The New Mexico water nerd joke is that Elephant Butte Reservoir is where we spread our water out to dry. Everybody probably has the same joke? Built from 1911-1916, it’s one of the first federal reclamation projects, storing Rio Grande water for irrigation in southern New Mexico and Texas. It’s one of those reservoirs that …
Continue reading ‘The great emptiness of Elephant Butte Reservoir’ »
I just stumbled on a very cool tool from the folks at ESRI using U.S. government Landsat imagery (yay public goods! background here) allowing you to look at vegetation change over time. Here’s a graphic look at water use in Albuquerque 1990-2010. The bits in green are places where vegetation has increased. The bits in that …
Continue reading ‘Visualizing Albuquerque water conservation’ »
In 1960, the Cold War was a thing – the moral imperative of our global stand against the commies. At the time, Albuquerque, New Mexico, was one of the nation’s centers for nuclear weapons research, development, and management. What better reason for supporting water development? From a May 20, 1960 hearing before the House Subcommittee on Irrigation …
Laura Paskus takes us this morning to the mountains of northern New Mexico, where the snow is melting earlier than it used to, and less of the ensuing runoff is making it into our Rio Grande: [A]s bleak as southwestern springtime stream flow forecasts have been in recent years, scientists at the University of New …
Continue reading ‘Climate change, the Rio Grande forecast problem, and the death of stationarity’ »
Lissa and I were sitting this afternoon in Pat Hurley Park, up on the west mesa (best view in Albuquerque, check it out) when we heard the rumble of Harleys. A couple of dozen bikes, a full biker wedding. And, being an outlaw gang – Bandidos, whose regalia included New Mexico “bottom rockers” (see Jeff …
I was trying to get a shot of our neighborhood roadrunner this morning as it hopped down into Lissa’s garden, a sort of “living Garden Gnome” shot. But I realized as I looked through the results that the garden itself, Lissa’s great work of living art, overwhelms the bird, however cool the roadrunner might be.
Albuquerque yesterday (Oct. 15) began pumping groundwater from an aquifer in the city’s northeast heights, the first time aquifer storage and recovery in New Mexico has reached the “recovery” phase. New Mexico is late to this party – states around us have been doing this for years. But it’s a huge milestone in water management …
Continue reading ‘Albuquerque recovering stored groundwater, historic first for New Mexico’ »
New Mexico journalist (and friend of Inkstain) Laura Paskus today launched a year-long look at climate change in New Mexico. From the opening installment: As the region continues to warm, snowpack will continue to decrease, the snow line will move higher in elevation and farther north, and winter snows will start later and end earlier …
I’ll be yammering on about “New Mexico’s Rio Grande: Fate of a 21st Century River“, Oct. 31, 10 a.m., at the Albuquerque Open Space Visitor’s Center. We tried to schedule it for a time when the sandhill cranes had arrived. You’ve already heard me, but the OSVC is one of the best places in town …
Continue reading ‘I’ll be speaking in Albuquerque Oct. 31 about the fate of the Rio Grande’ »
Some thoughts after today’s Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee hearing on federal western California New Mexico etc. drought legislation…. On Congressional process We currently have two “California drought bills” – H.R. 2898 developed by California House Republicans and S. 1894. They are very different. As a matter of process, the details of the difference don’t …
Continue reading ‘Thoughts on federal drought legislation circa October 2015’ »