MRGCD supports the State’s efforts to better understand and address human-driven water depletions in the Middle Rio Grande Valley. This includes the State’s pending metering order and a future evaluation of the cumulative effects of domestic wells. These are important steps toward improved water management and accountability. However, the bosque remains the largest source of …
Accumlating odds and ends, cluttering my brain but lacking the oomph for a full blog post: Rio Bravo Bridge With work getting underway on the replacement of the Rio Bravo Bridge over the Rio Grande in greater Albuquerque’s South Valley, a bit of spelunking in one of the Internet’s unlit subterranean passages yielded this bit …
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’ »