South Platte Data Platform / Stories

Stories within the South Platte Data Platform consist of multiple datasets and visualizations integrated in a way that provides context and perspective, in order to educate and illustrate about water resource issues. Stories are intended to integrate data and science with human connection in order to achieve greater understanding and dialogue.

Stories of Interest

Stories of interest to South Platte and Metro Roundtable stakeholders include the following, which have been determined based on Roundtable input and correspondence. These stories were evaluated during the project and should continue to be evaluated in the future. The stories selected to be implemented in the project focus on a subset that could be achieved with available data and other resources, and which provide useful and timely information. Current attention is focusing on Stories Being Developed.

  1. Agricultural
    1. Story: Return flows - significance in South Platte
      1. What happens to returns when agriculture gets more efficient?
      2. Extract data from StateMod South Platte model
      3. Use Source Water Route Framework for stream segments
      4. Also can link to Visual South Platte
      5. Display acreage served by sprinklers above a point on river?
      6. Display returns at points on river
      7. One or more case studies at specific locations showing change over time
      8. Visualize "water colors" such as natural flow, reservoir release, return flows
    2. Story: Irrigated agriculture change over time
      1. Animation of irrigated lands
      2. Agriculture peaked in 1970s and has been declining since
      3. Where is dry-up occurring?
    3. Story: ATMs - adoption and effectiveness for addressing water supply gap
      1. Show locations on maps - need public ATM dataset from CWCB or someone else
      2. Link to studies, operations documents, etc. - need public ATM dataset from CWCB or someone else
  2. Municipal
    1. Story: Population historical trends and forecasts
      1. Locations of municipalities and municipal water providers
      2. Population historical trends by city, county
    2. Story: Change in water use efficiency
      1. Links to websites, conservation/efficiency plans
      2. Highlight success stories (Denver Water, others)
      3. Use HB 1051 data.
  3. Environmental & Recreational
    1. Story: River health
      1. OWF has been working on a river health visualization tool - see Eagle River example
      2. Need to grind some existing South Platte data into format used by this tool
    2. Story: Duck Flyover recharge and habitat from same project
      1. Recharge locations - need project location data from DU or SWSI E&R results?
      2. Explain benefits for duck flyovers
      3. Explain trends - dependency on corn?
    3. Story: Importance of recreation in the basin
      1. Map showing camping areas, other recreation - need from CPW
      2. Display dataset of outfitters and stream reaches - need better public dataset from outfitters
  4. Industrial
    1. Story: Largest use types
      1. Energy?
      2. Breweries? Case study?
  5. Story: Projects to address water supply gap
    1. Maps of IPP locations (private), and characteristics of IPPs
    2. Map showing master plan extent in river basins - could be difficult to get the spatial data
  6. Other stories
    1. Story: Change in water availability over past 40-50 years
      1. Extract data from StateMod South Platte dataset
      2. Display natural and available flow from model
      3. Display wet/dry/average years
      4. What is SWSI base supply scenario versus hydrology?
      5. Change in snowpack. See map. See animation for water years.
      6. Transbasin diversions?
    2. Story: Aquifer storage and recovery (ASR)
      1. What is story?

Potential Technologies

The following are technologies that are being evaluated to implement stories.

Considerations for using a specific technology include:

  • Compatibility of solution with State of Colorado IT environment
  • Hosting cost
  • Ability to automate data uploads (so that story content can be updated over time)
  • Implementation effort
  • Integration with version control (so that content changes can be tracked)

Stories Being Developed

The following stories are actively being developed on this project through the efforts of the Open Water Foundation in coordination with South Platte and Metro education committee.

Stories consist of "panels" or "sections", each of which contain one or more of the following elements:

  • Narrative
  • Image(s)
  • Video
  • Interactive maps
  • Interactive data tables
  • Interactive data visualization(s)
  • Links to other web resources such as data sites, visualizations, and in-depth resources.

Each "panel" can be used in a story, with appropriate narrative content. Panels are typically organized in slideshow or book fashion, using scrolling content, tabs, or other expandable content. Technological limitations may impact how stories are constructed. For example, it may be necessary to provide a screen image in a panel rather than live data visualization, with link to the live visualization.

Story: South Platte Water Entities

The online story is available at the following link. The ideas below have been substantially incorporated, and content is kept below as ideas for additional enhancments.

This story highlights the various types of water entities such as cities, agriculture, E&R uses. The purpose of the story is to provide general context for the number, location, and extent of such entities in the basin.

  • Context: Locations
  • Context: Relative water use
    • by sector, time of year, trend
    • biggest water users on average by municipality, ditch, crop type, etc.

Panel 1a - Municipalities Locations

Narrative: Show the locations of municipalities to emphasize the locations on Front Range, along rivers, and some isolated (groundwater supply).

Panel 1b - Municipal Size and Growth

Narrative: Show historical and expected population growth for municipalities (or counties), which is cited as one of the main drivers for increasing water demands and the water supply gap.

  • Context: List and map of counties/municipalities sorted by population, percent of population in basin and state, for example. See also full-size image. see prototype
  • Details: Graph and tables for each county/municipality showing historical and projected population from DOLA, perhaps also show SWSI Update scenarios - See also full-size image see prototype
  • Perspective: Can also show that population is expected to decrease or increase much more slowly in some rural areas by showing map and/or table contrasting rural and urban areas See also full-size image. see prototype

Panel 1c - Water Use

Narrative: Summarize information about municipal water use.

  • Background: How is water use defined? Diversion/depletion, consumptive, wastewater return, indoor/outdoor, etc.
  • Context: Which municipalities use the most water? Show a table showing recent data, total and system GPCD.
  • Context: Water use and relative amount of flow for nearby stream gage, such as percent of annual amount or monthly flow.
  • Context: Change in efficiency of water use over time.
  • Context: Comparison of urban and agricultural water use
  • Data: 1051 data, published data from entities
  • Data: Can we get machine-readable data for a few entities from published annual reports, etc? For example, can we get the Excel workbook with data corresponding to annual report and/or Water Efficiency Plan?

Panel 2N - Agricultural Sector

Narrative: Show general data for agricultural sector.

  • Context: List ditches, with links to websites if available.
  • Context: Irrigated lands and ditch service area maps, using CDSS data layers.
  • Context: Can show diversions and/or consumptive use sorted.
  • Context: Can show change in irrigated acreage over time, also with graph showing trends across the basin.
  • Context: Could show change in irrigation practice over time such as flood, sprinkler, surface water, groundwater supply.

Panel 3N - Environmental Sector

Narrative: Provide context to indicate value of environment, challenges, and opportunities.

Panel 4N - Recreational Sector

Narrative: Provide context to indicate that recreation is important in the South Platte

  • Context: Display recreation map layers from SWSI, if available.
  • Context: Show camping locations, etc. (if layers are available from CPW).
  • Context: Show recreational outfitters, etc. (if layers are available).
  • Resources: Map attributes can provide links to outfitters.

Panel N+ - Other Sectors

Narrative: Show data for other sectors such as additional industries.

Story: Population Trends and Water Use

The online story is available at the following link. It was decided to included this in the Entities story because of overlapping content and message. The ideas below have been substantially incorporated, and content is kept below as ideas for additional enhancments.

This story highlights population trends in each county (possibly cities).

  • See information in the previous story - need to decide to what degree the stories overlap/share.

Story: South Platte Hydrology and Need for Storage

The development of this story is in process. A draft version will be made available for review as soon as possible, planned for August 2018, or early September.

This story highlights hydrologic variability, its challenges, and need for reservoirs to manage water supply across variable hydrologic conditions.

Panel 1 - River Locations from StateMod and Stream Gages

Narrative: These are locations where streamflow is either measured or simulated. Natural flows are the estimated streamflow with human impacts removed. For example, diversions are added back to the river and reservoir releases are removed. See also the full-size image.

StateMod nodes

Panel 2 - Hydrologic Variability Illustrated with Annual Natural Flows

Narrative: Annual estimated natural flows at gages throughout the basin can be ranked and evaluated for frequency, such as "drought", "dry", "average", "wet", and "flood", as shown in the following figure. This illustrates that the basin experiences periods of drought and abundant supply. See also the full-size image. Note:

  • The South Platte CDSS model did not include the Poudre so need to explain how natural flows are impacted by this.
  • Although there is some variability across the basin, conditions tend to be similar across the basin within a year.
  • Wet and dry periods often occur in groups.
  • Note the severity of 2002, which was the trigger for major changes in Colorado, including IBCC, Statewide Water Supply Initiative, etc.
  • The annual water demand in a year can exceed the natural supply.

StateMod nodes

Panel 3 - Hydrologic Variability Illustrated with Measured Flows

Narrative: Do the same thing with measured/simulated flows.

Panel 4 - Surface Water Supply Index

Narrative: Water supply can also be viewed as an index, such as -4 for extreme drought and +4 for abundant supply. An index uses multiple inputs to create an indicator of water supply. The following image shows the monthly Surface Water Supply Index (SWSI) for South Platte, which considers resevoir storage, snowpack, and streamflow. Note 2002. See also the full-size image.

Index

Below is a detailed SWSI (index) graph for the Poudre. Note 2002. See also the full-size image.

Index

Panel 5 - Snowpack - 1-year Storage

Narrative: Snowpack is Colorado's main water supply, and is essentially a one-year storage reservoir. It has the benefit of being natural, high elevation, and generally high-quality supply. However, it suffers from hydrologic variability and will be impacted by climate change. The following is SNOTEL data, which is available for specific locations. See also the full-size image.

StateMod nodes

The following is SNODAS data, which is available for the entire State. See also the full-size image.

StateMod nodes

Panel 6 - Surface Reservoir Storage - Multi-year Storage

Narrative: Surface reservoir storage is the most cost-effective storage, although costs are increasing. Reservoirs created on mountain streams and rivers allow gravity to be used to move water supplies. Need to include image showing reservoir storage over time during drought period.

Panel 7 - Alluvial Aquifer Storage - Short and Long-term Storage

Narrative: Describe how the alluvial aquifer is used to manage supplies within the irrigation season, recharge, etc.

Panel 8 - Reservoir Operations can Increase Value of Storage

Narrative: Describe how reservoirs can be operated for greater benefit, such as in series, exchanges, redundancy, historical operations, opportunities.

Story: South Platte IPP Locations

This story focuses on helping Roundtable members and the public understand the background and status of IPPs.

There is general interest among Roundtable members in knowing more about Identified Projects and Processes (IPPs). A list of IPPs was created for the Statewide Water Supply Initiative 2004 project and has been updated over time. However, updates to data have been minimal through SWSI updates and Basin Implementation Plan projects. IPPs are indicated in BIP and Colorado Water Plan as a major contributor to meeting new water supply demands.

There is interest from Roundtable members in knowing the status of old IPPs and whether the current list accurately represents all IPPs. There are also process questions, such as whether a WSRF or other grant project needs to be included on the basin's IPP list before being allowed to request funding.

A draft version of the story has been completed and is available online. Three versions of the story were prepared using different technologies in order to evaluate options. The content for the stories is the same, but the layout and visualization components vary:

Remaining issues to be resolved include:

  1. Connecting the story to the southplattebasin.com website. Lacey Williams to do?
  2. Get Roundtable input on whether to enable access to IPP data list in machine-readable file and coordinate with Roundtable support, CWCB, and SWSI Update team on process to update the list. Ideally the story will provide access to a versioned snapshot of the data and have a link to the authoritative current version. The story content and data analysis process has been designed to be updated to reflect new data. Publishing machine-readable IPP data files on the Roundtable website has not been done before. Is a decision needed or just do it?
  3. Decide whether a contact should be listed in the story, in case there are questions. Need Lacey Williams input.
  4. Get Roundtable feedback on the story via meeting, webinar, etc. This will be coordinated once additional stories are published so they can be discussed together. Steve Malers will coordinate with Casey Davenhill, Lacey Williams and others.