Modeled Impacts of Climate Change on Regional Hydrology in the Upper Boise River Basin Idaho

Climate change directly affects the hydrologic cycle in mountainous watersheds, which has consequences for downstream users. Improved water projections under diverse potential climate futures are critical to improve water security and management in these watersheds. In this research, we examine potential hydrologic changes to a semi-arid, snowmelt-dominated, mountainous watershed, the Upper Boise River Basin, ID, which supplies water to an agriculturally intensive and rapidly urbanizing region. Using the Envision integrated modeling framework, we created a hydrologic model that was calibrated to several hydrologic metrics and ran it through the end of the century under six diverse climate scenarios. Here, we present selected annual and daily hydrologic metrics for the study area.