Sacramento River RAFT water temperature model simulations based on hypothetical reservoir perturbations in the historical record

We used a process-based water temperature model (RAFT, Pike et al., 2013) to estimate the ability of reservoir discharge to mediate river temperature heating processes impacting downstream locations (i.e., discharge-mediated temperature management) on California's Sacramento River. This was done by modeling water temperatures over the historical record (1990-2020) of model forcings and only perturbing reservoir discharge levels on a daily time step, ranging from 3000 to 15000 cubic feet per second as simulated at the Sacramento River at Wilkins Slough USGS gauging station (https://waterdata.usgs.gov/monitoring-location/11390500).

Pike, A., E. Danner, D. Boughton, F. Melton, R. Nemani, B. Rajagopalan, and S. Lindley. 2013. Forecasting river temperatures in real time using a stochastic dynamics approach. Water Resources Research 49:5168-5182.