Colorado River Flows Rebuilt Back To 1490 - Current Drought Mild - AFP

[hatrack]

A new tree-ring-based reconstruction of 508 years of Colorado River streamflow confirms that droughts more severe than the 2000-2004 drought occurred before stream gages were installed on the river. The new research also confirms that using stream gage records alone may overestimate the average amount of water in the river because the last 100-year period was wetter than the average for the last five centuries.

"This work updates the original landmark Colorado River reconstruction that was done at The University of Arizona's Laboratory of Tree-Ring Research," said David M. Meko, a UA associate research professor of dendrochronology, the science of tree-ring dating. "The main points of the 1976 research hold up. Droughts more severe and intense than we've seen in the gaged record occurred in the past, and the long-term mean flow is lower than the gaged mean flow."

Connie A. Woodhouse said, "The updated reconstruction for Lee's Ferry indicates that as many as eight droughts similar in severity, in terms of average flow, to the 5-year 2000-2004 drought have occurred since 1500." Woodhouse, who led the research team, is a physical scientist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) National Climatic Data Center Paleoclimatogy Branch in Boulder, Colo.

Allocations of Colorado River water made in the 1922 Colorado River Compact between the states of Arizona, California, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, Wyoming and Utah therefore overestimate the amount of river water available. Los Angeles, Las Vegas, Denver, Phoenix, Tucson and Albuquerque are among the many cities dependent on Colorado River water. "The long-term perspective provided by tree-ring reconstructions points to a looming conflict between water demand and supply in the upper Colorado River basin," the researchers wrote in their report.


EDIT

http://www.terradaily.com/reports/Historic_Colorado_River_Streamflows_Reconstructed_Back_To_1490.html

[htuttle]

1. "Whiskey is for drinking. Water is for fighting over"

And I think the fighting has hardly begun.

[enlightenment]

2. Interesting, but doubtful that this will penetrate the Western psyche

any more than previous studies. The bottom line, as the article points out, is not new -- just reaffirmation of what has been known for many years. The Colorado River Compact wasn't even based on the Lee's Ferry data, but on previous data taken at Yuma, and it was way off (17 maf, if I recall correctly).

Folks just don't want to believe that the majority of the southwest is an artificial construct. Without water, much of the area would dry up and blow away -- and there are still how many? golf courses in Phoenix? How many grass lawns in Las Vegas?

Southern Nevada Water Authority says that we'll just get water from Northern Nevada (doctrine of prior appropriation and all that). Plenty to go around, no worries -- and meanwhile the bathtub rings around Lake Mead and Lake Powell and Lake Havasu just keep getting lower and lower.

[Xithras]

3. WHERE in northern Nevada?

The Truckee river isn't THAT big, and much of its water is already used by the communities in Northern Nevada. How much water do they think they can pull from it?

[enlightenment]

5. Not the river! The underground aquifer that sits

beneath (mostly)White Pine and Lincoln counties.

[kestrel91316]

6. The White Pine locals are NOT happy about Vegas trying to

raid their aquifer. If they drop that groundwater level anymore, my g-grandfather's old homestead and all the adjacent ranches will just go back to sagebrush.

There are so few people there, they have no political clout. So Vegas will steal with impunity.

[enlightenment]

8. I agree with the White Pine folks.

Prior appropriation is an intrinsically unfair system -- someone always loses. Sucking this aquifer dry (as Vegas pretty much did to the one beneath it) is only a short-term fix. That's the failure of society all the way around, IMO; the inability to address situations in the long-term view. It may be easier, more popular, and more politically expedient to make a quick fix, but it just creates more problems.

sigh.

[phantom power]

4. Whee.

[XemaSab]

7. Dendrochronology kick!