Guardians
A detail of the new public art, a sculpture named “Guardians” by Nora Naranjo Morse, in the park around the corner from our house:
Archive of entries posted by jfleck
Stuff Lauren Villagran wrote elsewhere
My colleauge Lauren Villagran, our new Las Cruces bureau, wrote in this morning’s Journal about the struggle over the future of the Gila River in New Mexico: Should the river run wild, or be managed and controlled? Should New Mexico take the water or leave it?
In a drought, who runs out of water, and who pays?
When New Mexico was being entertained to newspaper and television coverage last year of water trucks rolling to the handful of communities that, in the midst of drought, had run out, I did a piece in the paper trying to get my arms around the folks he hadn’t run out of water. What were they …
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Has California’s probability density function changed?
As California grapples with drought, it’s a good time to revisit Milly et al.’s 2008 Science paper Stationarity Is Dead: Whither Water Management? I’m not statistician enough to answer the question posed by the post’s title, but it’s at least worth considering, as part of the state’s policy responses to this drought on multiple time scales (both …
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“practicably irrigable”
I’m on the hunt for the origins of the phrase “practicably irrigable”. If anyone has any insights, please jump in on the comments. Here’s what I know: The concept is central to water law in the western United States. The first reference I’m able to find in the U.S. legal canon is in the 1960 …
California’s drought: this is a test
California’s remarkable, looming drought conditions are a test, and via OtPR we’re seeing some clues as to who will pass: Southern California prepared for this and has a sufficient buffer that it doesn’t need to ration this year. And how did Southern California prepare? In part by being audacious enough and rich enough, but also …
Vegas: It’s easier to conserve water if you’ve been wasting a lot to begin with
Back in the 1980s, a researcher named Lawrence Hamilton (gated JSTOR paper here) studied water use and conservation behavior among the residents of 431 homes in Concord, New Hampshire. Concord’s a classic case – a slow, steady population increase putting pressure on supply that’s manageable during wet times but that became a problem in 1980, …
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Great Blue Heron
My friend Judy Liddell posted a lovely picture of a Rio Grande bosque great blue heron on her Facebook page yesterday, to which I had this comment: I have a lot of birds for which I say “That’s my favorite bird!” But I think the great blue heron may really be my favorite, the first bird …
Southwest drought risk
One of the significant areas of climate research right for us in the southwestern United States involves work on modeling the large (spatially and temporally) droughts that are so significant in long term human and ecosystem dynamics. These are the ones that are not just one-year whammies, but linger for decades, like the drought of …
Surrender, Dorothy
I think this was taken right before all that bad stuff started happening to Dorothy, the witches etc.