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Articles 1 - 30 of 40
Full-Text Articles in Physical Sciences and Mathematics
City Of Santa Fe's Offset Program: A Comprehensive Demand Analysis And Program Review, Francesca Shirley
City Of Santa Fe's Offset Program: A Comprehensive Demand Analysis And Program Review, Francesca Shirley
Water Resources Professional Project Reports
In principle, Development Water Offset programs (offset programs) are designed to allow for urban growth without increasing water demand. Offset programs necessitate a reduction in existing water demand, typically achieved through plumbing retrofits, equal to the expected new demand, resulting in a net zero increase in water use. The City of Santa Fe (Santa Fe) has administered an offset program since 2002. The program banks water saved from its retrofit rebate programs. The banked water savings, known as Conservation Credits, can then be purchased by developers, and dedicated to new development projects. Under the water bank model, new demand has …
Dynamic Fallowing In The Middle Rio Grande: A Look At The Environmental Water Leasing Program, Jared Wood
Dynamic Fallowing In The Middle Rio Grande: A Look At The Environmental Water Leasing Program, Jared Wood
Water Resources Professional Project Reports
The Environmental Water Leasing Program (EWLP) is a federally-funded collaborative effort of the Middle Rio Grande Conservancy District and the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation that has paid irrigators in the Middle Rio Grande to temporarily lease water rights and forgo their water use so that it may be used to provide environmental flows for the endangered Rio Grande Silvery Minnow. The program operates in a sometimes socially contentious context, in a region with an overallocated, legally constrained water system, to offer much needed water management flexibility. While dynamic fallowing payments for ecosystem services programs like the EWLP are common policy …
Irrigation And Innovation: Understanding Barriers To Innovative Actions To Manage Drought On Middle Rio Grande Farms, Eleanor C. Hasenbeck
Irrigation And Innovation: Understanding Barriers To Innovative Actions To Manage Drought On Middle Rio Grande Farms, Eleanor C. Hasenbeck
Water Resources Professional Project Reports
The Rio Grande has irrigated agricultural land in central New Mexico since time immemorial. Today, agriculture in New Mexico’s Middle Rio Grande valley is adapting to an increasingly scarce water supply due to long-term drought and climate change (Dunbar et al., 2022). As supply is decreasing, demands are increasing because of several factors: an increase in evapotranspiration (Dunbar et al., 2022); population growth in the Middle Rio Grande valley (NM LFC, 2021); and legal obligations to provide water for endangered species and to Texas and Mexico (NM ISC, 2017). Agriculture is largest water use by sector in the Rio Grande …
Groundwater Budgeting And Climate Change Vulnerability Assessment Of Water Supply At Bosque Del Apache National Wildlife Refuge, Maximiliano Trujillo
Groundwater Budgeting And Climate Change Vulnerability Assessment Of Water Supply At Bosque Del Apache National Wildlife Refuge, Maximiliano Trujillo
Water Resources Professional Project Reports
Water resources management is becoming increasingly complex in the Middle Rio Grande Valley, where the negative impacts of climate change and growing demand for a fully allocated river put further strain on diminishing water supply. The precarity of future water availability emphasizes the importance of fully accounting for existing water rights allocations and understanding how ever changing social and ecological processes might hinder those rights from being fully realized. This study aimed at improving knowledge of the groundwater budget at Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge, New Mexico by utilizing experimental methods of Darcy Flow analysis to estimate groundwater flow …
Motivations And Barriers To Participation In Community Outreach And Engagement Among Environmental And Water Resources Students And Postdocs, Sydney Donohue
Motivations And Barriers To Participation In Community Outreach And Engagement Among Environmental And Water Resources Students And Postdocs, Sydney Donohue
Water Resources Professional Project Reports
There is a need to utilize knowledge exchange avenues between academia and non-academic communities in order to advance environmental science and engineering education. Many universities and research centers attempt to enhance knowledge sharing by organizing broader impact outreach events such as lab tours, demonstrations, hands-on activities, and public presentations. Anecdotally, at two NSF-funded centers, the Transformation Network and Center for Water and the Environment, we have seen that only the same small subset of students and postdocs frequently participate while over 70% of those invited never volunteer. This study aims to survey environmentally-focused undergraduate students, graduate students, and postdocs’ motivations …
Performance Of The Mineral Recovery Enhanced Desalination Pilot Water Treatment Plant, Samantha Valentine
Performance Of The Mineral Recovery Enhanced Desalination Pilot Water Treatment Plant, Samantha Valentine
Water Resources Professional Project Reports
There is a growing interest in treating brackish groundwater to supplement freshwater resources for inland communities in arid climates. Water recovery by desalination of brackish groundwater is challenging due to mineral scaling from ions which form carbonate and sulfate minerals, dissolved silica which forms silicates, iron, manganese, and other constituents along with the difficulties and cost of disposing of large volumes of brine from the desalination process. The MRED process consists of a pretreatment process to increase water recovery and decrease waste production from brackish groundwater. The MRED process uses a unique sequence of unit processes consisting of: (1) Air …
Rural Water Manager Challenges In New Mexico, Amy "Aj" Jones
Rural Water Manager Challenges In New Mexico, Amy "Aj" Jones
Water Resources Professional Project Reports
New Mexico poses a valuable set of circumstances to study the challenges faced by drinking water systems. A general lack of resources for small systems, be it personnel and funding issues, lack of community engagement, lack or loss of institutional knowledge, ability to meet regulations, and aging managers were found to be very common and widespread. Rural water manager positions that are unsupported financially do not assist in alleviating rural poverty or draw the workforce. Therefore, the negative state demographic statistics are reinforced, further complicating rural water management rather than helping the issues. To look at drinking water management comprehensively, …
Securing Environmental Flows For The Rio Grande Silvery Minnow, Ashley Veihl
Securing Environmental Flows For The Rio Grande Silvery Minnow, Ashley Veihl
Water Resources Professional Project Reports
Since 1997, the Bureau of Reclamation (Bureau) has been leasing water to provide habitat for the now-endangered Rio Grande silvery minnow (Minnow). The majority of leased water comes from the San-Juan Chama project, a trans-basin water delivery system that was originally implemented to secure flows to the Rio Grande for municipal and agricultural use. Limitations on water storage within reservoirs incentivize contractors that are allocated more surface water than they can use to lease the extra quantity. It is through this water leasing market that the Bureau has established the largest environmental flow program in the state of New Mexico. …
The Role Of Citizen Science In Ecosystem Management: A Case Study Of The Middle Rio Grande Bosque Ecosystem Monitoring Program, Hannah Miller
The Role Of Citizen Science In Ecosystem Management: A Case Study Of The Middle Rio Grande Bosque Ecosystem Monitoring Program, Hannah Miller
Water Resources Professional Project Reports
Rapid advances in technology, especially smart phones, have changed citizen science around the world. Citizen science-generated data are growing exponentially, so there is increasing interest about what is happening with all this data. Some research suggests that governmental agencies are not using citizen science data to make ecosystem management decisions, although other studies contradict this finding. Regionally, the Middle Rio Grande bosque ecosystem extends for 162 miles along the Rio Grande in New Mexico. The Bosque Ecosystem Monitoring Program, or BEMP, was founded in 1996 following the efforts of the Bosque Initiative and the development of the Bosque Biological Management …
Sediment Influence On Escherichia Coli Variability In The Rio Grande During The Dry Season In The South Valley, Albuquerque, New Mexico, Kate Wilkins
Water Resources Professional Project Reports
With Escherichia coli (E. coli) being a widely used indicator of pathogen contamination, concentrations need to be fully understood to create effective best management practices for water quality managers. While management and impairment standards are focused on concentrations in the water column, there is research showing that E. coli attaches to sediment in the river and acts as a reservoir for E. coli. The Middle Rio Grande in the South Valley, New Mexico is classified as an impaired reach because it exceeds the E. coli water quality standard. Exceedances are commonly seen during the wet season in high flows, but …
Nm Stat § 7-36-20: Disconnected Land And Water Policy In A Climate-Altered Peri-Urban Fringe, Annalise Porter
Nm Stat § 7-36-20: Disconnected Land And Water Policy In A Climate-Altered Peri-Urban Fringe, Annalise Porter
Water Resources Professional Project Reports
New Mexico (NM) passed a land use law in 1967 that offers tax subsidies to agricultural landowners and is implemented at the county level. This law illustrates a stark disconnect between land and water policy: there are water policy implications because of it, but it has never been discussed accordingly. With a focus on New Mexico’s primary urban county, this study estimates that in 2020, Rio Grande surface flows were used to irrigate 4,388 acres of Bernalillo County land that received the special tax valuation offered through the law. This represents a potential use of nearly 11,000 acre-feet of water, …
When High-Water-Use Neighbors Move In: Farming Pecans In Valencia County, New Mexico, Tylee M. Griego
When High-Water-Use Neighbors Move In: Farming Pecans In Valencia County, New Mexico, Tylee M. Griego
Water Resources Professional Project Reports
Valencia County, comprised of a collection of farming communities in the Middle Rio Grande of central New Mexico, is undergoing a fundamental change in its irrigated agriculture. Historically, over recent decades, it has had many smaller-sized farms, or “hobby farms”, with fewer larger commercial enterprises, and with alfalfa as its dominant crop. But in recent years, it has seen a significant expansion of acreage devoted to pecan orchards – a higher value commercial crop that also is substantially higher in water use. Some of these orchards have been planted on land not previously irrigated. The Rio Grande flows through the …
Diatom Response To Different Hydrologic Sources In Alpine Streams: A Teton Range Case Study, Shannon Weld
Diatom Response To Different Hydrologic Sources In Alpine Streams: A Teton Range Case Study, Shannon Weld
Water Resources Professional Project Reports
Alpine stream diversity is due in part to different hydrological sources including snowpack, surface glaciers, and rock glaciers; climate change threatens to homogenize these sources. Surprisingly little is understood about algal communities in these stream types. We characterized algal communities and water chemistry among ten alpine streams from these sources in the Teton Range, Wyoming, USA. Late summer sampling (2019-2021) included diatoms, anions, cations, and water quality parameters. Data were analyzed using one- and two-way analysis of variance, principal component analysis, and nonmetric multidimensional scaling. There were statistically significant differences among some or all hydrologic sources for temperature, dissolved oxygen, …
Impact Of Riverside Drains On Surface-Water And Ground Water Interactions In The Middle Rio Grande, New Mexico: Implications To The Sustainability Of Native Cottonwoods (Populus Deltoides Ssp. Wislizenii) And Native Species, Gerardo Rodriguez
Water Resources Professional Project Reports
The Middle Rio Grande riparian zone, named the Bosque, provides cultural, aesthetic, environmental, recreational, and historical value to the residents of the Middle Rio Grande valley. Most of the Bosque has not experienced successful native cottonwood (Populus deltoides ssp. wislizenii) recruitment since the completion of the Cochiti reservoir and most of the Bosque cottonwood forest is senescing. This decline of the native species in the Bosque can be attributed to highly managed hydrology of the riparian zone. The levees and agricultural drains managed by the Middle Rio Grande Conservancy District (MRGCD), that borders both sides of the river, also affect …
How Do Dairy Feedlot Size And Land Use Practices Affect Groundwater Quality Over Time? A Preliminary Study In New Mexico, Nancy J. Mcduffie
How Do Dairy Feedlot Size And Land Use Practices Affect Groundwater Quality Over Time? A Preliminary Study In New Mexico, Nancy J. Mcduffie
Water Resources Professional Project Reports
Agricultural activities in general and dairy operations in particular, have been identified as a potentially significant source of nitrate contamination in groundwater. The late 1990s was a period of rapid growth for New Mexico’s dairy industry. The New Mexico State University Cooperative Extension Service reports that the industry grew from 105 producers and 80,000 cows statewide in 1990 to 175 producers and 310,000 cows in 2003, to 145 producers and 323,000 cows in 2015. New Mexico now ranks ninth in the nation in milk production by volume, fifth in the nation for cheese production, and has the largest number of …
Characterizing And Assessing The Hydrological Connection Of Sawyer Fen To Nearby Bluewater Creek In The Zuni Mountains, New Mexico, Luke Collis
Water Resources Professional Project Reports
Wetlands can hydrologically connect to nearby surface waters allowing for interaction with other landscape elements through spatial and temporal variation. The hydrologic connection of wetlands to surface waters is an important issue due to policies and regulations of the Clean Water Act (CWA) which emphasize the physical connection that wetlands have with nearby surface waters. The goal of this research was to quantify the hydrological connection of Sawyer Fen to a nearby Bluewater Creek in the Zuni Mountains, western New Mexico. Data were collected in the summer through the winter of 2019 at seven locations including Sawyer Fen, Bluewater Creek …
Measuring Variability Of A Moderate Snowpack Across A Forest Stand Boundary In The Sandia Mountains, Adrian Marziliano
Measuring Variability Of A Moderate Snowpack Across A Forest Stand Boundary In The Sandia Mountains, Adrian Marziliano
Water Resources Professional Project Reports
Mountain snowpacks provide much of the water resources for the southwestern United States. Due to limited freshwater supply and mounting climate stressors, accurate water budget forecasts have become increasingly important. Many regions, such as the lower-elevation mountains found in central New Mexico, lack valuable snow data that could improve these forecasts. The purpose of this research project is to measure and analyze the variability of a moderate snowpack in this region to better understand the representativeness of snow depth distribution and more accurately estimate snow water equivalence (SWE). A survey site with a 1,200 square meter plot in the eastern …
Climate Change Vulnerability Assessment Of Navajo Nation Water Resources In The San Juan River Basin, Nm: Utilizing Traditional Navajo Ecological Knowledge, Kirena Elana Yanibaa Tsosie
Climate Change Vulnerability Assessment Of Navajo Nation Water Resources In The San Juan River Basin, Nm: Utilizing Traditional Navajo Ecological Knowledge, Kirena Elana Yanibaa Tsosie
Water Resources Professional Project Reports
The Navajo Nation consists of 110 chapters, local government subdivisions, organized into five regional agencies. Over half of the Navajo Nation chapters have traditional names in the Navajo language that describe a local water source including springs, washes, rivers, ponds, and reservoirs. Therefore, traditional Navajo names consist of Traditional Navajo Ecological Knowledge (TNEK) and can assist in documenting water sources that can be further assessed for vulnerability and sensitivity to climate change. There are 52 Navajo Nation chapters located in the San Juan River Basin and 28 chapters have water related names. Water sources associated with place names will also …
The Relationships Between Benthic Macroinvertebrate And Local Water Quality And Physical Habitat Characteristics In The Rio Chama, New Mexico, Monika Hobbs
Water Resources Professional Project Reports
Incorporating the process of adaptive management in rivers management can assist with mitigating impacts of altered streamflow and prevent loss of aquatic biodiversity. Streamflow regimes are important drivers of stream ecology and structuring adaptive management around benthic macroinvertebrates could be an efficient means to understand ecological responses to management of streamflow regime. Over the past decade, there has been interest in implementing adaptive management practices to managing stream flow in the Rio Chama below El Vado Dam in northern New Mexico. The goal of this research project is to improve understanding of environmental drivers shape the benthic macroinvertebrate communities in …
Examining Transmission Loss Availability For Basin Aquifer Recharge From Perennial Streams In The Chuska Mountains On The Navajo Nation, Griffin Nuzzo
Examining Transmission Loss Availability For Basin Aquifer Recharge From Perennial Streams In The Chuska Mountains On The Navajo Nation, Griffin Nuzzo
Water Resources Professional Project Reports
Stream transmission losses due to infiltration from semiarid, perennial streams are important processes that can help water managers and users quantify aquifer recharge. Transmission losses are streamflow reductions that are due to infiltration through the streambed, evapotranspiration, and losses to the floodplain or streambanks (Shanafield, et.al, 2014). Transmission losses from infiltration will always be greater than the amount recharged bacause streamflow hat infiltrates into the streambed can take a variety of pathways other that recharge. This study considers transmission losses in Whiskey Creek, a perennial stream on the Navajo Nation in the Chuska Mountains. The objectives of this study are …
Horton Complex Stormwater Analysis And Management Plan, Bradley D. Meyer
Horton Complex Stormwater Analysis And Management Plan, Bradley D. Meyer
Water Resources Professional Project Reports
Flooding, water quality degradation and erosion are some of the negative impacts created by poorly managed urban stormwater runoff. Managing runoff is an ongoing challenge for watershed managers because of the constantly changing landscape due to development and redevelopment. The Village of Ruidoso in South Central New Mexico is an example of an urban area that is taking an innovative and progressive approach to stormwater management. The focus of this professional project was to perform a stormwater analysis for the Village of Ruidoso, apply it to the Horton Complex – an old school complex that the Village acquired and wants …
The Role Of Regulatory Agencies In The Frequency And Occurrence Of Health-Based Violations At Public Water Systems In The United States, Rose Afandi
Water Resources Professional Project Reports
The Safe Drinking Water Act (SDWA) was implemented in the United States (U.S.) in 1974 for the purpose of protecting consumers from water contaminants. The Federal government gave the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) the authority to delegate the responsibility of ensuring that States, Sovereign Nations and U.S. territories meet specific requirements upon being granted primacy to regulate all public water systems (PWSs) in their jurisdiction. An examination of seven years (2013-2019) of SDWA compliance data from all PWSs in the U.S. revealed trends within various categories of regulating agencies that could create disparities in how water systems are regulated. Analyses …
Who Decides: Is Water Life Or Capital? Contesting Visions Of Western Water Management In The 21st Century, Ceorl
Water Resources Professional Project Reports
There is an ideological divide between the goal of universal access to clean water and the outcomes of how water regulations are implemented. John Fleck, author of Water is for Fighting Over: and Other Myths about Water in the West and Sivas, et al. in California Water Governance in the 21st Century present contesting prescriptions for Western water management. The ideologies advocated by Fleck and Sivas, et al. differ as to who enacts and profits from each and exemplify the divide between the goals of water regulations and how they are implemented. Fleck regards water as property and an economic …
Quantifying The Extent Of Wildfire Impacted Streams In The Western United States, Grady Ball
Quantifying The Extent Of Wildfire Impacted Streams In The Western United States, Grady Ball
Water Resources Professional Project Reports
Beginning in the mid-1980s, the number of fires and acres burned by wildfire in the United States has grown at an explosive rate. Several factors, anthropogenic and natural, have converged to create a new era of high frequency, high intensity fires, which is predicted to continue until at least mid-century. Investigations into wildfire impacts have largely focused on post-fire impacts on terrestrial systems, while effects on aquatic ecosystems have been underrepresented. The growing threat of fire to streams has accelerated the need for germane information regarding the spatial extent of fire impacts on watersheds and post-fire impacts to aquatic systems. …
Water Security And Wildfire In Municipal Source Watersheds Of The Western United States, Mattjew V. Segura
Water Security And Wildfire In Municipal Source Watersheds Of The Western United States, Mattjew V. Segura
Water Resources Professional Project Reports
The goal of this study is to investigate water resource security for large metropolitan areas in the western United States and to identify cities that are at potential risk of water resource degradation due to wildfire. In this study, source watersheds for western cities are identified and ranked based on the potential resistance and resilience of their water supply to wildfire impacts. Next, the wildfire hazard potential of each of these catchments is determined and erosion potential estimates are used to infer how water quality will be impacted if the watersheds burn. The findings identify large populous cities that receive …
Inventory Of Restoration Needs Of National Forest Lands Of The Contiguous United States: An Assessment Using Watershed And Terrestrial Ecosystem Classification Tools, Kevin Carns
Water Resources Professional Project Reports
Ecological restoration assists the recovery of degraded ecosystems by returning their structure, processes, and functions to within their natural range of variation, improving long term sustainability and resilience. The United States Forest Service has sought to increase the pace and scale of restoration treatments on lands that it manages in order to continue to provide important ecosystem services including timber production, fish and wildlife habitat, grazing, watershed protection, and recreation. The Agency developed two classification systems to identify restoration need on Forest Service managed lands, the Watershed Condition Classification (WCC) and the Terrestrial Condition Assessment (TCA). These two classification systems …
Irrigation Forbearance In The Middle Rio Grande: Using Remote Sensing To Improve Investments, Trevor Birt
Irrigation Forbearance In The Middle Rio Grande: Using Remote Sensing To Improve Investments, Trevor Birt
Water Resources Professional Project Reports
In extremely dry years when there is a high premium on surface water, irrigation forbearance agreements help water managers maintain riparian health, fish populations, and ensure water delivery to downstream users. In order for these programs to maximize their effectiveness and limit their impact on agricultural communities, water managers should seek the highest return on investment - or the highest amount of water per acre entered into forbearance. This may be accomplished by assessing the water requirements of fields and then grouping by conveyance lateral, to target the highest among them as good forbearance participants. Unfortunately, irrigation measurement in the …
Save Money, Save Water; Developing A Risk Model For Leak Detection And Pipe Replacement Using Spatial Analysis, Angelique Desiree Maldonado
Save Money, Save Water; Developing A Risk Model For Leak Detection And Pipe Replacement Using Spatial Analysis, Angelique Desiree Maldonado
Water Resources Professional Project Reports
It is imperative to properly and proactively maintain a distribution pipe system. The benefits to optimizing a pipe distribution system include ensuring a safe water quality, reducing water loss from leaks and line breaks, minimizing revenue losses and providing a reliable service. There are also economic concerns as pipe replacement is extremely expensive; in the state of New Mexico, an estimated $1.16 billion in drinking water infrastructure is needed over the next 20 years. (USEPA 2013). Because distribution pipe is so costly to replace, an approach that only looks at age or type or non-system specific data may overestimate the …
Preservation Protocols For Maintaining Species Stability Of Arsenic, Chromium, And Selenium In Water Samples, Contessa Lowery
Preservation Protocols For Maintaining Species Stability Of Arsenic, Chromium, And Selenium In Water Samples, Contessa Lowery
Water Resources Professional Project Reports
Water quality has become an increasing concern in recent years. The environmental challenges surrounding water quality include the presence of dissolved metals and their potential impact on human health and the environment. The challenge is exacerbated because many important metals have multiple oxidation states, which affect the health and environmental behavior of the metal. Many metals are known carcinogens and increased anthropogenic effects have inexorably made metals’ accumulation an imposing threat. Analytical instrumentation has advanced in many areas, making it now possible to measure very low concentrations of multiple elements in water. Current interest is determining the chemical speciation of …
Comparison Of Methodologies Of Using Colorimetry To Detect Low Concentrations Of Bromide As A Hydrologic Tracer, Emily Wolf
Water Resources Professional Project Reports
The objective of this research was to compare colorimetric methods for measuring low concentrations of bromide in natural waters. The bromide ion has long been used as a tracer to study hydrodynamic processes and properties. Its conservative nature makes it ideal as a tracer. Bromide is almost entirely immune to loss from a solution via adsorption on rocks and sediments, or reaction with other solutes present in the water. Using three methodologies to use colorimetry in the detection of bromide, I analyzed samples taken from the Gila River, Jemez Creek, and the Rio Grande after injections of sodium bromide were …