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<br />003'. ~6 <br />l ,1 <br /> <br />Page 15 <br /> <br />The waters of the Colorado River are currently allocated between basin <br /> <br />states by interstate compacts, international treaties, court decisions, and <br /> <br />operating rules for the system of federal reservoirs. As in appropriation <br /> <br />doctrine which governs intrastate water allocation, this complex of institutions <br /> <br />establishes a somewhat ordered relationship among claims on limited water <br /> <br />supplies. That ordered relationship, which is largely hierarchical, is <br /> <br />represented in the first objective function by a series of weights on the <br /> <br />various water demands according to the priority which existing institutional <br /> <br />arrangements established for that demand. <br /> <br />Changes in water allocation institutions are represented by a reordering of <br /> <br />objective function. In the limiting case of complete abandonment of existing <br /> <br />~1 <br /> <br />water use priorities, hence the assignment of different weights within the <br /> <br />interstate allocation institutions, and assuming that alternative, institutions <br /> <br />which permit free transfer of water were to exist, market forces alone would <br /> <br />determine water uses. Therefore, the second objective function included <br /> <br />I <br /> <br />, . <br /> <br />weights for the various water demands which were ordered in strict consistence <br /> <br />with the marginal value of water in each respective use. <br /> <br />Varying the weights used in the objective function to represent alternative <br /> <br />institutional arrangements was only one of the perturbations which were employed <br /> <br />in order to investigate the behavior of the Colorado River system. Variation in <br /> <br />streamflow was of interest for two reasons. First, the primary goal of the <br /> <br />study, was to reveal how runoff increases due to vegetation manipulation might <br /> <br />be used. All analyses were run under two sets of assumptions; with and without <br /> <br />increased runoff from this source. Second, the performance of the storage and <br /> <br />delivery facilities which currently exist in the basin is affected by the <br /> <br />pattern inherent in the hydrologic trace, which means that a multi-period <br />