This page contains a collection of research,d atasets, and projects on the Colorado River Basin. Parts of this work were funded through the US Western Water Institutional Solutions Project.
Upper Colorado River Cooperation and Conflict Event Dataset
For his PhD dissertation research, Nathan Eidem, developed an Events Database for the Upper Colorado River Basin between 1970 and 2005. The Upper Colorado Events Database is available for download as an excel file.
Publications
Through the analysis of the events database, two papers were published that looked at the Colorado River basin as a case study in the context of intranational cooperation and conflict as well as analyzed the social, economic, and environmental aspects of the Upper Colorado River Region from 1970 to 2005. The work also was captured within Dr. Nathan Eidem's dissertation titled Enhancing Social-Ecological Resilience in the Colorado River Basin, which is available on OSU's Scholar's Archive.
- Intranational Cooperation and Conflict over Freshwater: Examples from the Western United States
- The Western Water Institutional Solutions-Western Water Information Network Collaboration: An Analysis of the Social, Economic, and Biophysical Environments Supportive of and the Historic Trends in Conflict and Cooperation in the Bureau of Reclamation’s Upper Colorado Region 1970-2005
Additional Resources
The Western Water Assessment Team at University of Colorado Boulder is a university-based applied research program that addresses societal vulnerabilities to climate variability and climate change, particularly those related to western water resources - including the Colorado River basin. Their research on the Colorado River addresses drought, climate change, and management and policy. It also includes transcripts of the negotiations for the 1922 compact.
Seligman's "Laws of the Rivers" provides an excellent overview of the compacts, treaties, etc. that govern the major rivers in the U.S., including the Colorado.