Search for: All records

This dataset contains: Values for 42 variables related to topography, climate, vegetation, geology, and anthropogenic activities collected from 2001 to 2020. These variables were used to assess the drivers of streamflow drought deficit and duration across 2,550 stream gauges in the contiguous United States, including both natural and human-impacted sites. The computation method for each factor is detailed in Table 1. The dataset also includes trend analyses of drought duration and deficit from 1980 to 2020, performed using the Mann-Kendall test under three conditions: independence, short-term persistence, and long-term persistence. The complete analysis and findings are presented in Vicario, S.A., Hornberger, G.M., Mazzoleni, M., Garcia, M. (2025), "Drivers and trends of streamflow droughts in natural and human-impacted basins across the contiguous United States," Journal of Hydrology, DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jhydrol.2025.132908. 

Feedback is ubiquitous in complex systems and critical to the process of designing public policies to solve problems such as climate adaptation. However, well‐known cognitive and institutional constraints can impact information feedback processes, limiting a system's ability to incorporate feedback into policy designs. This study analyzes the role that institutions play in regulating feedback in coupled infrastructure systems (CIS) to support the development of climate‐adaptive policies. Focusing on urban water systems, we ask:how do multilevel institutions governing information processing influence urban water systems' climate‐adaptive policy responses?Using the CIS framework, we develop a theoretical argument for policy design based on the cognitive model of active inference. Drawing on hydrological, administrative, media, interview, and institutional data, we trace two urban water systems' policy design processes over a decade. We find that successive waves of state‐level changes to water planning rules prompted more “exploratory” information processing during the study period. Moreover, an urban water utility's ownership type (public vs. investor‐owned) influenced how expected climate impacts were incorporated into policy designs. These findings provide insight into how institutional arrangements shape policy designs and suggest ways such arrangements may be altered to enable adaptive responses in the face of environmental uncertainty. 

This resource contains 49 factors categorized into five groups: climatic (14), topographic (11), vegetation-related (5), anthropogenic (12), and geologic (7) factors, concerning 383 watersheds within the GAGES-II gages dataset (https:// water.usgs.gov/GIS/metadata/usgswrd/XML/gagesII_Sept2011.xml) across the contiguous United States (CONUS). The selection of the 383 watersheds out of the 9067 (in the CONUS) from GAGES-II was determined by the availability of daily streamflow data from 1990 to 2020 and its anthropogenic influence. For further details, refer to section 2.1 of https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jhydrol.2024.130984. The factors represent average values for each watershed spanning 1990 to 2020, calculated using publicly available data. Detailed information on these factors, including their sources and calculation methods, is provided in Tables 1 and 2 of the PDF document (Methodology_factors.pdf). The Excel file (Factors.xlsx) contains the classification of the gages and their associated factor values. The computation of these factors was conducted for the manuscript authored by Sara Alonso Vicario, George M. Hornberger, Maurizio Mazzoleni, and Margaret Garcia, titled "The Importance of Climate and Anthropogenic Influence in Precipitation Partitioning in the Contiguous United States," published in the Journal of Hydrology, Volume 633 (2024). The manuscript is accessible at https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jhydrol.2024.130984. 

Abstract In complex, polycentric environmental governance systems, actors may choose to collaborate with one another to reduce their collective vulnerability and enhance system function. However, collaboration can be costly, and little evidence exists for how particular collaborative forums impact the broader governance system in which they are embedded. To address this gap, we investigate the role of intermediate collaborative forums, which support collaboration among a subset of system actors, in polycentric governance systems. Empirically, we analyze the structural and functional role of an intermediate collaborative forum called the Arizona Municipal Water Users Association (AMWUA) within the municipal surface water governance network for the Phoenix Metropolitan Area (PMA) in Arizona, United States. To do this, we draw from 21 interviews with water professionals in the PMA, which we analyze through a combination of network analysis and qualitative coding. We find that AMWUA facilitates strong bonding capacities among members, allowing for streamlined bridging to the rest of the network that enhances information processing and advocacy of member needs. Our findings advance theory on the role of collaboration in polycentric systems and inform the design of collaborative institutions to improve environmental governance. 

Abstract Designing urban water systems to respond to the accelerating and unpredictable changes of the Anthropocene will require changes not only to built infrastructure and operating rules, but also to the governance arrangements responsible for investing in them. Yet, inclusion of thispolitical‐economic feedbackin dynamic models of infrastructure systems and socio‐hydrology has lagged behindoperationalfeedback concerns. We address this gap through a dynamical systems application of the Coupled Infrastructure Systems (CIS) Framework, which provides the conceptual building blocks for analyzing social‐ecological systems through various classes of infrastructure and the flows of material and information among them. In the model, political‐economic feedback involves three decisions—infrastructure investment, rate‐setting, and short‐term demand curtailment—and each decision is constrained by institutional friction, the aggregation of decision and transaction costs associated with taking action. We apply the model to three cities in the Phoenix Metropolitan Area to compare how institutional friction interacts with a city's water resource portfolio and financial position to determine its sensitivity, or the degree to which its performance (e.g., providing sufficient supply to meet demand) changes given reductions in Colorado River water availability. We find that the slowing effect of institutional friction on investment and rate‐setting decisions can increase the sensitivity of a city's supply, but it can also promote objectives that compete with over‐response (e.g., rate burden). The effect is dependent on the initial operating capacity of the CIS and flexibility within the institutions, highlighting the need to consider political‐economic and operational feedback together when evaluating infrastructure systems.