Water management concerns have forced water managers and decision-makers to make critical management decisions under a high degree of uncertainty. To mitigate this problem, scenarios are proposed as a future planning tool that can help water managers in implementing strategies and policies that are better informed and more robust. Scenarios represent a possible sequence of events that projects us from the present into an alternative future state. Scenario development is a process that is based on creating and analyzing scenarios relevant to a management question of interest. The approach to developing scenarios and applying them is achieved through a framework composed of five phases: scenario definition, scenario construction, scenario analysis, scenario assessment, and risk management.
Using the scenario development framework, a set of scenarios were developed for the management objectives and operations of the Salt River Project; a stakeholder group that provides water and electricity to the greater Phoenix area at affordable costs. The area of study encompassed a portion of the management areas under the SRP domain – the Verde River Watershed situated in the Colorado River Basin from which the SRP draws the bulk of its surface water supply. Through the scenario development process eight scenarios with explicit links to prevalent Verde Watershed issues and Salt River Project management concerns were identified. To analyze the future impacts of these scenarios on the Verde River Watershed and the operations of the Salt River Project, a computational model was constructed specifically to simulate future change in the Verde River Watershed with respect to the issues selected to represent the developed scenarios. After the analysis of scenario results that were produced by the model, implication narratives were provided to outline the impact of each scenario on the Verde River Watershed and on the Salt River Project’s management operations in that basin.