Adaptive and Sustainable Management

The maximum flood that can be experienced without exceeding some amount (e.g., $10 million) in damages. Resilience will increase with improved flows access to floodplains and removal of infrastructure from floodplains.

Greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from land or water management, industrial/commercial activities, energy production, or transportation

The Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) uses a satellite-based method to estimate fluctuations in groundwater in the Earth’s surface. By subtracting the water subcomponents soil moisture, snow-water-equivalent, and surface reservoir storage, the residual GRACE signal can be interpreted to represent basin-wide groundwater changes.

Groundwater stress measures the ratio of groundwater withdrawal relative to its recharge rate over a given aquifer. Values above one indicate where unsustainable groundwater consumption could affect groundwater availability and groundwater-dependent ecosystems. The indicator was used by the World Resources Institute (WRI) in the Aqueduct 2.0 project.

Drought severity measures the average length of droughts times the dryness of the droughts from 1901 to 2008. The indicator was used by the World Resources Institute in the Aqueduct 2.0 project.

Flood occurrence is the number of floods recorded from 1985 to 2011. The indicator was used by the World Resources Institute in the Aqueduct 2.0 project.

Inter-annual variability measures the variation in water supply between years. This indicator was used by the World Resources Institute in the Aqueduct 2.0 project.

Land Subsidence can be the result of depletion of aquifers. Both the absolute amount and rate of subsidence are used.

Building standard and cost of maintaining levees/assessed value of the land use they protect. This ratio of benefit to cost helps us understand levees are the most important in a system.

Frequency of levee breaks in the region. The frequency of levee weakening and breaking is informative about the power in the channel in particular locations.