Ben Livneh News

Satellites reveal widespread decline in global lake water storage

Anonymous — Thu, 18 May 2023 18:52:25 +0000

Satellites reveal widespread decline in global lake water storage Anonymous (not verified) Thu, 05/18/2023 - 12:52

More than 50 percent of the largest lakes in the world are losing water, according to a groundbreaking new assessment published today in Science. The article was coauthored by Professor Balaji Rajagopalan and Associate Professor Ben Livneh, both from CU Boulder's Department of Civil, Environmental and Architectural Engineering. Fangfang Yao, a CIRES visiting scholar, was the lead author.

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Ben Livneh joins CASE Fellows program

Anonymous — Thu, 15 Dec 2022 16:25:51 +0000

Ben Livneh joins CASE Fellows program Anonymous (not verified) Thu, 12/15/2022 - 09:25

Ben Livneh, associate professor of civil, environmental and architectural engineering, has joined the Colorado Art Science Environment (CASE) Fellows program. The program is the latest incarnation of the Office for Outreach and Engagement's work to connect the arts, sciences and community for shared action on Colorado’s interrelated social and environmental issues.

CASE Fellows are artists from all corners of Colorado and CU Boulder scientists who will work in teams to produce artworks that will be exhibited at the Colorado State Capitol as part of the Colorado Creative Industries Creative Capital program, May-September 2023. The exhibition, tentatively titled "Coloradans and Our Shared Environment in Times of Challenge and Change," will tell the story of how Coloradans are experiencing interrelated challenges of fire, drought, and water and air quality in their communities. The CASE Fellows aim to build a sense of connection around Colorado environmental issues by co-ideating artwork with input from communities.

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Ben Livneh Receives AGU Hydrologic Sciences Early Career Award

Anonymous — Thu, 08 Sep 2022 19:41:45 +0000

Ben Livneh Receives AGU Hydrologic Sciences Early Career Award Anonymous (not verified) Thu, 09/08/2022 - 13:41

CIRES Fellow and WWA Director Ben Livneh was announced as American Geophysical Union’s (AGU) 2022 Hydrologic Sciences Early Career Award recipient. Being selected as a Section Honoree is bestowed upon individuals for meritorious work or service toward the advancement and promotion of discovery and solution science. AGU, a nonprofit organization that supports 130,000 enthusiasts to experts worldwide in Earth and space sciences, annually recognizes a select number of individuals as part of its Honors and Recognition program.

Livneh is recognized by the global Earth and space sciences community for his tremendous personal sacrifices and selfless dedication to advancing Earth and space sciences.  Livneh's nominator, CIRES Fellow and CU Boulder Professor Balaji Rajagopalan, described Livneh's research as fundamental to advancing our understanding of hydrologic processes and drought. Rajagopalan also highlighted Livneh's remarkable productivity, his passion for teaching and mentoring students and his humility.

AGU will formally recognize this year’s recipients during #AGU22 Fall Meeting, 12-16 December 2022 in Chicago, IL and online everywhere. This celebration is a chance for AGU’s community to recognize the outstanding work of our colleagues and be inspired by their accomplishments and stories. 

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Livneh interviewed by 9News on flash flooding in areas hit by wildfires

Anonymous — Tue, 19 Jul 2022 15:43:20 +0000

Livneh interviewed by 9News on flash flooding in areas hit by wildfires Anonymous (not verified) Tue, 07/19/2022 - 09:43

Ben Livneh was interviewed by Denver 9News for a piece focusing flash flooding over the Cameron Peak Fire burn scar.

The floods caused serious damage in the Glen Haven, Crystal Mountain and Buckhorn areas of Larimer County.

Livneh is an associate professor in the Department of Civil, Environmental and Architectural Engineering at the 91��Ƭ��AV. He is an expert in the impacts of changing land cover and climate on water resources.

In the piece, he discusses the increased risk of flooding in communities for years following wildfire damage.

Watch the story at 9News...

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After a Wildfire, What Happens to Water?

Anonymous — Mon, 11 Jul 2022 22:00:53 +0000

After a Wildfire, What Happens to Water? Anonymous (not verified) Mon, 07/11/2022 - 16:00

When Western wildfires break out, water may first come to mind as a critical resource for helping extinguish it. But what about after the flames finish?

A 2022 CU study on the growing impact of wildfire on the Western U.S. water supply found that large forest fires can significantly increase the amount of water in surrounding streams and rivers up to six years after a fire, impacting regional water supplies and increasing risks for floods and landslides. The results suggest that water and natural hazard management will need to be more prepared for wildfire impacts. U.S. wildfires — which have quadrupled in size and tripled in frequency since 2000 — are only projected to escalate.

“It is something organizations need to educate fire-prone communities about, so we can be prepared for short- and long-term impacts.”

“We’re likely going to see a lot more fires,” said Ben Livneh, co-author of the study and assistant professor of civil, environmental and architectural engineering. “Like we saw with [Boulder County’s] NCAR and Marshall fires, this is going to be a clear and present danger.”

Historically, forest-based streams and rivers increased in predictable amounts in response to rain or snowfall. However, from 1970 to 2021, those amounts declined due to warming and evaporation.

Wildfire adds another layer to the equation.

“When you bring so much fire into the mix, it fundamentally alters that relationship,” said Livneh, who also serves as director of the Western Water Assessment and is a fellow in the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences (CIRES).

The study examined 35 years of data from 179 forest basins in the Western U.S. between 1984 and 2019, including 72 sites where at least one large wildfire occurred. In areas where 20% or more of the forest burned, area streamflow was 30% greater than expected, for an average of six years post-fire.

It’s the first paper to show this increase persists in all four seasons after a fire, in all manner of vegetation, topography and elevation.

This water surplus could in part be a good thing, given the overall decline in the past 40 years. But it also comes with elevated landslide risks and a need for Western communities to invest in a greater diversity of water sources, as ash-laden water is low quality and expensive to treat, according to Livneh.

Due to the uncertainty of where or when future forests will burn, wildfire is not currently factored into assessments of the effects of climate change on Western U.S. streamflow.

“It is something organizations need to educate fire-prone communities about, so we can be prepared for short- and long-term impacts,” said Livneh.

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9News features Livneh in Climate Change Town Hall

Anonymous — Mon, 15 Nov 2021 16:28:13 +0000

9News features Livneh in Climate Change Town Hall Anonymous (not verified) Mon, 11/15/2021 - 09:28

9NEWS explored climate change solutions with Colorado experts at a town hall on Wednesday.

The town hall included topics like weather, water, wildfires and what we can do to protect our planet.

The panelists were:

Becky Bolinger, assistant state climatologist for the Colorado Climate Center,
Ben Livneh, director of Western Water Assessment, and
Ean Tafoya, Colorado field advocate for GreenLatinos.

All this month, 9NEWS is talking about climate change and how it affects everything we do: from wildfires to energy to our food supply to drought.

Because of warming and drought, reservoirs on the Colorado River like Lake Powell are at their lowest level in years. Millions of people in Western states rely on the Colorado River for their water.

We're also talking about wildfires and what Colorado's forests will look like for years to come after last year's fires.

Researchers are studying the trends of warmer, drier weather in the state and the impact they could have on forest recovery.

Researchers say finding alternative energy sources is one solution to lower temperatures and control wildfire, but it could be years before we see the impact of those changes.

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Livneh featured in PBS NewsHour Documentary on the Colorado River

Anonymous — Thu, 11 Nov 2021 17:47:13 +0000

Livneh featured in PBS NewsHour Documentary on the Colorado River Anonymous (not verified) Thu, 11/11/2021 - 10:47

The Colorado River runs nearly fifteen hundred miles, winding through seven states and Mexico. It supplies drinking water to nearly 40 million people, irrigates nearly 4 million acres of farmland and attracts millions of nature lovers to scenic Grand Canyon vistas.

And it is on the brink.

A 20 year mega-drought — exacerbated by climate change — is squeezing the Colorado dry. It’s a crisis for the people of the Southwest and a “canary in the coal mine” for us all.

Join PBS NewsHour’s Miles O’Brien for a special hour-long live event exploring the relationship between climate change and the fate of the Colorado River Basin.

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Livneh quoted in Kaiser Health News wildfire story

Anonymous — Tue, 28 Sep 2021 19:39:09 +0000

Livneh quoted in Kaiser Health News wildfire story Anonymous (not verified) Tue, 09/28/2021 - 13:39

The ‘Burn Scars’ of Wildfires Threaten the West’s Drinking Water

Colorado saw its worst fire season last year, with the three largest fires in state history and more than 600,000 acres burned. But some of the effects didn’t appear until this July, when heavy rain pushed sediment from damaged forests down mountainsides, causing mudslides that shut down sections of Interstate 70 for almost two weeks.

Immense quantities of sediment choked the rivers that supply most of the state’s water. In western Colorado’s Glenwood Springs, the water became so murky that the town twice had to shut off the valves that pump water from nearby rivers to avoid overwhelming its filtration system. City managers sent alerts to the town’s 10,000 residents, telling them to minimize water use until the sediment moved downstream.

Wildfires and their lasting effects are becoming a way of life in the West as climate change and management practices cause fires to increase in number, intensity and acreage burned, while extending the length of the fire season. In “burn scars,” where fires decimated forest systems that held soil in place, an increase in droughts followed by heavy rainfall poses a different kind of threat to the water supplies that are essential to the health of communities.

“You know about it; it’s in the back of your head,” said Glenwood Springs resident Paula Stepp. “But until you face it, you don’t know how it’s going to impact your town.”

Dirty, turbid water can contain viruses, parasites, bacteria and other contaminants that cause illness. But experts say turbid water from burn scars is unlikely to make it to people’s taps, because water utilities would catch it first.

Still, the cost to municipal utility systems — and the residents who pay for water — is immense. Rural small towns in particular face the choice between spending millions of dollars to try to filter turbid water or shutting off their intake and risking shortages in areas where water may already be scarce.

And as fires move closer to communities, burning synthetic materials from houses and other buildings can create toxic compounds that leach into water supplies, which is what happened in California after major fires in 2017 and 2018.

“When we put [fires] out, we become less aware of them,” said hydrologist Kevin Bladon, of Oregon State University. But from a water perspective, “that’s when all the problems start.”

Montana’s capital city, Helena, gets its drinking water supply from the Upper Tenmile Creek watershed in a forest thick with trees killed by beetle infestations. City leaders worry a fire would quickly chew through that dry fuel and leave the watershed exposed to sediment contamination. Despite a logging project that cleared many of those trees two years ago, the fire threat remains and city leaders worry the resulting sediment would overwhelm the water treatment plant and shut down the primary water source for 40,000 people.

“If we had a fire up there, depending on where it is and how big it is, it could put the Tenmile plant out for a season or two,” Helena Public Works Director Ryan Leland said.

To protect against that happening, the city is in the early phases of designing a basin that can trap sediment before the water reaches the plant, Leland said. The city also recently announced plans to drill three groundwater test wells, which would give them another drinking water supply option if something happens to the Upper Tenmile watershed. Treated water from the Missouri River is the city’s current backup supply.

The Rocky Mountains and about 200 miles separate Glenwood Springs from Greeley, in northeastern Colorado. But the 2020 fire season caused similar problems in both cities, creating burn scars that later flooded, contaminating water sources.

So far this year, Greeley has had to shut off its intake from the Cache la Poudre River for 39 days because the water was contaminated with sediment, ash and organic matter. “Normally we would never turn it off,” said Greeley water and sewer director Sean Chambers.

To cope, the city has been trading water with a nearby agricultural company that owns reservoirs used for irrigation. The swap gives the turbid water to farmers and redirects the reservoir water to Greeley. “If we didn’t have the trade in place, the cost [of buying water] would be astronomical,” Chambers said.

But Chambers admitted this system is a luxury that smaller towns may not enjoy. Greeley is 10 times the size of Glenwood Springs and has spent more than $40 million this year recovering from the Cameron Peak Fire — the largest fire in Colorado history, which burned for four months in 2020. Those costs may climb as rain continues, he said. Larger towns also tend to have better filtration systems that can handle more sediment, which clogs up filters and requires utilities to add chemicals to remove contaminants before the water is safe to drink.

While dry states like Colorado expect fires each year, recent blazes in wetter places like western Oregon have caught researchers off guard. Last September, fires scorched about 11% of the state’s Cascade mountain range, leaving burn scars above rivers and reservoirs that supply much of the state’s water.

“We have to be very proactive,” said Pete Robichaud, a research engineer with the U.S. Forest Service in Moscow, Idaho.

After a wildfire is extinguished, Robichaud’s agency and others send teams of specialists to evaluate the risks that erosion and ash pose to water supplies. Their data can help land managers decide whether to take actions like thinning forests above rivers, dredging contaminated reservoirs, covering the area with mulch or seeds to reduce erosion, or forming a plan for alternative water sources.

Even advance notice of a flood could help immensely, said Stepp, the Glenwood Springs resident. She is the executive director of the nonprofit Middle Colorado Watershed Council, which recently worked with the U.S. Geological Survey to install rain gauges along Glenwood Canyon. These monitor weather upstream and notify downstream water users that a sediment-laden flood could be coming.

She said it is crucial for small communities in particular to partner with state and federal agencies. “Basically, we work with everybody,” she said.

Although debris flows can bring soil bacteria into water supplies, city utilities can disinfect them with chemicals like chlorine, said Ben Livneh, a hydrologist at the University of Colorado-Boulder. But those disinfectants can themselves cause a problem: Organic matter from sediment can interact with these chemicals and create carcinogenic byproducts that are difficult and expensive to remove.

Another waterborne danger comes from chemical byproducts and heavy metals from burned structures. “Those would be potentially really problematic to treat,” Livneh said.

After the 2017 Tubbs and 2018 Camp fires that devastated the Northern California communities of Santa Rosa and Paradise, researchers examining the tap water of nearby homes found benzene and other carcinogens. Public health researcher Gina Solomon at the Public Health Institute in Oakland, California, said the contamination likely came from plastic pipes that melted and leached chemicals into the water.

Smoke and ash from burned structures may also add toxic chemicals to water supplies. “The smoke from the fires is a truly nasty brew,” Solomon said.

California has been relatively lucky when it comes to sediment flow. The years-long drought in most of the state means burn scars remain intact — though a heavy rain could wash down years of debris.

It’s unclear how long burn scars continue to pose a landslide risk, said Bladon, the Oregon hydrologist. But parts of Alberta in the Canadian Rockies, for instance, continued to see extremely turbid water for a decade after a 2003 fire.

“My fear is we may not have seen the worst of it yet,” Solomon said.

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How fire today will impact water tomorrow

Anonymous — Thu, 29 Jul 2021 21:00:37 +0000

How fire today will impact water tomorrow Anonymous (not verified) Thu, 07/29/2021 - 15:00

In 2020, Colorado battled the four largest wildfires in its history, leaving residents anxious for another intense wildfire season this year.

But last week, fires weren’t the issue—it was their aftermath. When heavy rains fell over the burn scar from the 2020 Cameron Peak fire, they triggered flash flooding and mudslides northwest of Fort Collins which destroyed homes, killed at least three people and damaged major roads. Flooding along the 2020 Grizzly Creek and East Troublesome burn scars also unleashed mudslides across Interstate 70 through Glenwood Canyon and in Grand County just west of Rocky Mountain National Park.

These tragic events make it clear that the effects of wildfire don’t end when the flames go out. There can be environmental consequences for years to come—and keeping an eye on water is key.

CU Boulder Today spoke with Professor Fernando Rosario-Ortiz, an environmental chemistry expert who studies how wildfires impact water quality; and Assistant Professor and CIRES Fellow Ben Livneh, a hydrologist who studies how climate change affects water supplies and how fires and rain influence landslide risk, about how fire may shape the future of water in the West.

Fernando Rosario-Ortiz, professor of civil, environmental and architectural engineering, is an expert in environmental chemistry who has been studying the natural processes that impact water quality since his arrival at CU Boulder in 2008, and how wildfires impact water quality since the High Park fire in Fort Collins in 2012. (Credit: CU Boulder)

What happens to water in lakes, rivers and streams after a nearby wildfire?

Rosario-Ortiz: When you have open flames, a lot of gaseous reactions and solid phase reactions, it results in the transformation of chemicals and alterations to the soil, and we observe the effects once we look at the water quality. For example, we observe the enhancement in the concentration of nutrients in water, which is not necessarily a bad thing, but it can cause subsequent issues in the reservoirs like algae blooms. There can also be a mobilization of metals and enhanced concentration and activity of what we call organic carbon as well as turbidity, which can then impact water treatment production and formation of disinfection byproducts.

How do city water suppliers and treatment plants deal with these impacts?

Rosario-Ortiz: Ideally, you want to have a secondary water source. In Fort Collins, back in 2012 after the High Park fire, the river was impacted but the reservoir was not impacted. So they could draw from the reservoir and wait for the worst to pass.

If you don't have that option, some of the challenges after wildfire and rain events include increased sediment mobilization, which is very challenging for water treatment operations. Those are short-term effects that might give you a headache, but they can also become long-term challenges. Never mind the fact that you may have issues with infrastructure.

Ben Livneh, assistant professor in civil, environmental and architectural engineering and a fellow at the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences (CIRES), is a physical hydrologist who researches how climate change and landscape changes can affect where and how much water is available in an area—and when. His work also examines how fires and rain can influence landslide risk. (Credit: CU Boulder)

How can wildfire affect water quantity and timing in a landscape?

Livneh: In the western U.S. we really rely on water that flows in rivers and streams, and that fills the reservoirs for our supply. So when we think about even small changes to the amount of water that comes off of the hill slope, or across the landscape, that can have a big impact on the total availability of water.

One of the most notable things that happens in a fire is that the texture of the soil changes. Initially, less rain will soak into the soil, and more rain will become surface runoff. There's a lot of reason to think that you will get more total water—but it'll be much more “flashy” when it comes.

On one hand, that can be good if you have a reservoir to collect it. But we've heard of water utilities actually turning off their intakes after a fire if the quality of the water is too low. And that's tricky, because often drought is involved in some fashion. So there's often this competing need for more water, and yet the quality is low.

What are the factors that affect the likelihood of floods or mudslides after wildfire?

Livneh: When water carries enough stuff with it, we call it a debris flow, which is a type of landslide. The bigger and bigger it gets, the more impactful it is. We have research funded by NASA where we looked at 5,000 landslide sites around the world. We found that sites that had a fire in the past three years required less precipitation to cause a landslide.

But there's also a lot of local variability that really matters. Moderately steep, heavily vegetated areas, types of soils—especially sandier soils—increase risk. Also we now have a lot of people who have built structures on steep slopes in these areas, so there's a human element there, too. And the time of the year that it happens can matter. A fire right before your rainy season is an important factor.

What does this all mean for the future of Colorado and the western U.S.?

Rosario-Ortiz: When homes burn, you’re not just combusting houses, you're combusting everything inside those homes. You might now be combusting electric vehicles, for example, with a large battery.

Then what are some of the other potential concerns with exposure to air? Water? That's going to be something that we will need to explore further over the next few years.

Livneh: Some estimates say the amount of forest area being burned each year in the western U.S. has doubled in the last 25 years. And it really poses risks to communities, especially in the wildland-urban interface (WUI). Managing it is largely a kind of a policy problem, but in the next 10 years or so we're going to continue to have these big fires.

First and foremost, people need to be paying attention to these flood watches and to local guidance on evacuation. The most important thing is saving lives.

What can we do to prepare for the future?

Rosario-Ortiz: Utilities might have to be thinking about potential upgrades in facilities. That means we may have to also consider financing of these projects and how to improve overall resiliency.

Livneh: One of the most robust features of climate change is warming, right? As rain becomes more prevalent, we're just going to have to continue expanding our portfolio of things we do to keep up. The more open-minded we can be about managing for these things is important. I'm kind of an optimist. As humans, we've overcome so many technical challenges; it's not going to be something we can't solve our way out of.

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Research on soil moisture aims to improve irrigation models

Anonymous — Wed, 17 Mar 2021 18:10:36 +0000

Research on soil moisture aims to improve irrigation models Anonymous (not verified) Wed, 03/17/2021 - 12:10

Irrigated agriculture is the planet's largest consumer of freshwater and ultimately produces more than 40% of food worldwide. Yet the exact amounts of water actually being used in irrigation remains largely unknown.

Answering that question would provide insight into the global water balance – the flow of water in and out of systems on Earth. It will be particularly relevant as the effects of climate change on that process become more pronounced in the future.

To fill this gap, CU Boulder researchers gave computer models of land surface different amounts of information on soil moisture and then evaluated how well irrigation can be predicted from them. Being able to do this on a large scale would be a useful step toward understanding how sensitive irrigation and evapotranspiration are to climate change.

The work, recently detailed in Scientific Data–Nature, was led at CU Boulder by Assistant Professor Ben Livneh, with funding and support from NASA.

Livneh is part of the Department of Civil, Environmental and Architectural Engineering and the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Science (CIRES). He said the project uses satellites to offer a view of the global water balance that wasn’t available before.

“When precipitation falls on land, the largest place it goes is back into is the atmosphere, but we don’t have the technology to measure that change at large scales,” he said. “Here we are using this satellite like a giant scale that weighs the land. Basically, when land loses mass, we can tell that a lot of water is going into the atmosphere."

Recent PhD graduate Ronnie Abolafia-Rosenzweig was the lead author of the paper with Livneh. He has since started working at the National Center for Atmospheric Research to improve the physics of operational hydrologic models.

“Understanding how much water humans use to irrigate is essential because irrigation alters Earth’s water and energy budgets and is depleting water reservoirs across the globe,” he said. “I am now collaborating with scientists from Michigan State University and the Sharif University of Technology in Iran to apply our methodology to predicted irrigation water use in agricultural regions surrounding Urmia Lake, which has lost 80% of its original water extent in the last two decades due to climate change (prolonged drought) and irrigation water use.”

Livneh said the next phase of this research would likely center on these changes in larger basins such as the Mississippi or Colorado rivers, with a focus on the role of humans with agriculture development.

This project was co-led by Professor Eric Small in the Department of Geological Sciences.

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