Theses and Dissertations Collection

Water is fundamental to social and environmental systems, particularly throughout the Columbia River Basin (CRB). However, climate impacts and population growth pressure on water resources will affect everyone living in the Basin, but not equally and there is growing concern over whether the status quo is sustainable (Hamlet et al., 2007; Cosens et al., 2016). Significant changes to the quantity and quality of water resources are already apparent across CRB. Changing climate patterns and increased average winter temperatures have contributed to a shift from snow to rain dominant precipitation, particularly at mid-elevations (Nolin & Daly, 2006). The resultant declines in snowpack, coupled with limited water storage infrastructure, indicate risk of diminished water resources throughout the Basin (Mote et al., 2005; Payne et al., 2005). The attending changes to water volume and timing of availability have broad hydrologic, as well as social implications. The following three studies share in common exploration of regional water resource challenges and spatial analyses. From this work, we grain understanding of regional research funding patterns and conclude that there is a relative dearth of funded, peer-reviewed mountain climate research in the CRB that integrates the social and physical realms. In addition, we provide a novel approach to representing spatio-temporal distribution of social and physical vulnerability to climate change induced water resource loss at a water management scale (subbasin). Our results from two comparative methodological approaches, equal and variance weighting, uncover consistent patterns of vulnerability across the Basin, and suggest that “hotspots” of overlapping vulnerabilities also exist within the study area. We provide suggestions for further research and conclude that hotspot subbasins may be considered priority areas for next steps in targeting finite resources for integrated climate research and water loss adaptation efforts, in addition to community scale vulnerability analyses.