Sustainable water management under future uncertainty with eco-engineering decision scaling

Managing freshwater resources sustainably under future climatic and hydrological uncertainty poses novel challenges. Rehabilitation of ageing infrastructure and construction of new dams are

widely viewed as solutions to diminish climate risk, but attaining the broad goal of freshwater sustainability will require expansion of the prevailing water resources management paradigm

beyond narrow economic criteria to include socially valued ecosystem functions and services. We introduce a new decision framework, eco-engineering decision scaling (EEDS), that explicitly

and quantitatively explores trade-offs in stakeholder-defined engineering and ecological performance metrics across a range of possible management actions under unknown future hydrological

and climate states. We illustrate its potential application through a hypothetical case study of the Iowa River, USA. EEDS holds promise as a powerful framework for operationalizing

freshwater sustainability under future hydrological uncertainty by fostering collaboration across historically conflicting perspectives of water resource engineering and river conservation

ecology to design and operate water infrastructure for social and environmental benefits.

We acknowledge S. Steinschneider for developing the stochastic weather generator for the Iowa River Basin; S. Wi for the VIC hydrologic model development; D. LeFever for support in

developing the reservoir systems model; and R. Olsen for his help in providing hydraulic modelling tools and economic information for the Coralville Lake flood control system. Special thanks

to P. Clark for artwork in Fig. 1. Additional support for C.M.B. and C.M.S was provided by the NSF CAREER Award (CBET-1054762). The views in this article are those of the authors and do not

necessarily represent the views of the OECD or its member countries. This article has been peer reviewed and approved for publication consistent with USGS Fundamental Science Practices

(http://pubs.usgs.gov/circ/1367/,) and we thank J. Friedman of the USGS for his constructive comments. Any use of trade, firm, or product names is for descriptive purposes only and does not

imply endorsement by the U.S. Government. This paper resulted from a synthesis project funded by the National Socio-Environmental Synthesis Center (SESYNC) under National Science Foundation

Award #DBI-1052875.

Department of Biology and Graduate Degree Program in Ecology, Campus Mail 1878, Colorado State University, Fort Collins, 80523, Colorado, USA

Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of Massachusetts, 12B Marston Hall, 130 Natural Resources Road, Amherst, 01003, Massachusetts, USA

US Geological Survey, Fort Collins Science Center, 2150 Centre Avenue, Building C, Fort Collins, 80526, Colorado, USA

Alliance for Global Water Adaptation, 7640 NW Hoodview Circle, Corvallis, 97330, Orlando, USA

National Socio-Environmental Synthesis Center, University of Maryland, 1 Park Place, Annapolis, 21401, Maryland, USA

Department of Geography, Loughborough University, Leicestershire, LE11 3TU, UK

Department of Scenarios and Policy Analysis, Deltares, PO Box 177, Delft, 2600 MH, The Netherlands

Delft University of Technology, Faculty of Technology, Policy & Management, PO Box 5015, Delft, 2600 GA, The Netherlands

US Army Corps of Engineers, Institute for Water Resources, 7701 Telegraph Road, Alexandria, 22315, Virginia, USA

Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), 2 rue André-Pascal, Paris, 75775, France

National Socio-Environmental Synthesis Center, 1 Park Place, Annapolis, 21401, Maryland, USA

N.L.P. and J.H.M. conceived the original project. N.L.P., T.E.G. and C.M.B. led the drafting of the text. C.M.S., C.M.B., T.E.G. and N.L.P. led the case study analysis. N.L.P, C.M.B.,

T.E.G., J.H.M, M.A.P., C.M.S., R.L.W., M.H., G.F.M., K.C.D. and A.B. contributed to the intellectual content through workshop participation and writing.

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