Water Resilience in the Northern Great Plains

Effective water management is critical for people, crops, livestock, ecosystems and the energy industry. Increasing climate variability not only results in extreme precipitation events, it can also have large effects downstream, as set forth in the Fourth National Climate Assessment and explored in detail in the Northern Great Plains water section of the US Climate Resilience Toolkit. The Northern Great Plains region, in particular, is subject to extreme weather events: from droughts to floods to extreme cold and blizzards. Snowfall is essential for recharging aquifers and resupplying groundwater as evaporation rates in the summer often exceed precipitation rates, leading to a shortage in available surface water. Managing water is no easy task for local governments and will only get more challenging in the future as it continues to warm up and dry out. When it comes to floods in the region, they often originate from runoff due to spring snowmelt, or from extreme rainfall during summer thunderstorms. Overlay this with increasing precipitation trends in the region and you have a perfect setup for flooding, requiring expensive relocation for properties most at risk on floodplains. In recent memory, record-setting years for precipitation and flooding occurred in 2018 and 2019 in parts of the Northern Great Plains region including South Dakota. Short-duration droughts in the Missouri River basin have also been problematic, affecting water supplies, agriculture and transportation of goods. Monitoring of precipitation, soil moisture and snow water equivalent (how much water gets stored seasonally in a snowpack) at lower elevations in Montana, the Dakotas and northern Nebraska provides critical information for climate modeling in the region, as having the most accurate and up-to-date information can help mitigate potentially devastating consequences. Read more on drought early warning systems for the Missouri River Basin. The goal is to improve regional capacity to respond to and cope with drought through collaboration and knowledge sharing between federal, tribal, state, local and university partners. Read more about a strategic action plan on enhancing tribal capacity to use information and new tools like drought indicators across the region here.