The University of Colorado’s Charles Wilkinson: One of the best developments for the environment in the West has been the quiet but deep revolution in federal water policy. Over the course of the past quarter century, we have moved from a dam-and-reservoir, build-at-any-cost mentality to a multifaceted approach that respects all that we need from, …
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tl;dr – Heads up, Arizona. Less water headed your way! longer version – Stuck out here in the Rio Grande Basin, I’ve long suffered Colorado River Basin Envy Syndrome. The Colorado is the sexy river, which means it gets all the cool science. I dream of an analysis this rich of uncertainties in my river’s …
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After stalling out for a couple of weeks, the Colorado River Delta Minute 319 pulse flow is back on the move. According to the latest map and missive from the science team, an earthen dam below the downstream-most habitat restoration site was removed, and the pulse has received an added stimulus from the Kilometer 27 …
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When Daniel Trembley MacDougal of the New York Botanical Garden rode a flood pulse through the Colorado River Delta in 1905, he found a puzzling landscape – one of the most arid regions of North America sliced through by “swampy jungles”. At a time when beaver was being trapped into oblivion elsewhere, it was a …
We’re beginning to see details of a pilot program to conserve water in the Colorado River Basin to prop up declining water levels in the basin’s major reservoirs by paying water users to not use water. The Southern Nevada Water Authority’s board last week approved that agency’s $2 million contribution to what would be a …
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One of the epic Colorado River stories involves the Great El Niño of 1983, the year they almost lost Glen Canyon Dam. With a massive snowpack melting off in a hurry in June of that year, Lake Powell filled to the spillways, which couldn’t handle the load, and it is said we came close to catastrophe. …
This is my favorite border picture from my trip last month to Arizona-California-Sonora-Baja. You can see the old border fence on the right, one of those repurposed metal landing strip things, which as near as I can tell is where the actual border is. The big new fence is pulled back 50 yards or so …
I’ve apparently got more time on my hands than skill, but I figured out, somewhat crudely, how to downland LANDSAT maps and make some pictures. Here’s the largely dry bed of the Colorado River on February 27. Apologies for the large file size, but it should have enough resolution to click and zoom if you’re …
When I set up a Google News alert some years ago on the words “Colorado River”, I noticed a revealing pattern. In spring, as the weather warmed, the water management and drought news I was hoping for was increasingly mixed with stories of drunk people drowning in the river. In the fall the mix of drunks …