Transcript Storage is Where You Find it. Can we Adapt to Climate

Storage is Where You Find it.
Can we Adapt to Climate
Change by Mitigating Dust?
Ben Harding
AMEC Earth &Environmental
35th Annual Colorado Water Workshop
Gunnison, Colorado
July 21, 2010
Reservoirs Work Harder
Vega Reservoir
2040 Modeled Storage Content
40000
Individual Model Results
35000
Historical
30000
AF
25000
20000
15000
10000
5000
0
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Reservoirs Work Harder
Vega Reservoir
2040 Average Monthly Modeled Storage
30000
Range of Model Results
Historical Average
Individual Model Results
25000
More seasonal storage
would help.
Where can we build it?
AF
20000
15000
10000
5000
0
Jan
Feb
Mar
Apr
May
Jun
Jul
Aug
Sep
Oct
Nov
Dec
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Dust Deposition on Snowpack
4
Dust Speeds Runoff
Rio Grande River near Del
Norte
6000
6000
5000
5000
4000
4000
Moving
Moving this
this
water
3000
3000
2000
2000
1000
1000
00
1-Oct
1-Oct
To here
Mean
Mean
2009
2009
Would take 135,000 AF
of storage
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Where does the dust come from?
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Earth in Motion
Tom Painter
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April 3, 2009 Surface Winds
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Average Wind, Jan – April, 2009
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April 3, 2009 3:00 pm, On the Ground, Tuba
City
Jayne Belnap
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Bare Ground on April 8, 2009
Very dry Aug-September = no/ low germination of winter annuals
Dry Jan-Mar = no/low growth of all plants MODIS Image from Greg Okin, UCLA
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Wind Tracking
Tom Painter has also
tracked “Dust DNA” to
northeast Arizona
Tom Painter
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Jayne Belnap
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Margaret Hiza, USGS
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Here is the Win-Win
 We can use new storage to adapt to climate change and more
 The Navajo Nation wants to restore its rangelands
 But the Navajo Nation has few resources
 New “storage” is valuable and expensive
 Can we build our new storage out of the restored rangelands of the


Navajo Nation?
Benefits of “natural” storage would accrue to constructed and natural
systems
Benefits on the Navajo Nation might be broad
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How?
 Livestock was probably a principal cause of rangeland deterioration
 The cultural importance of livestock to the Navajo community goes far

beyond monetary value
Could intensive, “holistic management” techniques be used to
rehabilitate rangeland on the Navajo Nation?
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Thanks for Listening
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