Data to Supplement "What will it take to stabilize the Colorado River?"

The Colorado River is facing an unprecedented water supply crisis due to a 20% reduction of streamflow compared to the 20th century average and to policies that have allowed 21st century consumptive water use to exceed water supplies. To continue to meet demands, storage in the two largest reservoirs in the United States, Lakes Mead and Powell, have fallen from nearly full in 2000 to a projected level of 25% full by the end of the year. Existing drought management policies have thus far been unable to arrest this decline. If the current drought were to continue, substantially greater reductions in consumptive use will be necessary to avoid the loss of hydropower and avoid unpredictable delivery reductions to water users. To address the imbalance between supply and consumption, we identify combinations of limits on Upper Basin consumptive use alongside reduced deliveries to the Lower Basin and Mexico. These adaptation measures need to be applied swiftly to avoid further decline if the current drought persists.

This collection is supplementary data and code referenced in the journal article titled "What will it take to stabilize the Colorado River? ". This collection is to preserve and provide access to data used in the study in the interest of transparency and reproducibility of this work.