"I love your water & water plan!"

New technology and fresh ideas could help safeguard the water we all depend on in a recent report.

Emerging Technologies to Improve Water Resource Management in Colorado was published by the University of Colorado Boulder Mortenson Center in Global Engineering & Resilience and Colorado State University Water Center, highlighting some of the most pressing issues facing Colorado water managers to focus dialogue, funding, and legislative activity around advancements supporting water conservation.
 

What's In the Report?

The report explores a whole toolkit of 21st-century solutions:

Innovating on the Farm: Helping Colorado's farmers use cutting-edge data to grow the food we love with less water, protecting our agricultural heritage and precious rivers.

Protecting Our Forests and Faucets: Using new technology to monitor forest health and lower wildfire risk. Because when our mountain forests thrive, they deliver the clean, reliable water that our communities depend on.

Putting Water Data in Your Hands: Creating open and accessible platforms for water information. When everyone from a state manager to a curious citizen can see the data, we all make smarter decisions and become better stewards of our shared resource.

X-Raying the Snowpack: Flying planes with advanced, snow-penetrating sensors to accurately measure our mountain snowpack—our state’s largest natural reservoir. This tells water managers exactly how much to expect when the snow melts.

Guarding Our Groundwater: Deploying new tools to monitor and manage our state’s hidden aquifers. By closely monitoring this vital underground resource, we can ensure it remains a reliable backup for generations to come, especially during the driest years.

A 21st-Century Water Market: Developing transparent digital tools to make sharing and trading water rights simpler and more efficient. This flexibility helps move water where it's most needed while respecting our state's long history of water law.

Climate Financing for Water Security

Since the report was published, there has been increased attention to leveraging climate finance toward water security. The University of Colorado Boulder Mortenson Center in Global Engineering and Resilience, with partners, are currently developing the first-ever demonstration of carbon credits earned from green infrastructure replacing gray infrastructure for water treatment.

Water insecurity is increasing globally as one of the first perceivable effects of climate change. While water management is typically a local challenge, climate finance mechanisms can switch climate-damaging capital toward climate reparative water infrastructure and create a sustainable, performance-based funding stream to incentivize safe water services globally.

Emerging momentum toward climate action includes dedicated climate financing mechanisms that may be leveraged toward water security. Climate finance mechanisms offer the potential to switch climate-damaging capital toward climate reparative water infrastructure and create a sustainable, performance-based funding stream to incentivize safe water services.

Green infrastructure, including tree planting, soil erosion control, wildfire mitigation and livestock exclusion, can improve water quality and reduce the need for concrete and steel gray infrastructure. By avoiding the construction and operation of energy-intensive, carbon-emitting water and wastewater plants, we can generate carbon credit revenue to pay for watershed protection.