Colorado River shortage declaration possible by 2015/16

update: Michael Cohen at the Pacific Institute emailed with a subtle clarification. If Lake Mead, as the USBR analysis reported below suggests, drops below elevation 1,075 feet above sea level during 2015, the actual shortage declaration on the lower Colorado would then apply to the following year’s water allocation. More specifically, during August the Bureau …

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Dear tourists: many areas of New Mexico are currently not on fire

The city government folks in Santa Fe, NM, want to assure you that, despite all the smoke, Santa Fe itself is currently not on fire: A news release issued by city government on Wednesday declared that “forest fires burning in Northern New Mexico are well removed from the City of Santa Fe and are not …

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“This is a different river.”

I write about minnows in the Rio Grande, and smelt and salmon in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta. Richard White writes about salmon in the Columbia. In all three cases, we’re discussing species-focused environmental efforts – to “save” the silvery minnow in the Rio Grande, or salmon and the delta smelt in California, or salmon in …

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Stuff I wrote elsewhere: “Emerson, Nixon and the silvery minnow”

So I’m all, like “view from nowhere” in this piece in this morning’s newspaper. I’m genuinely agnostic on the question of the fate of the silvery minnow, an endangered fish found only on the stretch of the Rio Grande that flows through Albuquerque and points slightly north and south. But I think we need to …

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fire map

Recalling one of Inkstain’s two mottos*, I’m experimenting here with fire maps. This is an attempt at the perimeter/heat map for the Thompson Ridge fire in the Jemez Mountains of New Mexico, as of last night’s IR overflight, GIS data courtesy National Interagency Fire Center. The “view larger map” link allows you to do what …

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