Stuff I helped produce elsewhere: tumbleweed snowman
In New Mexico, we make our snowmen out of the materials at hand: (updated with a link to the video because I can’t figure out how to embed it right)
Archive of posts filed under the New Mexico category.
What will it take to end New Mexico drought?
Corey Pieper, a National Weather Service meteorologist in Texas, linked this evening to some excellent (if grim) maps showing what it would take to bring Texas, New Mexico and the rest of the southern tier of states out of drought. The first is the percent of normal precipitation required over the winter to end drought: …
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Stuff I wrote elsewhere: Getting to know our river
From the morning paper, a riff on getting acquainted with our river: The question of what we know about our river, and how we care for it, has been on my mind since I finished reading Cynthia Barnett’s new book, “Blue Revolution.” Barnett, a Florida journalist, writes about the need for a water ethic. She …
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The sound of bark beetles
I’m thinkin’ you’ll want to head out to your favorite local bookstore and buy Bill deBuys’ A Great Aridness. It’s full of stuff like this, on the dry winter of 2001-02, when a bear came out of hibernation early because it was so warm and ransacked deBuys’ yard in search of something to eat: That …
Stuff I wrote elsewhere: megadrought
Because it’s hard to resist the word “megadrought” – or, frankly, the concept: Tree rings from the headwaters of the Rio Grande show a 50-year drought from 122 to 172 AD, suggesting that “megadroughts” may be a recurring feature of the region’s climate, according to new research by a University of Arizona team. Scientists have …
Stuff I wrote elsewhere: the endangered species act process brokenness
Thrown on driveways this morning, my effort to explain why I think the endangered species act process, as it relates to the silver minnow on the Rio Grande, is broken: If you believe those who argue we are overusing water in the Middle Rio Grande Valley and headed for a crash (and there’s good data …
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Another reason for New Mexicans to resent Colorado
It’s not enough that Mesa Verde is on their side of the border. (We all know it really belongs, for all practical purposes, in New Mexico.) Now I discover, playing with Google Data Explorer, that Colorado just passed New Mexico in natural gas production. Man! I thought that was the one thing we were good …
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On the nature of nature
We spent Saturday at the Bosque del Apache, a wildlife refuge south of Albuquerque. It’s early in the season for the well-known sandhill crane wintering grounds, but in addition to cranes we saw mobs of pintails, a cormorant, a family of grebes (I’m reasonably certain they were westerns, though they’re tough to tell at a …
Stuff I wrote elsewhere: more on our forests burning
Lissa and I are in St. Louis, a wet place. I know it is a wet place because there is no dirt. Or, more specifically, there is no bare dirt. Something’s growing everywhere, the result of 38 inches (97 cm) precipitation per year. I’m always struck by that when I visit a wet place. While …
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Irony defined: Barnett’s “Blue Revolution” at the office pond
Irony defined: sitting in the shaded courtyard at work yesterday at lunch, next to a lovely fountain/pond flanked by lush lawn, reading the opening chapter of Cynthia Barnett’s Blue Revolution: Sacramento landscape architect Ronald Allison tells of a two-and-a-half-acre residential design in Granite Bay with a waterfall, a grotto, a cave, six fountains, a pool …
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