PROJECT SUMMARY

This project was a collaboration with scientists at the University of Lethbridge. The project evaluated historical, contemporary and possible future land cover and climatic changes within the Castle Watershed headwaters of the Oldman River Basin (ORB), and quantified the impacts of these changes to river runoff and water supply. Synergistic field, remote sensing and modeling studies were conducted to understand terrain and land cover properties in this Rocky Mountain watershed and how they influence hydrology at a scale suitable for operational water resource planning. Researchers at PARC provided high-resolution Regional Climate Model projections to drive the ACRU physical hydrological model and parameterize it for simulations of future trends in ORB water supply. A complimentary goal was to provide baseline data on past and present hydro-ecological conditions within the Castle Watershed. Towards this goal, PARC scientists reconstructed the annual flow of the Castle River from 1150 to 2015.