Visualizing the pulse flow (click on the image to embiggen).
Hitting “reload” and keeping track of six open browser tabs was making my head hurt – this helped.
Back story here via Paul Tashjian, written as the pulse flow was getting underway:
As I write, action is underfoot to combine water from the Albuquerque-Bernalillo County Water Utility Authority, the Middle Rio Grande Conservancy District and Audubon for a release of water into our parched Rio Grande. The hope is to water the riverbed for four days through Albuquerque, soak the aquifer, and provide an “irrigation” to our stressed and dying bosque forest. At the same time, a robust monitoring program has been put in place to understand groundwater response, the seepage rate, characteristics of the watering, and the response of the trees themselves. This monitoring effort will provide invaluable insights to water managers about how we may solve problems of this nature in the future.
In Arizona it’s the San Pedro that is dying. Santa Cruz died a long time ago. Now reinvigorated with artificial flows for a perennial reach in town. I was surprised at how quickly the aquatic insects returned. The time is coming soon when reclaimed water (TtT) will have to go to people. My guess is that your bosque will be gone in your lifetime. Our house is in a mesquite bosque at the confluence of two washes. One flows ephemerally every year. The other has flowed only a few times in the 30 years we’ve been here. I just had the dead parts of the mesquites removed for fire protection. Looks like a GI haircut.