I’m excited to be giving a talk on the Colorado River Delta environmental pulse flow Sept. 8 at Colorado College in Colorado Springs. If you’re in the neighborhood, please come by, say “hi”, and, if possible, ask questions when I explain things poorly. The talk is a snapshot of a work in progress, so no …
The San Diego Air And Space Museum posted some wonderful old aerial pictures of Hoover Dam on Flickr, and I’m hoping someone in the Inkstain posse can help me sort out the history. This image was taken by Colonel Orie W. Coyle, and appears to be a test of Hoover Dam’s outlet jets that I’m thinking …
The pecan trees of Pecan Lane have seen better days.
Indiana, where nine out of the past ten years have been wetter than the long term average, is talking about water shortages: Water shortages are coming to Indiana unless the state implements policy changes, according to a recent prediction by the Indiana Chamber of Commerce Foundation. Data courtesy NCDC.
From the USDA (pdf): Contracted production of California processing tomatoes is forecast at a record high 14.0 million tons, averaging 48.61 tons per acre, according to a survey conducted by the National Agricultural Statistics Service. The current forecasted production is 17.6 percent above the 2013 crop. Drought has been an issue for some crops, but apparently …
Continue reading ‘Resilience to drought, California tomato crop edition’ »
I don’t know whether to view these signs all over Tucson’s golf courses proclaiming their use of “reclaimed” water as proud – “We’re water smart!” or defensive. But whenever the conversation veers toward water “reclamation”, always ask yourself where that water might have gone if you hadn’t, for example, put it on this golf course. …
In the Colorado River Basin writ large, 14,000 acre feet of water is a very small rounding error – less than one tenth of one percent of the river’s flow. But the New Mexico discussion over the possibility of a diversion high in the watershed of the Gila River in New Mexico, raises fascinating questions …
Former Southern Nevada water chief Pat Mulroy explains that, while Las Vegas is an easy rhetorical landing spot because it is right next door to Lake Mead, the dropping Colorado River reservoir is a basin wide issue: What we are experiencing is not a Las Vegas problem — it is truly a regional problem that …
Continue reading ‘Mulroy: Lake Mead’s bathtub ring is not just Las Vegas’s problem’ »
Even with the fizzling El Niño forecast, the winter outlook for the United States released by the Climate Prediction Center yesterday looks awfully El Niño-like, with odds favoring wetter weather across the southern tier of states. But for the bulk of the Colorado River Basin’s water-producing region, which is in the central Rockies, the forecast looks …
Continue reading ‘Colorado River Basin forecast for the winter of 2014-15: “meh”’ »
Via Brett Walton: Continuing a decades-long trend, California farmers will increase their almond acreage next year, according to a U.S. Department of Agriculture report. An estimated 48,000 acres of new almond orchards will be planted next year, an estimate based on a first-ever survey of nursery sales. The increase is roughly 40 percent higher than the …
Continue reading ‘Drought and those yummy California almonds’ »