Archive of posts filed under the New Mexico category.

Stuff I wrote elsewhere: Basin Study – it’s conservation for now

Posted by on

From this morning’s Albuquerque Journal, my distillation of the Colorado River Basin Study’s key message: Towing icebergs from Alaska or building a giant pipeline from the Missouri River won’t bail out the western United States from its growing water supply crisis, federal officials said Wednesday. Instead, conservation by the region’s farms and cities offers the …

Continue reading ‘Stuff I wrote elsewhere: Basin Study – it’s conservation for now’ »

Dry November

Posted by on

New Mexico’s 2012 weather feels increasingly like a teachable moment, though the lessons must be handled with care. As the folks in the local media-weather complex went into stormpocalypse mode over the possibility that it might actually snow this weekend, I took pause in Saturday’s paper to look back: The storm comes as New Mexico …

Continue reading ‘Dry November’ »

Possible San Juan-Chama water shortages

Posted by on

Regular readers will know of my obsession with pushing beyond the “OMG we’re running out of water!” story line to look in detail at who, specifically, gets shorted when supplies run low and what adaptive responses they have available. In New Mexico, water managers are using the occasion of our current drought to helpfully prepare …

Continue reading ‘Possible San Juan-Chama water shortages’ »

More on the definition of “drought”: a dry spot

Posted by on

Another episode in my effort to explore the meaning of “drought” by way of example. Up on Albuquerque’s north side is a spot the birders call the “Tramway wetland”*. It’s the spot where the main flood control channel for much of Albuquerque slows before entering the Rio Grande. The local flood control authority has designed …

Continue reading ‘More on the definition of “drought”: a dry spot’ »

Stuff I wrote elsewhere: on drought metrics

Posted by on

From the work blog, some material from a discussion among drought researchers on the Sheffield Nature paper and the question of when the Palmer Drought Severity Index is or isn’t the right tool for the drought measurement job. Here’s Dave Gutzler: Despite its many limitations PDSI is still a meaningful indicator of short term climate …

Continue reading ‘Stuff I wrote elsewhere: on drought metrics’ »

Stuff I wrote elsewhere: court rules against New Mexico water transfer

Posted by on

From Saturday’s newspaper, my story about a state court ruling against a proposed groundwater transfer case in New Mexico: State officials made clear Friday that, while they ruled against this application because of its failure to specify where and how the water would be used, they do not in general oppose water transfers around the …

Continue reading ‘Stuff I wrote elsewhere: court rules against New Mexico water transfer’ »

How the US-Mexico Colorado shortage/surplus sharing deal works

Posted by on

When the federal government and the seven US states that share the Colorado River signed their 2007 “Interim Guidelines for Lower Basin Shortages and the Coordinated Operations for Lake Powell and Lake Mead,” the final Record of Decision (pdf) included several chunks of legalese to the effect that the deal, while binding on the US …

Continue reading ‘How the US-Mexico Colorado shortage/surplus sharing deal works’ »

nota bene: population growth in the West’s urban archipelago*

Posted by on

Just the blog equivalent of thinking out loud here. It’s not that this data was surprising to me, so much as that I wasn’t sure what to expect. Four cities in the western United States with some similar characteristics – arid climate, water supply challenges, growing populations. Each of the four is the dominant population …

Continue reading ‘nota bene: population growth in the West’s urban archipelago*’ »

Water transfers: the view from downstream

Posted by on

A small but interesting water law/politics/policy case is emerging in northern New Mexico, involving a request by a Sangre de Cristo mountains ski area to use more water for its snow-making equipment. This is the sort of case that hinges on the withdrawal/consumption distinction – how much water a user withdraws from the system, versus …

Continue reading ‘Water transfers: the view from downstream’ »

Heineman-Fleck house monthly climate report, now with new improved PRISM data

Posted by on

If you needed another prod to sign up as a CoCoRaHS weather observer, now you can get PRISM data for your own neighborhood. I’ve got 13 years of precip data for my house, first as part of the Albuquerque National Weather Service’s CityNet program, and now as a CoCoRaHS observer. But 13 years is too short …

Continue reading ‘Heineman-Fleck house monthly climate report, now with new improved PRISM data’ »