Estimating Benefits of Forecast-Informed Reservoir Operations (FIRO): Lake Mendocino Case-Study and Transferable Decision Support Tool

February 11, 2021

Tom Corringham (CW3E) helped develop economic methodologies for assessing benefits of FIRO for a study sponsored by the US Bureau of Reclamation and Sonoma Water. The study was led by economists Dr. Lou Nadeau and Tess Hubbard at Eastern Research Group (ERG), who estimated Lake Mendocino FIRO benefits at over $9Million annually. Caitline Barber (ERG) developed a Decision Support Tool to apply methods to other reservoirs, and the DST was used to test transferability at Prosser Reservoir in the Truckee River Watershed. For more information, see AGU interactive poster here and the Lake Mendocino FVA Section 5.