Background
Lake Mead is currently facing a water crisis caused by various factors, such as climate change, inadequate use of water resources, and drought. Located on the Colorado River in Arizona and Nevada, Lake Mead remains one of the vital sources of water for the people who live in the nearby areas, including Phoenix, Las Vegas, and Los Angeles.
There has been a steady decline in water levels in recent years. At the moment, they are at their lowest historical level. The drought, inadequate and excessive resource use, and the increasing demand of the growing population have put a strain on them, making the water crisis a pressing issue.
The nearby communities will be severely affected by the crisis’s consequences for the economic development and the region’s environment. Thus, a comprehensive plan for solving the issue of using Lake Mead’s water resources is necessary. The paper aims to elaborate on possible solutions to this problem.
Annotated Bibliography
Achhami, A., Kalra, A. & Ahmad, S. (2018). Dynamic simulation of Lake Mead water levels in response to climate change and varying demands. Planning and Management. World Environmental and Water Resources Congress 2018.Web.
This paper discusses the future scenarios for managing water resources in Lake Mead. The authors focus both on the current state of the water crisis and what consequences can be expected if the management strategy is not changed; they also evaluate models that can help estimate the changes in water levels in the future.
The primary focus of the paper is the application of the STELLA tool, a system dynamics tool that can help simulate the past, present, and future conditions of Mead Lake (Achhami et al., 2018). The paper’s results demonstrate that this model can help predict the future of the crisis and identify what actions need to be taken to mitigate the negative consequences.
The paper can be deemed a credible source as it was part of the World Environmental and Water Resources Congress. Its findings are still relevant as the studied model can still be used for future predictions and estimating future consequences. To understand why it is crucial to find the most effective solution to the issue, it is necessary to understand why it needs to be found now. For this, it is crucial to elaborate on how the future damage can be estimated and what needs to be changed to avoid it, which is covered in the paper.
The details regarding applying the STELLA tool could also be useful for the project. This could be helpful when elaborating practical solutions to the water crisis and estimating the crisis’s damage. The paper assesses the effect of climate change on water levels and how the growing demand contributes to the crisis (Achhami et al., 2018); other factors, including meteorological and socio-economic ones, are also considered. This information will also be helpful for future projects.
Margan, S. (2022). Technology focus: water management. Journal of Petroleum Technology, 74(12), 78-79. Web.
The article focuses on how technology can solve the water crisis affecting Lake Mead, Lake Powell, and other areas. The author (Margan, 2022) claims it is extremely important to find innovative ways to use emerging technology, as the United States saw historically low water levels not just in the described area. Other parts of the country were also affected, which can lead to even more devastating consequences. Margan (2022) emphasizes that there have been enough technological developments to treat and prevent water crises.
However, insufficient attention is paid to the necessary actions to protect water as a sustainable resource (Margan, 2022). Thus, his paper studies “different approaches to chemically managing high-salinity produced water through commercially viable approaches” (Margan, 2022). Particularly, he concentrates on the application of chemical technologies and smart technologies.
The present article is recent; thus, its findings are still relevant. Journal of Petroleum Technology is a reliable and credible source for evaluating the use of technologies. Making water use and distribution sustainable is impossible without applying chemical technologies, which is the main topic of discussion in Margan’s (2022) paper.
Elaborating on approaches to chemical technologies can be useful for investigating possible practical solutions to the problem. The paper also includes an investigation of the application of the newest smart technologies. Thus, the content of the chosen paper is relevant to the future project.
Shen, C., Li, H., Chen, M., Zhu, K. & Wang, Fan. (2022). Prediction model of lake water volume based on k-means. ICECC 2022: The 2022 5th International Conference on Electronics, Communications and Control Engineering, 57-62. Web.
The paper focuses on the aspects contributing to the lake’s low water levels and the approach to evaluating future water levels. The authors evaluate the inflow, outflow, and water loss as the main factors; they also use the ‘k-means cluster approach’ to evaluate the data regarding the water levels (Shen et al., 2022). Finally, they evaluate the findings in terms of assessing the leaders’ actions in crisis management.
The paper is credible because it was part of an international engineering conference that took place in 2022; thus, all the findings are still relevant today. The paper deals with the water crisis in the Southwest in the US in general and the crisis in Lake Mead in particular, which can be helpful for future research. The article suggests practical methods of evaluating the crisis, which are necessary for estimating what needs to be done to solve the problem. This information could be beneficial for future projects, as elaborating on a plan to solve the crisis is impossible without first evaluating the scope of the crisis.
Yi, D. (2020). Water scarcity and sewage treatment in Beijing and Las Vegas. IOP Conference Series: Earth and Environmental Science, 525. Web.
The article compares water crises in two parts of the world: the Southwest, the US, and Beijing, China. It brings awareness to the methods of fighting water scarcity in China and how Chinese authorities managed to alleviate the crisis (Yi, 2020). The author (Yi, 2020) suggests how China’s experience could be useful in solving the crisis in America.
The paper is part of an international environmental science conference and thus can be deemed credible. The findings are still relevant, as there have not been many policy changes since 2020. Applying the experience of another country in solving a similar issue would be particularly useful for the paper, as an example of successful crisis management would help create a similarly helpful model for the researched area. Moreover, the paper also covers the historical and natural differences between the areas. This could be helpful when trying to understand which solutions can serve as an example and can be applied in America, and which solutions cannot be adopted.
Zhang, Q.; Fan, M.; Hui, J.; Huang, H.; Li, Z.; Zheng, Z. (2022). Smart sharing plan: The key to the water crisis. Water, 14(15). Web.
The article is dedicated to investigating possible ways to solve the water crisis in the Colorado River, Lake Mead, and Lake Powell. The authors suggest that the hydroelectric facilities in these areas are used inadequately, leading to rising competition for water and an inability to comply with sustainable development goals. They imply that it is necessary to find and apply alternative resource production and distribution methods to solve the current issues and prevent potential ones.
Thus, they design and study the use of alternative models such as a simplified Penstock Dam model, a Distance Decay model, and a Multi-attitude Decision model (Zhang et al., 2022). They provide mathematical modeling, practical aspects of the use of the models, the necessary conditions for their application, and a comprehensive approach to sustainable development in the region in general.
The paper was released in 2022; thus, the findings can still be found relevant. The journal in which it was published deals with water issues specifically; thus, the source can be considered credible. This paper is useful for future projects for several reasons. Firstly, it suggests real, practical models for water management as solutions, which could be useful for this part of the research.
Moreover, the conditions necessary for applying the suggested models are also provided. The authors’ approach to elaborating the suggested models is comprehensive, meaning that they consider “all factors to develop a relatively complete and idealized mathematical model” (Zhang et al., 2022). Finally, finding solutions to the water crisis is impossible without considering the region’s sustainable development and how to maintain it, which is included in the paper.