From the morning paper: New Mexico’s current drought, with dwindling water supplies and increasing wildfire risk, is a taste of our future under climate change, according to a sweeping new federal report released Tuesday. While climate’s natural ups and downs are playing a major role in our current drought, rising greenhouse gases increase the odds …
Continue reading ‘Stuff I wrote elsewhere: the National Climate Assessment’ »
It’s lacking the drama of the March Minute 319 pulse flow on the Colorado River, but I’m getting my own little pulse flow on the Rio Grande here in Albuquerque beginning later this week: Beginning Wednesday, central New Mexico will get its river back – for a week. The anemic Rio Grande, parched by drought, …
I like my friend JR’s attitude toward gardening in the desert: I water almost nothing here. I do throw yesterday’s left over water from Cooper’s bowl on the autumn sage. It keeps the red blossoms coming and the hummingbirds like that. Some days the birds get the left over water. The New Mexico locust gets …
Imperial County in the desert of southeastern California is the nation’s leading producer of Brussels sprouts. According to the newly released U.S. Department of Agriculture Census of Agriculture, there were 2,237 acres of Brussels sprouts in Imperial in 2012, growing on 6 farms. For reasons unknown to me (c’mon, you’ve tried ’em, right?) Brussels sprouts are …
Continue reading ‘With Colorado River water, growing Brussels sprouts’ »
The University of Colorado’s Charles Wilkinson: One of the best developments for the environment in the West has been the quiet but deep revolution in federal water policy. Over the course of the past quarter century, we have moved from a dam-and-reservoir, build-at-any-cost mentality to a multifaceted approach that respects all that we need from, …
Continue reading ‘Wilkinson on the environmental shift in western water policy’ »
Our friend Sybil has a particularly nice backyard fountain.
tl;dr – Heads up, Arizona. Less water headed your way! longer version – Stuck out here in the Rio Grande Basin, I’ve long suffered Colorado River Basin Envy Syndrome. The Colorado is the sexy river, which means it gets all the cool science. I dream of an analysis this rich of uncertainties in my river’s …
Continue reading ‘The Salt/Verde, climate change and Upper Basin Envy’ »
After stalling out for a couple of weeks, the Colorado River Delta Minute 319 pulse flow is back on the move. According to the latest map and missive from the science team, an earthen dam below the downstream-most habitat restoration site was removed, and the pulse has received an added stimulus from the Kilometer 27 …
Continue reading ‘Colorado River Pulse Flow On the Move Again’ »
Teddy Roosevelt, speaking in Santa Fe, NM, May 5, 1903, during his grand western tour: I build no small hope upon the aid that under the wise law of Congress will ultimately be extended to this as to other States and Territories in the way of governmental aid to irrigation. Irrigation is of course to …
Continue reading ‘Irrigation and hope for New Mexico’s future’ »
Here’s a nice visualization from the USGS of groundwater depletion in the High Plains Aquifer: h/t Sharlene Leurig