New Mexico In Depth (https://nmindepth.com/category/environment/)
This week the state agency in charge of building a diversion on the Gila River has scaled down plans for capturing the river’s water. The agency’s decision might mean good news for project critics who feared its environmental consequences and high cost. But many questions remain around how much money the state has to build the project, the location and scale of the diversion, and who would buy the water once it’s built.
For University of New Mexico graduate student Shaleene Chavarria, understanding stream flows and climate change is personal. She’s from the Pueblo of Santa Clara which, like many of New Mexico’s tribes, relies on stream flows for irrigation as well as for ceremonies that are tied to the planting and harvest seasons.
Climate represents general conditions in a particular region over a period of time. Weather happens on a day-to-day basis.
Drought is not unusual in New Mexico. But unlike in the past, when changes in long-term, large-scale precipitation patterns drove drought in the Southwest, changes in temperature will drive drought in the future.
Thirty-three counties and more than 100 municipalities in New Mexico have passed restrictions on mining, oil and gas that go beyond state laws. A controversial bill that would limit that local control passed the House Tuesday.
New Mexico In Depth helped produce an episode of Native America Calling on how the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s policies and procedures work – and sometimes, don’t – in Indian Country. Click on the headline to listen.
On Monday, the national radio program Native America Calling will host a show that New Mexico In Depth helped produce about how the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s policies and procedures work – and sometimes, don’t – in Indian Country.
In the desert Southwest, an immense amount of tinder sits on top of a drier landscape in a climate that’s warmer than at any time in the past 1,000 years, scientists believe. Last year’s Silver Fire in the Gila National Forest illustrates a shift that’s already taking place to new ecosystems people living today haven’t seen before.
Click on the headline to listen to the Native America Calling episode on water that New Mexico In Depth helped produce.
New Mexico In Depth helped produce an episode of the national radio program Native America Calling on water that airs Wednesday.
July 16 will mark 35 years to the day in 1979 when a dam on the Navajo Nation near Church Rock, N.M., broke, releasing 94 million gallons of radioactive waste into the Puerco River, which flowed through nearby communities.
