‘So Far, So Good’ for the Colorado River Watershed in 2023

An Inkstain guest post from Jack Schmidt, crossposted with encouragement from the Utah State University Center for Colorado River Studies By Jack Schmidt | December 7, 2023 In Summary By the end of November 2023, storage in the reservoirs of the Colorado River watershed had been reduced 1.73 million acre feet from the high of …

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Inkstain mailbag: Why “Ribbons” plural?

Alert reader T texted a question: Why “Ribbons” vs “Ribbon”? I can’t wait to read all about it. Thanks, T! The title of our forthcoming book* Ribbons of Green: The Rio Grande and the Making of a Modern American City comes from a passage in the strange and wonderful book The Desert by John van …

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Ribbons of Green: A water book? A city book?

I have devoted an inordinate amount of time over these last few months thinking about two things: finishing the book, and dreaming about the dreamy freedom of my life after we handed over the manuscript to the University of New Mexico Press. The book work, finishing the manuscript of Ribbons of Green: The Rio Grande …

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Ribbons of Green: the Spandrels of Duranes

I’ve been fiddling with some of the maps we’ll be using for our book Ribbons of Green: The Rio Grande and the Making of a Modern American City, trying to think about how to use this 1888 topographical map of Albuquerque and its surroundings. It may work best unadorned – a river, a railroad, and …

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How Albuquerque learned about the Endangered Species Act listing of the Rio Grande silvery minnow

The Rio Grande silvery minnow is kind of a big deal in understanding 21st century management of New Mexico’s Middle Rio Grande. So it was hilarious to me to look back at the initial public announcement of its 1994 Endangered Species Act listing. The community first learned of it on page C6 of the Aug. …

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New Mexico’s Rio Grande Compact debt is likely to grow; El Vado Dam won’t be fixed for a long while yet; we might see a lot more Middle Rio Grande Valley farmers paid next year to fallow

Finishing the new book has thrown me into a time warp. We’re about to hand in a manuscript for a book that traces a century and a half of the evolution of Albuquerque’s relationship with the Rio Grande, leading up to now. But the now of the act of writing (November 2023) is different from …

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Protecting Reservoir Storage Gains from Water Year 2023: How are we doing?

A guest post by Jack Schmidt of the Utah State University Future of the Colorado River Project. By Jack Schmidt A few weeks ago, I posted a perspective demonstrating that we consumed or lost to evaporation the “gains” of Water Year (WY)2011, WY2017, and WY2019 within two years of each of those large runoff events. …

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Water Year 2023 in Context: A Cautionary Tale

A guest post by Jack Schmidt of the Utah State University Future of the Colorado River Project. By Jack Schmidt The end of September marked the end of Water Year 2023 (WY2023). This is a good time to take stock of the year’s runoff and to understand how much reservoir storage improved. What kind of …

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