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Extremely interesting! However, I'll bet this fellow is about as welcome in most U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and Forest Service meetings as the small pox.
I have no animals on my very small Texas South High Plains acreage but perhaps I should have significantly raised my mower to allow more of the taller weeds to have survived so that they could have helped capture more of the little rainfall we've been getting. I have tended to keep the grasses and weeds mowed short so that coyotes were reluctant to come close to the house. Also there was a concern for wildfires. I noticed this year with our serious lack of rain, I have a lot more barren areas around than I had when I first bought the place a few years ago when it had probably not been mowed in 20 or 30 years.
Extremely interesting! However, I'll bet this fellow is about as welcome in most U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and Forest Service meetings as the small pox.
Strange that I had never heard of him but then I have been retired for over a decade. Thanks for the name though.
I do believe that the lack of ground cover can dramatically affect how rainfall stays in the soil in hot dry climates, i.e., the longer moisture remains in the soil, the greater the chance a dormant seed has of germinating. I do now regret mowing so short my former lush short grasses when I first came out here. After a spring rainstorm, I can definitely see the difference in soil moisture on my land and the adjacent uncut lands.
It does sound like Savory may have an ax to grind or perhaps whoever wrote the Wiki article about him did. At any rate, some say politics and biology don't mix. From my years with the Feds in biology, I say they mix very well but nothing like sugar and water; more like drugs and alcohol. Everyone suffers from the concoction.
Debbie, the water wizards at EBID say the snowpack this year was far below average, and coming on top of two critical drought years the amount of meltwater that actually reaches the rivers will be very low, probably the lowest in recent history.
If you're thinking about buying property, and particularly if you're going to do something that requires a steady and abundant supply of water, you should consider your options very carefully. Water is always problematic in New Mexico, and never more than now. Water tables are certain to fall, so even wells may be in danger of going dry. On top of that, a lot of ground water in New Mexico is not good water....full of minerals of all kinds, particularly salt.
Here's what I got last month from Elephant Butte Irrigation District, extremely bad news :
"A conservative estimate for runoff for April through July is 22,000 acre-feet. To give an idea of the severity of this drought, the average is 440,000 acre-feet, so this working forecast is five percent of average. With this assumption, the usable water for release to EBID, EP1, and Mexico during the 2013 season will be only 167,779 acre-feet, with a river diversion of 146,000 acre-feet among the three entities. Getting more conservative, assuming no additional inflow from right now, the available release is 145,000 acre-feet. In either case, this will be by far the lowest release in the nearly 100 years of Project history, the previous low being 206,000 acre-feet in 1964. Based on the water currently in Project storage, and deducting San Juan-Chama and Compact Credit water and anticipated evaporation, we will have an available allotment of 3.2 to 3.6 inches for the season. This will be lower than the 4 inches of 1964 and 2011, and worse yet, it comes on the back of the critically short years of 2011, and 2012. "
In the southern part of the state, they're pumping a whole lot of water out to save orchards and fields since there's no water for irrigation. I just wonder how much more they can pump out before there begins to be problems.
Plus they're building so much in El Paso and and Las Cruces - everywhere you look there's a new subdivision going up.
In the southern part of the state, they're pumping a whole lot of water out to save orchards and fields since there's no water for irrigation. I just wonder how much more they can pump out before there begins to be problems.
Plus they're building so much in El Paso and and Las Cruces - everywhere you look there's a new subdivision going up.
Probably the last gasp runup of the development bubble. Last ones in lose the most when the collapse comes.
I have lived here all of my 62 years. The worst drought was in the 50's and was quite severe. This one is coming close, but what I find interesting is that if you look at the rain fall averages we are coming OUT of a high rainfall period. Starting in 1980 we started being blessed with two to three times the amount of rain that we considered normal. And that "normal" prior to 1980 goes back to the 1800's when we started keeping records (the Indians didn't bother).
We are now .... Normal. In my humble opinion, we are storing too much water in the norther part of the state with the lakes that have been "recently" built.
We got spoiled, now we are paying for it. Too many people, too much water storage for recreation, Texas' demands have increased, Mexico's demands have increased. It is a vicious cycle....
We are in the middle of the dry and long drought down here south of Albuq, there is absolutely no moisture around here except for the irrigation ditches, where the farmers are worried if there will still be water later in the season. At least here people are sensible; they are not watering grass, hosing driveways, washing cars, or wandering in the crunchy dry bosque. Even though it is all sand and scrub, the desert plants who are supposed to be here are doing just fine...
I have lived here all of my 62 years. The worst drought was in the 50's and was quite severe. This one is coming close, but what I find interesting is that if you look at the rain fall averages we are coming OUT of a high rainfall period. Starting in 1980 we started being blessed with two to three times the amount of rain that we considered normal. And that "normal" prior to 1980 goes back to the 1800's when we started keeping records (the Indians didn't bother).
We are now .... Normal. In my humble opinion, we are storing too much water in the norther part of the state with the lakes that have been "recently" built.
We got spoiled, now we are paying for it. Too many people, too much water storage for recreation, Texas' demands have increased, Mexico's demands have increased. It is a vicious cycle....
JMHO
I like the notion that this is "normal". If adopted by most everyone, it means we are successfully adapting our minds and lifestyles to reality. It can mean "old" normal dating back to the beginning of climate research or a "new" normal based on what we understand about recent climate change. If the geographers adopt the notion, the latitudes and longitudes of ecosystem classification will shift and the whole culture will begin adapting. The developers, cross-country migrants, and politicians will begin changing their practices and decisions. these are hopeful signs for an optimistic outlook. the cynics among us will deny that we have learned anything.
When my neighbor was going on about climate change and drought I decided to look up some of the stations around that have had data going back a long time, and guess what? You are right. The rainfall fluctuates a lot, and what we are now experiencing isn't unusual at all. Of course it is possible that we are at the beginning of what will prove to be a substantial long term reduction in rainfall, but that remains to be seen.
Temperatures on the other hand have risen ~2F since the 70s and this is an unusually large and sudden change.
Just like with other problems when it comes to weather, the tremendous growth in population has a lot to do with how many people are going to be affected. Back in the 50's there were far fewer people living in the West. Towns were much smaller but today, there is a much higher need for water. People want a lot more luxuries today also, energy needs are much higher.
Back in the 50's, the southern part of New Mexico was not about the urban sprawl you see today. Where I live, not many have adjusted anything because of the drought. People who took hour long showers before still do today. People fill their swimming pools, more housing subdivisions are going up everywhere you look.
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Dry and crunchy
