Evaluating the impacts of climate change in the Connecticut River Basin

For the past four years, The Nature Conservancy (TNC) and the US Army Corps of Engineers (Corps) have funded a study at UMass to evaluate the impacts of climate change on the biological resources in river and to investigate how the negative impacts of reservoir regulation could be ameliorated in the face of climate change.  It is fortuitous that this study provides an excellent basis for future “watershed” type studies that may be performed by the NECSC. The study has resulted in a full calibrated hydrology model of the Connecticut River Basin, a set of 112 different future hydrology scenarios associated with climate change, and a simulation and optimization model of the major reservoirs in the basin.