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 …
Albuquerque’s bosque has been suffering a rapid dieback, as shallow aquifers drop away from the roots of the community’s beloved cottonwood gallery forest. This is uncharted territory for our modern bosque, which grew into its present state after Bureau of Reclamation channeling in the 1950s created the modern river corridor, and flood control and water …
Continue reading ‘Rapid dieback in Albuquerque’s Rio Grande bosque’ »
While pulling together some data today for our latest Water Matters podcast, I was surprised by the dry streak we’ve been in. The last above average monsoon here was 2018. (Episode posts tomorrow – 6/23 – I’ll try to remember to update the post with a link. Update: the episode) Also, I’ve been trying to …
Continue reading ‘Recent Albuquerque monsoon history: dry’ »
I made a brief stop at a dry Rio Grande main channel this morning, around the Central Avenue Bridge, before I pointed the Space Ghost southwest into the South Valley. The Arenal Canal, which hugs the sand hills on the valley’s western edge, was flowing, but just 25 cubic feet per second. 100 cfs is …
Going through our chaotic collection of old maps at the H-F house, I found a treasure: 2003 BLM map of Albuquerque and vicinity that I’d used to mark a bunch of bike rides with highlighter. Pre-GPS era. I’ve been at this for a long time. My favorite social media response to the announcement of our …
Continue reading ‘Bob and I got our pictures in the paper!’ »