Archive of entries posted by jfleck

Lousy Rio Grande snowpack, but the runoff forecast is not as bad as I thought!

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The January NRCS Rio Grande runoff forecast is lousy: a mid-point forecast of 65 percent of average at Otowi (upstream of Albuquerque) and 37 percent of average at San Marcial (downstream of Albuquerque). Based on the current snowpack, I expected worse. Forecaster Karl Wetlaufer, in the email distributing the numbers, explains: After a wet start …

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Can “Floating Pools” be the template for future management of the Colorado River?

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By Eric Kuhn and Jack Schmidt The press coverage of the December 2024 Colorado River Water Users Association (CRWUA) meeting mostly focused on the ongoing stalemate between representatives of the Upper and Lower Division States over their competing proposals for how the Colorado River Systems’ big reservoirs will be operated after the 2007 Interim Guidelines …

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Inkstain 2024 – y’all really like Eric Kuhn’s writing

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If traffic to this blog is an indicator, y’all are really interested in thoughtful independent analysis of the standard talking points in the Colorado River negotiations. Also, the work of my longtime collaborator Eric Kuhn (which is unsurprising, I’ve long been really interested in Eric’s work). Three of the four most-read Inkstain posts this year …

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The Rio Grande cutthroat trout and the Endangered Species Act

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The US Fish and Wildlife Service earlier this month (December 2024) once again declined to list the Rio Grande cutthroat trout as “endangered.” It’s a native species endangered (in the colloquial sense, not the legal sense) by both anthropogenic habitat changes (warm temperatures, less water, dams and stuff) and non-native immigrant species. USFWS identified non-native …

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Lousy start to the Colorado/Rio Grande 2024-25 snowpack season

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I was talking to Eric Kuhn Thursday (write a book together – bonded for life) who pointed out that the Colorado Basin River Forecast Center has started running its models for 2025 runoff. They don’t look good. It’s way too early to think of this as a “forecast.” But they provide a feel for where …

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Peter Kropotkin and the alley behind my neighborhood gas station

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There’s a pedestrian alley in my neighborhood that provides an important link for the low-stress version of my bike commute. The neighborhood, built in the 1950s, has a few of them, but they don’t get much use. People don’t walk much any more. Which I guess is why someone thought it would be OK to …

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