Re: Dendrochronology throws doubt on Colorado water use allocations

Aidan Karley wrote:

From http://www.geolsoc.org.uk/template.cfm?name=ColoradoBelittle


A new reconstruction of 508 years of Colorado River streamflow, based on tree-ring data, confirms that droughts more severe than the recent 2000-2004 drought occurred before stream gauges were installed on the river. The new research also confirms that using stream gauge 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.


[SNIP]

The political and economic implications of this research are potentially severe for those states that depend on the Colorado for much of their water. Allocations of Colorado River water made in the 1922 Colorado River Compact between Arizona, California, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, Wyoming and Utah overestimated 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.



Hmmm, time for a new, smaller, toilet cistern and a change to low-irrigation crops ?
Aidan-- no used getting involved in US Western water wars. Numerous early Western US geos (most notably John Wesley Powell 140 years ago) noted exactly what you've seen from Scotland...and the politicians refused to listen--having an 'if you build it, it will rain' mentality.

I have little sympathy for millions of people who move to a desert,(just about everyone in the US west of the 100th meridian, excluding those in the coastal rainforests of the states of Washington, Oregon, and northern California), refuse to act like they live in a desert, and come crying to those of us in wetter climes that they have a 'right' to our water.
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