morning yoga on Albuquerque’s Rio Grande
Rivers, people, awesome in so many ways.
Archive of posts filed under the water category.
Brad Udall’s western water climate change bibliography
Speaking earlier this month at the University of Colorado’s Martz Conference, Brad Udall offered what amounted to a bibliography, both helpful and deeply unnerving, of recent scientific literature documenting what we have learned in recent years about climate change and water in the Western United States, and what it tells us about our future prospects. …
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on the Colorado River in Kremmling, a case study in coupled human and natural systems
One of the main focuses of the class I help teach in the fall, “Contemporary Issues in Water Management“, is the nature and function of “coupled human and natural systems”. (In fact, might say it’s the main focus of the entire UNM Water Resources Program, come to think of it.) One of the biggest difficulties …
Decoupling, Colorado style
Bart Miller, Western Resources Advocates, on decoupling and Colorado’s push to close the gap between water supply and projected use: If cities continue on the track they’ve been on the last 15 years, which is reducing water use per capita by about 1 percent per year, that’s going to save a large chunk of the …
Beyond the Cadillac Desert
Chuck Cullom, the Central Arizona Project’s Colorado River Programs Manager, asked a great question during my lunch talk last week at the Universities Council on Water Resources annual meeting. It was a panel with me and Bill and Rosemarie Alley, who’ve written a new book on groundwater that you should click on this link and …
loss aversion and the latest Lake Mead forecast
The Bureau of Reclamation’s June Colorado River forecast projects Lake Mead ending 2018 at elevation 1,076.5 feet above sea level, three feet higher than the Bureau’s January projection of 1,073.5. If the forecast holds, that’s enough of an increase in Mead storage, thanks to a larger-than average snowpack in the Rockies, to avoid a shortage …
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so much water
Eric Kuhn points out that the Colorado River in Glenwood Canyon on Colorado’s West Slope, and its major tributary here the Roaring Fork, peaked last Friday, right around the time I was up there gawking at all the water: Flows on the Colorado River at Dotsero and the Roaring Fork River at Glenwood Springs …
Phoenix to pay Gila River Indian Communities to leave Colorado River water in Lake Mead
The Phoenix City Council today agreed to pay the Gila River Indian Communities $2 million as part of a deal to leave 40,000 acre feet of the Indian Communities’ Colorado River water in Lake Mead this year. The state of Arizona, the federal government, and the Walton Family Foundation also are contributing. From the city …
Grand Ditch
KAWUNEECHE VALLEY – The Colorado River was flowing this morning at around 700 cubic feet per second at the USGS gauge near Baker Gulch. It felt like a lot of water – spilling the channel banks and out into the meadows, as is its way in a good spring runoff. If you look downstream at …
As climate warms, a decline in snowmelt runoff
Based on hydrological model simulations and a new snowmelt tracking algorithm, we show that 53% of the total runoff in the western United States originates as snowmelt, despite only 37% of the precipitation falling as snow. In mountainous areas, snowmelt is responsible for 70% of the total runoff. By 2100, the contribution of snowmelt to …
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