Water Resources Research Act Program

Details for Project ID 2008TX311B

An Environmental Flows Information System for Texas

Institute: Texas
Year Established: 2008 Start Date: 2008-03-01 End Date: 2009-02-28
Total Federal Funds: $5,000 Total Non-Federal Funds: $10,080

Principal Investigators: Eric Hersh, David Maidment

Project Summary: TCEQ has had the authority to set instream flow requirements in water rights permits for more than 20 years and the agency relies on a number of techniques and data sources to develop instream flow recommendations. However, no comprehensive database of information is available for review and there is no systematic method for identifying or classifying Texas streams in order to determine the applicability of the Lyons (Bounds and Lyons 1979) or other existing methods. Moreover, the recently-passed Senate Bill 3 tasks stakeholders and regulators with determining and reviewing environmental flow needs, yet no comprehensive repository of relevant data exists that could shared with these stakeholders as they embark on the tasks of reviewing existing data and developing technical recommendations. Thus, we propose to develop a data model and information system to store and make available environmental flow data in a consistent and accessible format. The synthesis and integration of all these data, in combination with GIS tools, will produce an Environmental Flows Information System that will help TCEQ in establishing flow requirements in a systematic way across Texas.