a major tributary to the Rio
Grande, which irrigates over 2 million acres of farmland.44
Other direct economic functions of the Rio Chama include tourism and hydropower. The river and its surrounding landscape are used for a variety of recreational activities, providing over 200 jobs in the county and resulting in $35 million in hunting and fishing related
spending.45,46 Rio Arriba County is the second most popular county in the state for fishing and
by far the most popular for hunting by days spent.47 Hydropower is produced at both Abiquiu
41 Hughes, 2017
42 National Agricultural Statistics Service, 2017 43 Community By Design et. al., 2009
44 US Department of Interior, 2016 45 Arrowhead Center, 2019 46 US Census Bureau, 2017 47 Southwick Associates, 2014
16
and El Vado dams, with approximately 17 MW of generating capacity at Abiquiu Dam and approximately 8 MW at El Vado.
Water governance
The Rio Chama serves essential functions in its watershed, basin, and region, and is managed by different governance structures at each scale. Particularly below Abiquiu Dam, individual river diversions feed acequias, which are unlined gravity-fed ditches that have been used along the Rio Chama for centuries. Acequias users, or parciantes, open the head gates on the acequia to irrigate their fields at the direction of the mayordomo, who makes sure that the water is equitably distributed, especially when it is scarce. Because acequias are made of little more than earth and rocks, the infrastructure requires annual cleaning and repair, which
parciantes do together every spring.48 The acequia system is a point of cultural pride in New
48 Neuwirth, 2019
17
Mexico: as one author put it, “Acequias are what give us a sense of place, and the water becomes the blood that brings communities together.”49
In the context of the Rio Chama watershed, one primary actor is the US Army Corps of Engineers (USACE). USACE operates Abiquiu Dam, the largest of three dams along the Rio Chama, with the primary goal of flood control, controlling high flows for the southern portion of the river until its confluence with the Rio Grande.50 The US Bureau of Reclamation (USBOR)
operates Heron Dam primarily for storage of SJCP water and El Vado Dam for storage and management of both SJCP and native flows. The stretch of the Rio Chama between El Vado Dam and Abiquiu Dam is a federally designated Wild and Scenic River, and the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) and US Forest Service (USFS) are responsible for ensuring that the changes imposed by dams are balanced by “policy that would preserve other selected rivers or sections thereof in their free-flowing condition” in terms of water quality and ecosystem services.51,52
At the basin scale, governance of the Rio Chama primarily manages its contribution to the Rio Grande. The Middle Rio Grande Conservancy District was established by the state legislature in 1923 to manage irrigation and water storage throughout the middle Rio Grande Valley, including nearly 200,000 AF of storage at El Vado.53 The quantity, timing, and quality
of water in the middle Rio Grande region are primary concerns for many stakeholder groups. The Nature Conservancy established and coordinates the Rio Grande Water Fund, which brings together diverse stakeholders from the private sector, government, academia, nonprofits, and others to collaborate on innovative land and water management strategies. Several other such
49 Arellano, 2014
50 Utton Transboundary Resources Center, 2019 51 Community By Design et. al., 2009
52 Wild & Scenic Rivers Act of 1968
18
groups operate in the basin, including the New Mexico Water Dialogue, Chama Peak Land Alliance, and Rio Chama Flows Project.
As part of the larger Rio Grande region the Rio Chama is governed by interstate and international compacts. The Upper Colorado River Basin Compact of 1948 entitles New Mexico to 11.5% of flows from the Upper Colorado Basin.54 Approximately 100,000 AFY is diverted to
the Upper Rio Grande Basin via the Rio Chama for use throughout New Mexico. The Rio Grande Compact, resulting from treaties with Mexico in 1906 and 1944, further constrains these diversions. The compact states that after Pueblo water rights, the first priority of Rio Chama flows as measured at the confluence with the Rio Grande is to provide sufficient water to Texas to meet delivery obligations to Mexico. Mexico is guaranteed 60,000 AFY from the Rio Grande and 1.5 million AFY from the Colorado River.55 The Rio Grande and its tributaries, including
the Rio Chama, have not always been able to meet delivery obligations during drought years. A suit brought by Texas against New Mexico alleging breach of the compact was decided by the Supreme Court in 2017, which ruled that New Mexico had breached the compact and that the federal government could intervene in order to ensure adequate deliveries to Mexico.56
Changing conditions
The primary hydrologic change to the system has been the homogenization or
“flattening” of the hydrograph. Naturally occurring high snowmelt runoff peaks in late spring and early summer have been eliminated through flood control and water storage measures. Global climate change, particularly spring warming, has increased the proportion of precipitation
54 ibid 55 ibid
19
falling as rain rather than snow, as well as caused snow to melt sooner and runoff to arrive earlier in the season.57 These changes have resulted in hydrographs at the dams without noticeable
seasonal peaks. Impacts of this modified hydrograph on the river are described below.
20
Social and demographic changes have also impacted the river in recent years. Less than 10% of farmers in Rio Arriba county are under 35 and the average age in the county is just over 40, which is 10% higher than the median age in New Mexico and the US overall, indicative of the migration of young people to urban centers with better economic opportunities.58,59 Total
population in Rio Arriba County has slightly decreased in the last decade, likely for the same reason.60 Moreover, those who have remained working and living along the river are now
sharing space with wealthy landowners who purchase land in the region as a vacation home or side hobby. Economic inequality, as defined by the ratio of the mean of the highest 20% of incomes in the county to the mean of the lowest 20%, has skyrocketed from approximately 13-1 in 2011 to nearly 45-1 in 2017.61
Adaptations and opportunities
SEH resilience is defined by the ability of a system to adapt to changes while maintaining core system structure and function, and many successful adaptations have occurred in the Rio Chama watershed. Perhaps the best example is in acequia communities. Mayordomos work together with parciantes in their community to make decisions about how to equitably share the water differently every year depending on flow conditions. It is no coincidence that the acequia
system has persisted in New Mexico for centuries—it is designed to adapt to disturbances. On the lower Rio Chama, primarily below Abiquiu Dam, acequia infrastructure is made up of earth and rock structures that are damaged by high flows and are rebuilt in a community-wide effort
58 National Agriculture Statistics Service, 2017 59 US Census Bureau, 2019
60 US Census Bureau, 2019 61 FRED, 2020
21
every year. Although the infrastructure is vulnerable to damage from high flows, it is expected to fail, and rebuilding is part of the regular pattern of water use, reducing the vulnerability of the system overall. Because infrastructure failure and water sharing during droughts are expected— social and physical norms are “safe-to-fail” rather than “failsafe”—the system is well prepared to cope with disruptions.62,63
County and federal ecological regulations also support system resilience. The Rio Arriba County Design and Development Regulation System, also called the Yellow Book, contains provisions for different regulations in Critical Management Areas (CMAs) including Headwater Overlay Zoning Districts (HOZDs). HOZD regulations limit development in high mountain water storage areas and buffer zones downstream. The text of the regulation recognizes the role of the Rio Chama in sustaining local ecosystems and traditional acequia agriculture as well as the water quality benefits throughout the river system of maintaining high quality headwaters.64
Maintaining ecological integrity and thereby building natural resistance to disturbances is also reflected in the Wild and Scenic River designation. Focusing environmental protections on headwater areas supports the ability of the entire river to provide critical ecosystem services.
SEH resilience is critically important when ecosystem adaptations are undesirable but social systems are able to change the conditions that the ecosystem was adapting to. Water storage and flood control measures have all but eliminated peak flows along the Rio Chama, resulting in a narrower and less stable channel. The smaller channel has less capacity to convey water, ironically reducing natural flood control and diminishing system function. One group working to address this is the Rio Chama Flow Project (RCFP), a multi-stakeholder effort
62 Neuwirth, 2019 63 Turner et. al., 2016 64 Garcia et al, 2012
22
initially funded by a state river restoration grant that seeks to make river management more holistic and cognizant of ecosystem needs. Among the initiatives proposed by the RCFP are pulse flows, which are large water releases designed to have similar effects to the naturally varied flow regime, as opposed to the flattened hydrograph, and have been found to positively impact headwater dependent rivers in several ways, including improving biodiversity and flushing sediment.65 As a result of RCFP research and advocacy, a pulse flow of 4,000 cubic
feet per second (cfs) was released in 2016 which helped reconnect the hydrologic floodplain as well as support riparian growth and macroinvertebrate populations.66 Pulse flows, or
“environmental flows,” are now regularly released in order to support the Rio Chama ecosystem. Rather than attempting to restore the river that existed previously, the entire SEH system adapted to new conditions and figured out how to maintain system structure and function within this “novel ecosystem.”67
USBOR and others have been able to implement environmental flows along the Rio Chama due in part to water management flexibility at the basin and region scales. Among the first environmental flow projects on the Rio Chama was releases from El Vado in 2015 to provide habitat and breeding conditions for the silvery minnow as required by the Endangered Species Act.68 In 2012, Minute 319 was added to the 1944 Treaty with Mexico, allowing the
U.S. to transfer greater or lesser quantities of Colorado River water to Mexico based on the needs of either party with any water debt short of compact obligations to be made up in later years.69
This measure codified flexibility and adaptation in water management throughout the Rio
65 Brown et. al., 2015
66Rio Chama Reservoir Operations Pilot: Technical Summary 67 Hobbs et. al., 2006
68 Utton Transboundary Resources Center, 2019 69 ibid
23
Grande Region, and in 2014 a pulse flow of 106,000 AF was released near the US-Mexico border. A follow-up study found benefits to vegetation, greenness, and aquifer recharge, and concluded that additional pulse flows could continue restoring riparian vegetation and increasing channel capacity.70
Managing the system as a whole rather than the sum of disjointed parts requires significant cross-sector and cross-scale information gathering and sharing. Several
interdisciplinary water management groups at the watershed, basin, and region scales bring together private landowners, tribal government, academic water experts, industry, and other stakeholders to share their knowledge and collaborate on future water management strategies. A common theme across all groups is the need for more data to inform water management choices. The 2019 New Mexico Water Data Act set the stage for digitizing water data and establishing a standard format as well as single online repository for data from across the state. The Chama Peak Land Alliance has installed sensors and gauges on several private properties, opening the door to citizen science and stakeholder participation while expanding the scope of ecological data on the watershed. Such data can be used to improve widely applied models such as the USACE developed Upper Rio Grande Water Operations Model (URGWOM). The growing capacity of the system at multiple scales to collaborate and share information is a promising resilient aspect.
Discussion
Characterizing SEH resilience along the Rio Chama has implications for the region itself and for management of headwater dependent systems in general. The biggest challenge to
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supporting resilience is the multiscale nature of the system, which is apparent in every aspect characterized. Hyper-local, municipal, county, state, federal, and international governance structures with distinct priorities are nested within one another; global climate drivers influence precipitation in the watershed and snowpack throughout the basin; large-scale economic trends shape local industry. In order to establish what resilience means in a practical sense, stakeholder needs should be understood within the boundaries established at larger scales.
The top priority for the Rio Chama in the context of the Rio Grande region is to convey sufficient water from the Colorado River to the Rio Grande to meet compact obligations. Especially with other flexible water delivery provisions implemented at larger scales, a wide variety of day-to-day operating conditions may be implemented at the watershed scale while meeting
this goal. At the basin scale, stakeholders are primarily concerned with Rio Chama’s ecosystem services, which support a range of social, economic, and ecologic functions. As a primary tributary to the Rio Grande, the quality, quantity, and timing of Rio Chama flows impact flora, fauna, and anthropogenic water uses throughout the basin. Among the top priorities reflected in
Figure 6. Conceptual model of the Rio Chama system showing watershed, basin, region, and global scales.
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the regulatory framework are silvery minnow habitat, cottonwood germination, and releasing sufficient water into the Rio Grande to support agricultural and municipal demand downstream. Within the watershed, USBOR is the dominant actor and the top priority is water deliveries downstream. In the interest of better supporting downstream users, USBOR has been
increasingly flexible and adaptable in modifying the flow regime in recent years. It is important to note, however, that acequia infrastructure remains vulnerable to high flows. In organizational contexts, power means the ability to make sure resources are directed to the priorities of the more powerful party.71,72 Water management in headwater systems can increase SEH resilience by
explicitly including the needs of downstream and small-scale water users. Large scales are made up of all the smaller scales, and system-wide resilience is made up of individually resilient communities.
At a forum discussion, Chama Peak Land Alliance board member Manny Trujillo was asked why he, as a private landowner, was willing to serve on the board. He responded, “so I would know what they are doing.”73 This quip succinctly captures the essence of the need for
collaboration across scales and sectors in the Rio Chama system. Appropriately adapting to changing conditions requires a thorough understanding of SEH system dynamics, the needs of downstream users, and the role of the river in sustaining ecosystem services. In order to continue improving the state of knowledge of the Rio Chama system, future work should engage
stakeholder groups across sectors and scales, including downstream users, monitor
socioecological indicators and share those results, and especially continue to do so following innovations in water management. Although many stakeholders disagree on the details of how
71 Mangi et. al., 2013 72 Dahl, 1968
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to solve problems in the watershed or even disagree on what the problems are, all stakeholders value and even rely on the river and ecosystem services it provides. The best opportunity to improve SEH resilience on the Rio Chama is to bring stakeholders together on this common ground.
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Conclusion: implications for the future of CEE
SEH resilience refers to the ability of interconnected social, ecological, and hydrologic systems to adapt to changing conditions while maintaining their core structure and function, and resilience engineering interventions support resilience in SEH systems. When the planned engineering project is evaluated from a holistic systems perspective that takes into account multiple scales, the impact on structure and function within the watershed and downstream through multiple social and ecological systems may be more easily assessed.
Traditional engineering along the Rio Chama sought to optimize flood control by intensely modifying the streamflow regime. The current state of knowledge on SEH system dynamics is limited and was even more limited in the mid-20th century when the dams were
constructed. These knowledge gaps mean that CEE interventions almost always result in unforeseen consequences, and anthropogenic flood control along the Rio Chama inadvertently diminished natural flood control. As ecological monitoring increasingly indicated adverse ecological impacts, a resilience engineering strategy began to emerge. Flexibility and
adaptability in streamflow releases cleared sediment, helped revive bank-stabilizing vegetation, and restored some of the river’s natural capacity to contain water, naturally reducing flood risk.74
By adapting operation to include pulse flows, the dams both provide anthropogenic flood control and support natural flood control. Engineering for diversity and redundancy in flood control effectively address a wicked problem and bolster SEH resilience in the watershed.
The ultimate goal of CEE is to increase the well-being of people and their environments. CEE works keep communities safe through natural disasters and help protect ecological integrity while allowing people to utilize ecosystem services. Headwater systems are highly socially and
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spatially interconnected, and in order for CEE to continue addressing complex challenges within such systems, engineers should consider the full spatial and temporal extent of engineering impacts. As written in a 1998 circular, “Management of one component of the hydrologic system, such as a stream or an aquifer, commonly is only partly effective because each hydrologic component is in continuing interaction with other components.”75 SEH resilience
expands this lens to cover hydrologic, social, and ecological components that are impacted by engineering interventions.
There is no perfect formula or universal solution to the increasingly complicated challenges that arise at the intersection of humans and nature, but a change from “business-as-usual and systems optimization approaches” is clearly necessary.76 Resilience engineering better
upholds the mission of CEE to protect people and the environment in complex SEH systems and should be implemented accordingly.
75 Winter et. al., 1998 76 Seager et. al. 2011
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