Green acreage in non-Pueblo MRGCD irrigable parcels, summer 2026 2026 provided a remarkable convergence of a natural experiment on New Mexico’s Middle Rio Grande (a river and therefore irrigation system with little or no water) and the rapid advancement of what I’ve come to think of as “Curiosity Exploder Tools” (CETs, also more commonly known …
Continue reading ‘When people have less water, they seem to use less water’ »
Whiplash.
I took advantage of the break between Storm 2 and Storm 3 to wander the South Valley this morning. It was a great ride – lots of ditch banks, some weird urbanity (the Walmart parking lot where Frank Hubbell’s farm used to be, read our book to learn about the failed tobacco farming empire of …
My office mate and podcast hosting buddy Rin Tara had the good sense to pull out their phone and record some stuff while we were out at the Rio Grande Thursday, beneath the I40 bridge, waiting for the pulse flow to arrive. We had the good fortune to bump into Audubon’s Tucker Davidson when we …
Hitting “reload” and keeping track of six open browser tabs was making my head hurt – this helped. Back story here via Paul Tashjian, written as the pulse flow was getting underway: As I write, action is underfoot to combine water from the Albuquerque-Bernalillo County Water Utility Authority, the Middle Rio Grande Conservancy District and …
Continue reading ‘Visualizing the 2026 Albuquerque pulse flow’ »
At 2 p.m. Monday (Aug 31, 2026) the Albuquerque Bernalillo County Water Utility Authority, along with the Middle Rio Grande Conservancy District and Audubon Southwest, began releasing a pulse of water from Abiquiu Reservoir on the Rio Chama in Northern New Mexico as an experiment – what might a several day pulse of water do …
Of possible relevance to the current bosque dieback in New Mexico’s Middle Rio Grande? From PNAS: Predicting forest resilience requires knowing whether trees can physiologically acclimate to drought. Drawing on global in-situ field experiments, we find a pervasive lack of functional adjustment in forest trees. Trees maintain stable hydraulic and photosynthetic capacities, enabling maximum carbon …
Continue reading ‘The science of tree diebacks in drought’ »
It was 96F (35.5C) when I rode my bike home after class at 6:15 p.m. last night. “3.91 standard deviations above the long term record” is not terribly intuitive to me, the graphs above helped me visualize how extraordinarily unusual 2026 has been in Albuquerque. By all three normal measures – daily maximum, mean, …
Continue reading ‘temperature 3.91 standard deviations above normal’ »
I spent an unhappy evening yesterday staring at data, trying to make sense of the inevitability of change. I slept poorly. The Rio Grande through Albuquerque is dry, the Colorado River’s reservoirs are rapidly emptying and, unable to come to grips with this reality we have thrown up our hands and tossed the future of …