Tree Death and Climate Change

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A team at the University of Arizona has a neat piece of work in PNAS this week isolating the temperature variable in the tree mortality we’re seeing in the West. The scientists put piñon trees from northern New Mexico (I’m so parochial) into Biosphere 2 down by Phoenix, using the facility’s ability to control temperature to understand the role of temperature in drought-induced piñon dieoff. Their results should not be surprising. The warmer it is, the more likely for a given moisture deficit that the trees will die. Given the forecasts for the coming century, I don’t have to connect the dots for you.

This builds on a couple of key papers over the last few years, including one by Breshears et al. in PNAS and the van Mantgem et al. paper from earlier this year in Science.

More at the work blog, and I’ll have a story in the morning paper.

Western Water’s Paradox of Thrift

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When I install a low-flow toilet, I use less water each time I flush. In the arid West, this is a good thing, right? Maybe. Maybe not.

In Albuquerque, essentially every gallon I flush, after treatment at our sewage plant, ends up in the river, available for downstream users. It’s called “return flow credit”, and serves not only as a debit on the water accounting side wherever the water is withdrawn, but also as a credit in the river.

Such is the counterintuitive being faced in Las Vegas now as “graywater” systems are being discussed, and being opposed by the very people you might think would want to encourage such efficiencies. From the Las Vegas Sun:

The Southern Nevada Water Authority wants that system preserved because it allows Las Vegas to consume more than its annual 300,000-acre-foot allotment from the Colorado River. Water returned to the lake converts to credits that the Water Authority can use to pump more water from the lake.

But some homeowners, builders and environmentalists watching this continuous loop wonder: Why not shorten the distance water travels by allowing homes to keep and recycle the water they use — what’s known as graywater? Water from sinks, showers and washing machines could be reused to more efficiently and cheaply water lawns or other landscaping, they say….

The water authority, after studying the idea, decided this year to make it official policy to oppose it.

Cochiti

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IMG_0252

Originally uploaded by heinemanfleck.

That’s the Rio Grande you see there – the entire Rio Grande, as it leaves Cochiti Dam 40 river miles north of Albuquerque. It was flowing at about 1,000 cubic feet per second today when Lissa and I drove by during a Sunday wander.

Cochiti, completed in the early 1970s, is the primary flood control dam blocking high spring flows from the middle Rio Grande Valley, where Albuquerque is located.

View Cochiti in a larger map

It’s an earthen dam, built across a narrow point where the Rio Grande leaves the volcanic uplands of northern New Mexico and enters the broad valley where most of the state’s population lives.

Lissa and I drove up the back roads, dirt a good part of the way, that track the river through the Indian pueblos that fill the valley for the first 20 or so miles south of the dam. The interstate has carved a more practical route between Albuquerque and Santa Fe. Much of the quiet bottomland is missed, which is just as well for the place, I suspect. We saw kestrels and meadowlarks and a throng of turkey vultures flying against a stiff wind so they were really just hovering in place. Right after I took the picture above, a trio of cormorants flew down to land on the flat water just below the outlet falls.

We also could have sworn we saw an Aplomado falcon, but that couldn’t be, could it? Nah.

Aaron Million’s Water Plan

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Aaron Million and his Wyoming-Colorado water pipeline idea have been around a while. They’re still here. I’m not inclined to pay a whole lot of credence to his idea of piping gobs of water from Wyoming to meet the demand in growing Front Range cities. But he’s still at it, having persuaded the feds to do an environmental study of his idea, as a story this weekend from Ben Neary at the AP points out:

Critics say it’s impossible to evaluate the project without knowing who the end users are. And if Million has reached any firm deals to supply water, he’s not saying.

Million says the privately funded pipeline could deliver water to Colorado within five years at an estimated cost of $3 billion or less. He said he anticipates no trouble raising the money.

Million says the pipeline could carry up to 250,000 acre feet of water a year. That’s more than Denver Water supplies annually to the metro Denver area.

Stuff I Wrote Elsewhere: Chu’s Visit

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A bunch of stuff over at the place where I get paid on Energy Secretary Steve Chu’s visit to New Mexico this week. The bottom line: nuclear weapons remain important, lots of other missions for the labs, happy talk, no specifics.

Elephant Diaries: A New Business Model

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Via a tweet from Janet Stemwedel yesterday, a brilliant new business model has emerged. Here’s what she said:

@jfleck Did you not get the memo? The internet is killing print media. (And, I presume, making it harder to wrap fish and line cages.)

We’ve beent thinking about this all wrong. We’ve been mistakenly thinking we were in the news business, and wondering who will deliver the news when we’re gone. The real market niche here is for a non-news product for the wrapping of fish and lining of cages!

Action at the state level? No again.

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In a parallel to previous discussion of resistance to state-leve cap-and-trade measures, Kate Galbraith has a roundup of failures to increase gasoline taxes at the state level:

One by one, the state-level proposals to boost the gas tax — which I wrote about in January — are, well, running out of gas.

The latest casualty appears to be Vermont. The Vermont house voted for a gas-tax increase, but a key state senator is opposed — and has removed the measure from the transportation bill in his committee.

Other states with similar results, according to Galbraith: Rhode Island, Florida, Iowa. At a time states might have multiple reasons for doing this – greenhouse carbon tax benefits, plus a need to make up for falling revenue – it’s not happening.