It is a testament to the nature of rivers in the arid western United States that this is news: The San Joaquin River is flowing from Friant Dam near Fresno to the Delta…. That’s Alex Breitler writing today in the Stockton Record. If you follow the link, he gives a pretty good accounting of why …
As drought grips the Lancang-Mekong basin in Asia, tensions are growing over China’s dam, according to Richard Stone, writing in Friday’s Science (sub req): The drought’s effects have spilled across China’s borders, stoking tensions with neighbors and prompting scientific debate. Rice yields in Thailand are expected to take a big hit, and the Mekong River—the …
In theory, one of the benefits of interbasin water transfers is spreading risk. One basin may have drought while the other does not. But for folks on the Arkansas River in Colorado, that may not work out so well, based on new tree ring analysis by Jeff Lukas and colleagues. Chris Woodka of the Pueblo …
I noticed the lilacs starting to leaf out in our backyard this afternoon. We moved the weather station last week, so I’m not sure what 65F (18C) means, but that’s what the thermometer says. (Anthony Watts would no doubt disapprove of its current location in the corner by the back wall, but my old cotton …
It’s looking increasingly likely that we’ll see history this summer, of the dry, unpleasant sort, on Lake Mead. With a meager snowpack in the Upper Green and Upper Colorado, the chances of a water surplus in the Upper Colorado River Basin that would allow an extra dollop of the wet stuff for Lake Mead have …
Continue reading ‘How Low Can Mead Go? Let’s Talk Come June’ »
Another example of the conflicts that occur when we move water from one basin to another, this one from here in New Mexico: Stella Davis in the Carlsbad Current-Argus talks about the negative reaction from folks in the Pecos River Basin to a proposal to build a pipeline to ship groundwater from the Fort Sumner …
In 1879, one John Codman published, as was the fancy of the day, the journals of his travels “Round Trip By Way of Panama through California, Oregon, Nevada, Utah, Idaho and Colorado.” His travels took him across the lower Colorado River desert, and he seems not to have liked it much: This is the great …
This is a graph of the declining construction employment in Nevada, not the declining water levels in Lake Mead. In fact, if we were statistically clever enough, we could no doubt find a negative correlation between the two. As construction booms, more houses are built, and our friends in Vegas consume more water. Construction up, …
Continue reading ‘This is not a graph of the water level in Lake Mead’ »
As Emily Green likes to point out, low is bad when it comes to flow and water storage on the Colorado, and it’s increasingly clear that low is what we’ll get this year: According to the forecast out today, flow into Lake Powell on the Upper Colorado, which is the key point on the western …
This whole Up Front thing we’re doing at the Journal, with a rotating cast of writers doing front page columns on pretty much whatever amuses or intrigues them, is a bit of an experiment. My entry today was more experimental than usual, not sure if it worked entirely, but it was fun. The back story: …