Essay Example on The streamflow of Colorado River is highly Allocated

The over allocation challenges the demand and supply of its water consequently challenging the resources at its basin Due to the imbalance in the demand and supply the water security at the basin of the river is highly dependent on groundwater reserves During droughts the quantity of groundwater reduces rapidly with the effects being felt much in the seven states in the basin of the river Drought as a natural calamity is not preventable Therefore there is need to have control measures to be able to survive the drought with sufficient resources which is possible through proper analysis of the case and proposal of best ways to cope with the situation This paper studies the security status of the groundwater in previous droughts and the threats to the states whose allocation relies on the water The paper therefore evaluates the case and the related threat to the water security with a goal of arriving at accurate and valid inferences that can get used when getting solutions to the problem and maintaining a high supply of the resource that will sufficiently meet the demand The paper uses the data by for Space Research Center University of Texas which contained the report of their analysis of the average changes of the water levels of the river in times of droughts up to 2013 Scanlon Zhang and Reedy 9900 The study area spans across the basins of the river including states such as Mexico Arizona and Colorado The upper basin of the river runs along the upriver of Lake Powell while the lower runs the lake s downriver 

The study by the Space Research Center University of Texas uses Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment GRACE satellites to assess the state of the river at different times as specified by their research period The method gets advanced through the reconstruction of Total Water Storage changes that traditionally got studied through ground monitoring and manual collection of data for modeling the results in the report Therefore the observations were done through assessing the depletion of the total water storage and the correlation between the depletion and the soil moisture storage together with the surface reservoir in the lower and upper basins of Colorado River This research analyzes the inferences made from their observations Castle Thomas and Reager 3 Changes in the groundwater levels are beyond human control According to the study wet and dry cycles of the groundwater result from natural responses and irrigation pumping The conclusion was based on the data obtained on gravity and the level of groundwater In other words the effect of water use on the level of groundwater is not as evident as that of natural factors Natural factors vary the water input with an impact that cannot be regulated The level of water in the surface reservoir determines the time through which the water will remain available and the variabilities expected in the available amount 

The water budget of the covered zones was analyzed using the data from Prism Climate Group in the time frame of the research to evaluate the validity and credibility of the data by the Space Research University of Texas PRISM Climate Group last assessed in 2016 The results showed steep drops in the water levels in times of droughts The monthly changes in the storage as observed by PRISM got compared to those by GRACE and the error margins observed The results were similar with a significant drop during seasons of drought The results were closely linked to the data used since the inference shown relevant results The data was used assess the water levels in the different seasons across the years under study and the various demands for the resource by the regions depending on the river The results display the levels as intended and give observation on the reasons for the observations The article and the data sources used by the authors met their defined goals In the study by Scanlon Zhang and Reedy used as their data source the effect of drought as a natural occurrence are outlined as the main reason for the insecurity in the quantity of water getting to the lower basin of the river The key aim of the research was to study the implications of the data provided by the satellite views on the sustainable availability of the resource to the states allocated Colorado as their water source The defined goal got met since the conclusions gave the effect of drought to the availability of the groundwater and the impact to the security of the resource The paper is well structured with no deficiency in the statement of their conclusions about the research issue However the researchers state that the chief threat to the security of the water is the drought whose source is not controllable while the introduction expresses the over allocation as a threat under research The conclusion therefore contradicts the original idea put across during the development of the research topic The question that remains lingering in the review is the effect of human usage of the resource on the security of the water in the Colora