Water demand Agriculture Climate Change Irrigation Water Supply
Every five years, the Department of Ecology’s Office of Columbia River (OCR) is required to submit a long-term water supply and demand forecast to the Legislature.A significant portion of the 2011 Forecast was carried out in partnership by an interdisciplinary WSU team (see poster #617, “Assessing the impact of climate change on Columbia River Basin agriculture through integrated crop systems, hydrologic, and water management modeling,”for a more detailed description of the Forecast). To gather feedback, the WSU team organized a series of educational workshops and an online survey coinciding with the release of the draft Forecast results. The computer modeling that was central to the 2011 Forecast was assumed to be challenging material for a public outreach process. Research suggests that public knowledge about the nature and purpose of scientific models is low (Schwarz and White 2005). Based on this, workshops provided a non-technical overview of the methodologies used, followed by guided discussion to elicit participant questions and stakeholder responses. In similar contexts, the Department of Ecology normally solicits and responds to written and oral comments submitted by individuals or organizations. To supplement this feedback, we surveyed workshop participants using a wireless response system. The survey was also open during the public comment period through a web portal. Results from the workshops provide insight into the perceived usefulness of various portions of the Forecast, and will help prioritize work on the 2016 Forecast
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Details
Title
Enhancing stateholder feedback on the 2011 long-term forecast of water supply and demand for the Columbia River basin
Creators
Georgine Yorgey (Author)
Chad Kruger (Author)
Sylvia Kantor (Author)
Tara Zimmerman (Author)
Jennifer Adam (Author)
Michael Barber (Author)
Michael Brady (Author)
Kirti Rajagopalan (Author)
Elizabeth Allen (Author)
Conference
Washington State University Academic Showcase (Pullman, Washington, 03/30/2012)
Academic Unit
WSU Academic Showcase 2012; Civil and Environmental Engineering, Department of; Economic Sciences, School of
Grant note
Funding Agency: Washington Department of Ecology, Washington State University, Pullman, WA
Identifiers
99900502137001842
Copyright
In copyright ; openAccess ; http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/ ; http://purl.org/eprint/accessRights/OpenAccess