There’s no way to pin down the moment I started working on my book, because it happened in fits and starts that extend back in one form or another for more than a decade. But the first time I really went all in was in the spring of 2010, when I made a trip down …
Continue reading ‘Hitting “send” on my book’s manuscript, again’ »
Lions, like water lawyers, are doing pretty well for themselves in the drought. Mostly for the same reasons. https://t.co/ktMC6TO1nZ — WatergrlJD (@watergrlJD) March 13, 2016 Why lions can feast during a drought https://t.co/H7zc7fzsET — PRI (@PRI) March 13, 2016
In a neat new paper looking at sediment layers near Blythe, California, Jordan Bright of the University of California and colleagues (paper here, $ gated) argue that they’ve found evidence of the moment (in geological time, the “moment” is really hundreds of years) when the Colorado River made its first dash to the sea. The …
Continue reading ‘5 million years ago, when the Colorado River made its first dash to the sea’ »
This month’s US Bureau of Reclamation reservoir forecast model runs show the implications of the warm, dry spring, with a drop of 620,000 acre feet and six feet in elevation in the estimated end-of-year storage in Lake Powell, the major reservoir in the Upper Colorado River Basin. Here’s my long term forecast graph, updated with …
Continue reading ‘The warm, dry spring pushing Colorado River reservoir forecast levels down’ »
Brett Walton wrote a smart piece about the relationship between poverty, income inequality, and decaying US water infrastructure: Affordable water requires an all-in effort that cuts across the political spectrum, a mix of redirected spending priorities, tax policy, social programs, and engineering assessments at the local, state, and federal levels. The urgency, experts assert, will …
Continue reading ‘Poverty, income inequality, and US water infrastructure’ »
Brett Walton had a piece last week that suggested an appropriate damper for the US water community’s enthusiasm for the Obama administration’s recent Big Water Push: The budget request drew praise from water experts, who, even with the small sum, were happy to see more recognition from the country’s leadership. But those same voices note …
Continue reading ‘Technology is easy, but it’s water policy that matters’ »
Connie Woodhouse at the University of Arizona and colleagues have a new paper presenting the most direct link yet between a greenhouse-warmed climate and reduced flows in the Colorado River. Modeling has for many years projected such an effect in the future, but the new Woodhouse et al. paper (Increasing influence of air temperature on …
Continue reading ‘New evidence that a warming climate is already reducing Colorado River flows’ »
The March 1 forecast for the Rio Grande in New Mexico suggests we are heading into another dry year on the Rio Grande in New Mexico, with a median forecast of 80 percent of the 1981-2010 average flowing into Elephant Butte Reservoir. (source pdf) That is close enough to average that there is a lot …
Continue reading ‘A forecast for another dry year on the Rio Grande’ »
WILLOW BEACH, ARIZ. – One of the things I miss about my newspaper life is the quiet pleasure of a cool dateline, dangling at the start of a story like a sparkle of anticipation. So grant me this one. Willow Beach is a boat landing and picnic spot at the bottom of Black Canyon on …
I’ll be at the Nevada Water Resources Association meeting in Las Vegas next week, talking Wednesday morning about what we need to do to avoid running out of water. If you’re there, say “hi”.