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Water is a critical resource that can constrain the
development and management of energy, land, agriculture
and the environment. The spatial distribution and
temporal variability of water availability have strongly
influenced the location of human habitation, the siting
of energy production facilities, the intensity and
type of agriculture, and the distribution and abundance
of biota. Flood control projects have sought to mitigate
flood hazards, and reservoirs and water delivery systems
have addressed drought. While this has facilitated
the expansion of human habitation, the associated
modification of the landscape and the riparian zone
has led to river basin scale ecological impacts, degradation
of stream water quality and habitat, and changes in
the land-atmosphere exchange of water and energy that
may have global impacts. Environmental activists call
for the removal of dams to provide natural conditions
for endangered aquatic species, while storage is clearly
needed for energy production, flood control and water
supply. Environmental objectives and regulation over
the last 25 years have succeeded in drastically improving
the condition of American rivers through control of
municipal and industrial point sources. However, we
now face the much more difficult problem of controlling
landscape scale or non-point sources (e.g., sediment
laden with nitrogen or phosphorous from agricultural
fields; urban runoff; atmospheric deposition of sulfates)
of pollution to rivers. Climate variability and the
consequent large dynamic range of hydrologic processes,
and the continuous modification of the landscape by
human and natural factors pose a major challenge in
analyzing and forecasting the potential for floods
or water quality degradation.
The mission of the Columbia Water Center is to develop
technical analyses of and solutions to these complex
multi-resource management problems that are associated
with water quantity and quality and hazards.
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