This project aims to sustain food production under changing snowpack and snowmelt conditions in the arid West through a collaborative research framework (CRF). The CRF has two major goals:

 

1. The CRF will support collaboration among the various project components (hydrologic, institutional, and economic) by helping to identify common research questions and needs, as well as by aiding in the integration of complementary research findings.

 

1. The CRF will support co-production of knowledge by the project team and key stakeholders in selected case study basins. This will occur through the solicitation of stakeholder input and expertise generally, through the creation of stakeholder-based Technical Advisory Groups (TAGs), and through sharing accessible results with stakeholder communities. In this project, stakeholders represent water management at the basin scale for diverse uses, including irrigated agriculture, tribes, environmental instream flows, and municipal and industrial use.

 

By involving stakeholders directly in scientific inquiry, the CRF will help to support evidence-based water management, adaptation, and related policy deliberations. It will also provide an example of a replicable framework that can be used to enhance collaborative knowledge co-production about issues at the agriculture-water nexus in the arid West and other regions. Such activities strengthen the overall value of the research activities, results, and impacts of this project.