Salida Steam Plant
Wednesday
July, 26, 2023
Dinner: 5:30pm in the Steam Plant Ballroom
Talk: 7:00pm in the Steam Plant auditorium
Brad Udall
The Ongoing Multi-Decadal Colorado River Crisis: a collision of 19th Century Water Law, 20th Century Infrastructure, and 21st Century Climate Change and Population Growth
To reserve seats for the free dinner prior to the 7:00pm talk please R.S.V.P. to Butch Butler
Salida Steam Plant
Monday
August, 28, 2023
Dinner: 5:30pm in the Steam Plant Ballroom
Talk: 7:00pm in the Steam Plant auditorium
Dr. Branko Kosovic
Wildfires – can we predict their spread?
Wildland fires and weather are coupled through complex feedbacks including forest and wildfire management practices, human encroachment into wildland, and the effects of climate change on weather and vegetation.
To reserve seats for the free dinner prior to the 7:00pm talk please R.S.V.P. to Butch Butler
The Colorado River supplies water to over 40M people in seven states, two nations and 30 Indian Tribes. Every major Southwestern city including Denver, Phoenix, Tucson, Los Angeles, Las Vegas, Albuquerque and many others rely on the river for up to 90% of their water supplies. Much of the nation’s winter vegetables are also entirely reliant on Colorado River water. Since 2000, river flows have declined by nearly 20% compared to the 20th century, and the nation’s two largest reservoirs have plummeted from nearly 95% full to about 25% full. Multiple peer-review papers have attributed up to half of the flow decline on human caused climate change. Rising temperatures -- up about 3F since 1970 with much more warming to come -- cause more evaporation, less snow, more rain, and earlier runoff. The 23-year period since 2000 has had the lowest precipitation in the Upper Basin since records were first kept in 1895, also resulting in the loss of river flow. A large snowpack and resulting runoff in 2023 will buy the system a ‘grace year’ but otherwise will do little to change the fundamental water management problems due to the ongoing ‘aridification’ and water overuse in the American Southwest. In 2022, the federal government announced that large cutbacks would be needed to stabilize declining reservoirs and protect human health and safety. The “Law of the River”, the various agreements, court decisions, treaties and compacts that govern the use and operation of the river, is being modified quickly in fundamental ways to adapt to these new realities. What does this mean for Coloradans?
A video recording of Brad’s talk can be viewed at Brad Udall at the Salida Steam Plant 07/26/23
Bradley H. Udall is a Senior Water and Climate Research Scientist / Scholar at Colorado State University’s Colorado Water Center. His expertise includes hydrology and related policy issues of the American West, with a focus on the Colorado River. Brad was a co-author of the 2009 and 2018 National Climate Assessments and a contributing author to the 2014 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change 5th Assessment. Brad has testified in both the U.S. Senate and U.S. House of Representatives on the impacts of climate change of water resources and provided input to multiple National Academy of Science panels. He has published multi peer-reviewed journal articles on the causes of the declining Colorado River flows and on the ongoing aridification of the Western US. He has been interviewed by the New York Times, Washington Post, Denver Post, Los Angeles Times, USA Today, Arizona Republic and Arizona Daily Star among other publications. He has appeared on CBS’s 60 Minutes, PBS, the Weather Channel and other media outlets. Brad was formerly the Director of the Getches-Wilkinson Center for Natural Resources, Energy and Environment at the University of Colorado Law School and Director of the University of Colorado - NOAA Western Water Assessment. Brad has an engineering degree from Stanford and an MBA from Colorado State University.
The Collegiate Peaks Forum Series, now in its 21st year, is a free lecture series with presentations in Leadville, Buena Vista, and Salida.
Location: Salida Steam Plant, 220 Sackett Ave. Salida, CO 81201
Wildfire is a fundamental component of ecosystems which humans have used to manage landscapes throughout history. In recent decades, the destructive impact of wildfires has increased significantly in the United States and across the world. This increase arises from several factors, including forest and wildfire management practices, human encroachment into wildland, and the effects of climate change on weather and vegetation. Wildland fires and weather are coupled through complex feedbacks. For example, large wildland fires, result from interactions between weather and biomass, i.e., fuels. Fuels are characterized by their type, load, density, and moisture content, which are in turn affected by climate and weather conditions. Further, wind storms and storm outflows affect how fast fires spread. And yet fires themselves can affect the weather. Heat released by fires impacts local winds and creates updrafts lofting smoke and firebrands. These firebrands can be carried long distances, igniting new fires ahead of the fire front. Updrafts can result in formation of pyrocumulus or pyrocumulonimbus clouds. Therefore, while weather directly affects fire spread, fires can in turn modify weather.
Wildland fire prediction is a critical component of effective risk assessment, fire management and decision support. Accurate fire prediction is essential for forest management using prescribed burns. Prediction is made possible using advanced computing platforms and internet that enable rapid data access and processing. It is now possible to predict wildland fire spread with sufficient accuracy to inform critical decisions but these predictions must incorporate accurate weather forecasting of how fire affects weather and how weather affects fire. For wildland fire prediction, we use the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) – Fire model, a weather prediction model coupled with a fire behavior model. Wildfire risk assessment and prediction for better fire management requires accurate and timely information about weather and fuel conditions, ignition location and time. In this presentation, we will demonstrate some successes and challenges in predicting wildland fire spread based on computer simulations of recent fires in Colorado including: Last Chance Fire near Denver in 2012 (Muñoz-Esparza et al. 2018), East Troublesome Fire in 2020 (DeCastro et al. 2020), and Marshall Fire in 2021 (Juliano et al. 2021). These fires span a range of ecosystems and weather conditions and demonstrate current prediction capabilities and challenges.
Dr. Branko Kosović is the Director of the Weather Systems and Assessment Program and the Program Manager for Renewable Energy for the Research Applications Laboratory. He joined NCAR in 2009 after seven years at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. He received his Ph.D. degree in Aerospace Engineering from the University of Colorado (1996), M.S. degree in Aerospace Engineering from Penn State University (1991), and B.S. degree in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Rijeka, Croatia (1988). Dr. Kosović’s expertise is in boundary layer meteorology with a focus on high-resolution simulations of boundary layer flows. He has been involved in research and development activities in atmospheric transport and dispersion, turbulence simulations and modeling for renewable energy applications. He has also worked on inverse problems using nonlinear optimization and Bayesian inference with stochastic sampling. Dr. Kosović is currently working on extending multiscale modeling capabilities in numerical weather prediction models for wind and solar energy and wildland fire prediction applications.
A video of Dr. Kosovic’s talk can be viewed by clicking here.
The Collegiate Peaks Forum Series, now in its 21st year, is a free lecture series with presentations in Leadville, Buena Vista, and Salida.
Location: Salida Steam Plant, 220 Sackett Ave. Salida, CO 81201