Laura Paskus takes us this morning to the mountains of northern New Mexico, where the snow is melting earlier than it used to, and less of the ensuing runoff is making it into our Rio Grande: [A]s bleak as southwestern springtime stream flow forecasts have been in recent years, scientists at the University of New …
Continue reading ‘Climate change, the Rio Grande forecast problem, and the death of stationarity’ »
Lissa and I were sitting this afternoon in Pat Hurley Park, up on the west mesa (best view in Albuquerque, check it out) when we heard the rumble of Harleys. A couple of dozen bikes, a full biker wedding. And, being an outlaw gang – Bandidos, whose regalia included New Mexico “bottom rockers” (see Jeff …
Ian James at the Desert Sun this week took on the journalistic task of rounding up the back-and-forth over the politics, law, policy, and science of the Cadiz project, a proposal to pump groundwater in the deserts of Southern California and ship it off for use in coastal plain cities. Ian, who’s earned a reputation …
Continue reading ‘Cadiz, scientization, and how Dan Sarewitz almost drove me out of journalism’ »
One of my favorite water nerd film moments is the conversation between Humphrey Bogart and Claude Rains in which Rains’ Inspector Renault tries to get Bogart’s Rick to explain why he came to Casablanca: Captain Renault: What in heaven’s name brought you to Casablanca? Rick: My health. I came to Casablanca for the waters. Captain …
Continue reading ‘Turns out Casablanca isn’t a desert. I was misinformed.’ »
Captain Renault: What in heaven’s name brought you to Casablanca? Rick: My health. I came to Casablanca for the waters. Captain Renault: The waters? What waters? We’re in the desert. Rick: I was misinformed.
My new hobby, hunting for pictures of Lake Mead when it was full, led me this evening to the helpful USGS EarthExplorer archives of old U.S. government satellite images, where I found this little beauty. Apologies if it’s a slow load, they’re relatively large image file so interested water nerds can click on it and zoom …
Continue reading ‘The last time Lake Mead was full, as seen from outer space’ »
A great find for Bill Hasencamp’s collection of pictures of Lake Mead full: Optimistically, presumed to be full.
The Klamath Basin Restoration Agreement embodies one of the great experiments in collaborative watershed management under contested conditions, with a complex web of sometimes conflicting interests among agriculture, indigenous communities, fisheries, environmental flows, and power production. It also demonstrates one of the great risks in collaborative water management in the arid West: everyone has to …
Continue reading ‘A farmer’s defense of the Klamath Basin Restoration Agreement’ »
I keep asking my friends who manage municipal water systems in the West how low their communities’ water use can go. None of them really know, which is fascinating. Their customers’ water use just keep dropping. I’ve been following a couple of communities particularly closely – Albuquerque (because it’s my home town) and Las Vegas …
Continue reading ‘Albuquerque’s water use down another 3.4 percent in 2015’ »
I was trying to get a shot of our neighborhood roadrunner this morning as it hopped down into Lissa’s garden, a sort of “living Garden Gnome” shot. But I realized as I looked through the results that the garden itself, Lissa’s great work of living art, overwhelms the bird, however cool the roadrunner might be.