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Like most rivers worldwide, the transboundary North American Kootenay/i River has experienced multiple impacts including watershed developments, river channelization, and floodplain clearing, draining, and diking. Construction of Libby Dam was authorized by the 1964 Columbia River Treaty (CRT) between the United States and Canada, and in 1975 began regulating downstream flows for flood risk management and hydropower generation. Following cumulative impacts, the endemic Kootenai River White Sturgeon population collapsed and was designated as endangered in 1994 (U.S. Endangered Species Act). Subsequent Biological Opinions from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service prescribed Libby Dam operations to provide springtime flow pulses for sturgeon spawning. These provided the unanticipated benefit of substantial seedling recruitment of native and introduced riparian cottonwoods and willows. The regulated flow regime was further adaptively managed to provide a more normative (natural) regime, to balance ecological functions with flood risk management and hydropower generation. The broadened ecological considerations would be consistent with the proposed priorities for the modernization of the international CRT. The observed responses revealed that (1) diverse aquatic and riparian organisms are dependent on common river flow characteristics; (2) a normalized flow regime provided substantial ecological benefits; and (3) due to multiple influences, hybrid ecosystems develop along regulated rivers, with a blending of natural and altered processes and communities. For other regulated rivers, we recommend that (1) high springtime flows be allowed, as feasible; (2) followed by the gradual post‐peak recession; and (3) the maintenance of sufficient flows through the warm and dry interval of mid to late summer. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Water storage reservoirs alternately inundate and expose the drawdown zones, limiting riparian vegetation that provides wildlife habitats and contributes to the aquatic food-web. To characterize plant distributions and hydrogeomorphic associations, we inventoried quadrats in transects extending from the full-pool (FP) margin, downwards 12 m through the drawdown zones at sites around the Duncan Reservoir in British Columbia, Canada. Among the 69 plant species, black cottonwoods (Populus trichocarpa), willows (primarily Salix sitchensis) and other trees and shrubs occurred sparsely, rarely extending below 2 m below FP. Perennial herbaceous plants, especially horsetail (Equisetum arvense) and sedges (primarily Carex utriculata), were most common, extending down ~5 m below FP, and ruderal annual plants occurred sparsely at greater depths. Vegetation Cover and Species Richness were correlated with environmental factors, with (1) Elevation being highly influential, reflecting inundation duration and depth. (2) Position, longitudinal location, reflected greater vegetation diversity downstream of the reservoir. (3) Finer Substrate texture was favorable to retain moisture, but coarse sediments would resist erosion. (4) Shallow Slope was favorable to reduce drainage and included finer sediments. (5) Distance from the FP shoreline could reflect seed source proximity. Stepwise linear modeling with combined environmental factors accounted for ~30% of the variation in Vegetation Cover and Richness, and Canonical Correspondence Analysis revealed plant groupings relative to the environmental influences. At this and other storage reservoirs, regimes that reduce the frequency and duration of inundation could promote vegetation in locations with suitable environmental conditions in the upper drawdown zones, thus providing ecosystem enhancement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Major international agreements governing the shared use of transboundary waters rarely deal explicitly with species conservation, yet they often have major implications for aquatic, avian, and terrestrial species. To meet conservation objectives, it may be necessary to find flexibility, or "adaptive capacity" within these agreements to enable conservation measures. This study applies incident analysis to assess the adaptive capacity of the Canada–US Columbia River Treaty (CRT) to respond to evolving species conservation needs. Like many other transboundary agreements, the terms of the CRT cover power production, flood protection and irrigation, but not species conservation. We analyze the discourses and normative expectations of politically relevant actors regarding an international conflict with Canada over the use of flow modifications by US agencies to conserve an endangered species of sturgeon. Four distinct discourse coalitions formed around the issue, each with its own interpretation of the problem, normative expectations about the rules that should apply, and power to shape decision making. The incident highlights how domestic conservation laws can directly impinge upon an international transboundary water treaty, and how flexibility can be found within existing institutional arrangements for conservation purposes. However, new norms for fish conservation were not fully incorporated into the CRT and decision-making authority for conservation-related disputes became more entrenched in the Treaty's implementing agencies, potentially further excluding actors who might support fish conservation, such as environmental organizations and Indigenous governments. We recommend strategies to increase the adaptive capacity of the CRT and similar international agreements to enable species conservation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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The United States and Canada have begun renegotiating the Columbia River Treaty, which is an international model for transboundary water governance. This paper identifies six institutional factors that will affect negotiations pertaining to fish passage during the renegotiation of the treaty: geographical advantage, issue linkage, a basin commission, the duration of agreements, negotiating autonomy and side payments. These factors and the methods used to determine them can be applied to other transboundary river basins where basin states have a history of transboundary resource governance. This analysis also serves as a policy-relevant resource for Columbia River Treaty negotiators and stakeholders. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The public participation element of the Columbia River Treaty Review process conducted in the United States was assessed: to what extent did it incorporate participation by basin stakeholders, how importantly did this figure in the minds of stakeholders, and what is the prospect for stakeholder concerns to be given meaningful attention by the US Department of State in deliberations and actions concerning the future of the treaty? The analysis revealed that collaboration is important to stakeholders, and the process facilitated a significant degree of collaboration. The continuation of collaboration in treaty negotiation and in post-2024 treaty implementation was recommended. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents the implementation of stochastic dual dynamic programming (SDDP) to generate water-value functions for operations planning of the British Columbia (BC) Hydro system. An inflow model is developed to generate stochastic seasonal volumes forecasts and monthly inflows for the Peace River and upper Columbia River in Canada. A model is developed to model storage spaces for flood control and storage account operations to comply with the Columbia River Treaty (CRT) and subsequent agreements between Canada and the United States. Two novel algorithms are developed. The first uses SDDP and an updating process to generate the end of planning horizon water-value function, and the second uses SDDP to generate monthly water-value functions with a new stopping criterion for SDDP. Analysis results of the water-value functions illustrate the importance of globally optimizing reservoirs and storage accounts and modeling stochastic inflows. Results of simulation studies show significant benefits of using water-value functions over currently used methods and the need for modeling inflow uncertainties and storage account operations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]