South Platte Salinity
Research
Stakeholder-informed Research
Four main questions
Stakeholders identified their concerns and needs around salinity in the South Platte River Basin and grouped them into principal themes. The Technical Team, a subgroup of the larger Stakeholder Group, refined the concerns and needs into research questions.
These questions are intended to guide research efforts to ensure relevant and actionable results for the stakeholders. In addition, processes have been established to facilitate technical review of research results as well as ongoing communication and feedback from stakeholders.
What are the sources of salinity?
What are the concentrations/loads in the watershed (Waterton Canyon to the state line): spatial, temporal, amounts, constituents?
- Where are the hydrologic inputs and outputs of the watershed?
- How does salt accumulate over time and where does it go (load & trends)?
What is the interaction of water and land management with sources and concentrations/loads?
- What are the effects of agriculture and irrigation practices on salinity?
- What are the effects of municipal and industrial water use & treatment on salinity?
What are the impacts of salinity?
- Is salinity currently a problem and for whom? (municipal, agriculture, ecosystem (microbiome, aquatic invertebrates))? If so, where?
- Will salinity be a problem in the future and for whom? Where and when?
- What are the short-term and long-term salinity implications for species, groundwater, agriculture, municipalities, other states?
What are effective mitigation and management strategies?
By source, what are effective mitigation and management strategies to address salinity?
Interactive dashboard
The South Platte Salinity Dashboard is created from Watershed Rapid Assessment Program (WRAP) , a summary tool that extracts, organizes, and analyzes data and information at various watershed scales, including HUC 12, HUC 10, and HUC 8 levels. Utilizing the extracted data, the WRAP tool calculates a number of watershed health indicators to create an overall summary of the watershed condition.
Current South Platte Salinity research projects
Project Team: Allan Andales (CSU), Dan Mooney (CSU), Tim Gates (CSU), Jose Chavez (CSU), Grady O’Brien (Neirbo)
Funding Source: Colorado Water Center
The South Platte Salinity Stakeholder Group, which represents municipal, industrial, agricultural, and environmental interests, has identified the need for a basin-wide assessment of current salinity conditions. This project aims to summarize the state of knowledge on surface and groundwater salinity in the SPRB. Specific objectives are to:
- Assess existing information on the nature and extent of surface and groundwater salinity and its impacts on municipal water supply/treatment and irrigated agriculture in the SPRB.
- Identify key problems and issues caused by rising salinity that are currently affecting representative stakeholders.
- Organize the collected information into an online portal widely accessible to stakeholders. This will enable planning for targeted applications of monitoring, treatment, and remediation technologies at identified salinity hot spots within the SPRB.
Outputs will include (1) established working relationships with stakeholders, experts, and agencies; (2) a written report summarizing available salinity information and laying out plans for a thorough data collection campaign; (3) a SPRB salinity data platform; and (4) an emerging monitoring network and some preliminary collected data.
Information gathered in this project will help water users and managers understand the state of salinity problems in the SPRB and the vulnerability of the agricultural economy to this growing water quality concern. It also will form a springboard for discovery and implementation of effective solutions, leading to diminished land and water salinization and increased crop productivity.
Project Team: Grady O’Brien (Neirbo)
Funding Source: Colorado Corn Council
- Farmer Engagement
- Identify farmers and farmland available for long-term salinity characterization – target of 100 monitoring locations
- Farm visits and windshield surveys
- Interviews with producers
- Field observations of soil conditions, pumping wells, and ditches
- Spatial database and evaluation
- Compile data collected during field reconnaissance in spatial database
- Identify long-term monitoring sites
Project Team: Tim Gates and Jose Chavez (CSU)
Funding Source: Colorado Agricultural Experimental Station
The goal of this project is to initiate a systematic investigation that will lead to a reliable definition of the problem of water and land salinization in Colorado’s South Platte River Basin (SPRB), forming a sound basis for a search for effective solutions. This goal is to be accomplished through the following objectives:
- Assess existing information on the nature and extent of SPRB salinity and its impacts;
- Develop a rationale and plan for extensive data collection to enhance the characterization of salinity and its impacts and to support a search for effective solutions; and
- Initiate the gathering of the required additional data.
Outputs will include (1) established working relationships with stakeholders, experts, and agencies; (2) a written report summarizing available salinity information and laying out plans for a thorough data collection campaign; (3) a SPRB salinity data platform; and (4) an emerging monitoring network and some preliminary collected data.
Information gathered in this project will help water users and managers understand the state of salinity problems in the SPRB and the vulnerability of the agricultural economy to this growing water quality concern. It also will form a springboard for discovery and implementation of effective solutions, leading to diminished land and water salinization and increased crop productivity.
Project Team: Jose Chavez (CSU), Tim Gates (CSU), Allan Andales (CSU), Grady O’Brien (Neirbo); Mazdak Arabi (CSU), Ryan Bailey (CSU)
Funding Source: Colorado Water Conservation Board
To promote sustainable agricultural practices in Colorado’s South Platte River Basin (SPRB), it is imperative to understand the soil salinity status and its relationship with water resources salinity and other influencing factors. In this research project, we plan to use Landsat 5, 7, and 8 multispectral images to map estimated actual crop evapotranspiration, crop water stress, crop yield, and soil salinity levels (electric conductivity, dS/m) across the SPRB over a historic period of 20 years.
The information gained from these maps will aid in the identification of agricultural lands with different levels of salinity impact. We will focus mainly on corn and alfalfa fields because of their large extent in the SPRB and because of their deep root systems and response to salinity. Data on factors potentially contributing to salinity (irrigation methods, agronomic practices, soil types, irrigation water salinity, and geology) will be garnered from existing publications and ongoing surveys being carried out by related projects.
The information obtained from maps and the datasets shared by these collaborators will be merged into a Geographic Information System (GIS) to explore potential cause and effect relationships. The elaboration of the different salinity maps and apparent rates of salinization will assist in identifying key locations within the SPRB for more detailed monitoring in future projects. Thus, the outcomes of this project will help define a long-term research effort and publications will be a channel to educate stakeholders on the status of agricultural land salinization, its likely causes, and prospects for mitigation.
Resources
Have questions? Contact us.
Email the Stakeholder Group Facilitator at the Colorado Water Center.