Out here in the inland arid western United States, water management is complicated by the convoluted question of what happens to the water after we “use” it. Sometimes it’s used up. Sometimes we put it back, in a way that allows others to use it. Regular Inkstain readers, all three of you, will recognize this …
I’ve got the sad honor today of writing an obituary for Cliff Crawford, the retired University of New Mexico biologist for whom the word “beloved” carries only a fraction of the baggage that it should. Cliff’s the dean of the dean of the bosque biologists, a group who study and love the riparian strip along …
In search of the juniper titmouse and random desert wrens, I headed up the Domingo Baca trail in the foothills above Albuquerque this morning. As is the case with most of the little canyons on the west face of the Sandias, there’s a spring near the bottom of Domingo Baca Canyon. The tilt of the …
Continue reading ‘Water in the Desert: Domingo Baca Canyon’ »
Without pack animals and before fueled machinery, the ability of a human to carry food placed a fundamental constraint on economic integration across large distances. Over any significant distances, a human would have to eat all the food they could carry, leaving none left for trade. Trade of small, high value items could go on …
In an interview over at Grist, Brad Udall reminds us that, as we think about the effect of climate change on the West, it’s not just the thorny question of whether precipitation rises or falls that matters. Despite the uncertainties surrounding that question, as temperatures rise (a projection about which there is considerably less uncertainty), …
From the New York Times, Sept. 13, 2003: An obituary of the nuclear physicist Edward Teller on Thursday misstated the number of hydrogen atoms that join to make helium in the fusion process. It is four, not two.
For the ESA Nerds in the audience (a subset of Water Wonks), an update over on the work blog on the status of the San Acacia fish passage on the middle Rio Grande. From the bike ride, an observation: Bike rides on the Albuquerque flood control system trails sometimes feel like I’m intruding on the homeless …
Lissa and I were walking in the Rio Grande bosque, the riparian cottonwood forest, last night when the sun dropped below the clouds just before sunset and lit the trees across the pond with the most exquisite light. All we had was a cell phone camera, so I went back this evening at the same …
Continue reading ‘Water in the desert: not exactly nature, but close’ »
Great essay in High Country News by Jackie Wheeler about the strange and wonderful (and currently empty) Tempe Town Lake and our quirky relationship with water here in the affluent desert southwest: In so many ways, Town Lake was frivolous, artificial, and naïve. It didn’t produce hydroelectric power. It wasn’t built by beavers or glaciers. …
A bloggy bit from an ongoing project with Journal photographer Roberto Rosales on the trash in Albuquerque’s flood control system, and the people who try to catch it before it reaches the Rio Grande: “The vast majority of the floatables were plastic water bottles,” Daggett told me. “You buy your plastic water bottle and it …
Continue reading ‘Stuff I Wrote Elsewhere: It’s the Water Bottles’ »