Implications of floodplain dynamics for reservoir operation

Abstract

Drought and flood events cause billions of dollars of economic damages in the United States and other countries every year. To alleviate both types of disaster, reservoirs regulate inflow, decreasing downstream variability. However, one blind spot in current reservoir operation, specifically considering flood and drought management, is the impacts of current operation on the demands which operation is subject to in the future. Reservoirs are operated considering event and seasonal scales but influences processes, such as socioeconomic development, that occur over much longer time scales and in turn feedback to influence reservoir decisions. Recent and ongoing progress in understanding coupled social-hydrological systems provides a path to begin pro-actively managing reservoirs considering socio-economic dynamics. We develop a proof-of-concept model for feedbacks between reservoir operation and floodplain development, a specific case of socio-economic feedbacks, and discuss its potential implications for reservoir management.