Skip to Content

All Additional Resources

Water Supply

Aqueduct Water Risk Atlas – World Resources Institute (WRI)

Tool for understanding water-related risks and assessing exposure to water risk worldwide. Including 13 indicators of baseline water quality and future water quality. The atlas includes tools for prioritizing basins based on their indicators. 

wri.org/applications/aqueduct/water-risk-atlas/ 

Colorado Basin River Forecast Center – National Weather Service

Realtime, recent, and forecasted hydrologic data with tools and forecasts for the Colorado River Basin.  

cbrfc.noaa.gov/lmap/lmap.php

Colorado River Basin Natural Flow and Salt Data – U.S. Bureau of Reclaimation

Provisional natural flow of the Colorado River at Lees Ferry, AZ. 

usbr.gov/lc/region/g4000/NaturalFlow/provisional.html

Daily Snow Viewer – National Snow and Ice Data Center (CIRES)

Interactive map viewer showing daily snow coverage across the Western United States that allows users to explore variables like total snow cover, snow water equivalent (SWE), albedo, and radiative forcing. Summary data can be produced for States, Regions, and HUC basins. Check out the snow-viewer guide here: Snow viewer guide. 

https://nsidc.org/snow-today/snow-viewer 

Forests to Faucets 2.0 – USDA Forest Service

Storymap, dashboard, and reports connecting national forests to water supplies across the U.S. Explore your watershed using the Data Explorer tool. 

https://storymaps.arcgis.com/collections/4e450a6c7ed24f0cbae4abc1c07843b7?item=1 

Hydrodata Basin Maps: Upper Colorado – U.S. Bureau of Reclamation

Dashboard showing the status of surface water and surface water storage in the upper Colorado River Basin.  

usbr.gov/uc/water/hydrodata/status_maps/

Intermountain West Climate Dashboard – Western Water Assessment, NOAA and Partners

The intermountain West Climate Dashboard provides situational awareness of climate, drought, and water resources for Colorado and Wyoming.  

wwa.colorado.edu/resources/intermountain-west-climate-dashboard 

National Water and Climate Center Interactive Map Viewer – National Resource Conservation Service (NRCS)

NRCS Interactive Map customized to show the adjusted streamflow for the current water-year-to-date, as a % of the period-of-record average. Click on a gage of interest to bring up a popup, click on the popup to expand it, and then click on Data Reports and either Water Year Table or Water Year Chart for the current year’s monthly flows. For historical flows at that gage, open the Water Year Table, click on the Create/Modify Report tab in the upper left. When the tab opens, click the first checkbox for ‘stream volume, adjusted’ then below that, change Time Period to “Period of Record”, then click on the View Report tab at upper left. 

nrcs.usda.gov/wps/portal/wcc/home/quicklinks/ 

National Water Information System: Map View, Colorado River Basin – U.S. Geological Survey

Interactive map viewer of all the hydrological monitoring sites run by the U.S. Geological Survey in the Colorado River Basin.  

maps.waterdata.usgs.gov/mapper/ 

Principal Aquifers of the United States – U.S. Geological Survey

This website compiles USGS resources and data related to principal aquifers including Aquifer Basics, principal aquifers maps and GIS data, and the National Aquifer Code Reference List. 

usgs.gov/mission-areas/water-resources/science/principal-aquifers-united-states

Science Be Dammed: How Ignoring Inconvenient Science Drained the Colorado River (Book) – Kuhn, E., and J. Fleck (2019). University of Arizona Press.

Science Be Dammed is an alarming reminder of the high stakes in the management—and perils in the mismanagement—of water in the western United States.  It seems deceptively simple: even when clear evidence was available that the Colorado River could not sustain ambitious dreaming and planning by decision-makers throughout the twentieth century, river planners and political operatives irresponsibly made the least sustainable and most dangerous long-term decisions. 

https://uapress.arizona.edu/book/science-be-dammed

Watershed Erosion Prediction Project (WEPP) – USDA, U.S. Forest Service

The Water Erosion Prediction Project (WEPP), is a physically-based soil erosion prediction technology. WEPP has a number of customized interfaces developed for common applications such as roads, managed forests, forests following wildfire, and rangelands. It also has a large database of cropland soils and vegetation scenarios. The WEPP model is a distributed parameter, continuous simulation model, and is able to describe a given erosion concern in great detail for an experienced user. 

forest.moscowfsl.wsu.edu/fswepp/