Document Type
Report
Publication Date
January 1980
Abstract
This summary completion report describes the project work completed in three areas: 1) the development and preliminary testing of drought severity and vulnerability indices, 2) the impacts of Utah's 1977 drought, and 3) an operation comparison of stochastic streamflow models. The drought indices were evaluated for three municipal and three irrigation water supply systems in Utah. It was concluded that a continuous loss function to define the effects of water shortage would be more appropriate than the existing assumption that drought-related lossed occur suddenly at a certain degree of water shortage. Information on the impacts of Utah's 1977 drought was collected by surveys of municipal and rural domestic systems, water users in Salt Lake County, and farmers, stockmen, ranchers, and irrigation company officials. Survey results were used to examine drought effects in different regions of the state and with respect to size of municipal supply systems. Despite severe restrictiosn placed on Salt Lake County water users most did not consider the experience an "undue burden." The comparison of five stochastic streamflow models on four Utah streams lead to a preliminary model choice strategy which is based on the historical estimates of the lag-one autocorrelation and Hurst coefficients.
Recommended Citation
Bowles, David S.; Hughes, Trevor C.; James, W. Robert; Jensen, Donald T.; and Haws, Frank W., "Vulnerability of Water Supply Systems to Droughts" (1980). Reports. Paper 587.
https://digitalcommons.usu.edu/water_rep/587