Development of a Reservoir System Operation Model for Water Sustainability in the Yaqui River Basin

Abstract

The Yaqui River Basin (YRB) is in the semiarid state of Sonora in northwest Mexico. The flow in this watershed is controlled by three reservoirs: Angostura, Novillo, and Oviáchic. A daily reservoir operation model is developed for this system to assist local reservoir operators in the decision-making process. This model is composed of a semidistributed daily watershed simulator combined with a nonlinear optimization model. The hydrologic simulator was developed using the Hydrologic Engineering Center–Hydrologic Modeling System (HEC–HMS) developed by the USACE Hydrologic Engineering Center and the optimization model was developed using the General Algebraic Modeling System (GAMS) methodology. Two climatology forcings (precipitation, temperature, and solar radiation) were applied to the HEC–HMS simulation: (1) a network of daily ground observations from Mexican water agencies during the historical period of October 2001 to September 2010; and (2) gridded fields from the North American Land Data Assimilation System (NLDAS) at a 12-km resolution during the same simulation period. The NLDAS forcing improved the spatial representation of the simulator, compared to ground observation forcing, in areas draining into Angostura and Novillo. However, ground observation forcing resulted in the best performance of the hydrologic model in the contributing area of Oviáchic. The simulated reservoir releases were compared to historic releases at the three reservoirs to generate confidence in the simulation tools. Findings show that existing water allocation strategies are unable to satisfy demands from most users. The simulator, in combination with the optimization model, was useful to generate water allocation scenarios that would meet these demands; therefore, the proposed model is a useful tool for reservoir operations in the YRB.