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Practical Panarchy for Adaptive Water Governance pp 99–114Cite as

Governing the Rio Grande: Challenges and Opportunities for New Mexico’s Water Supply

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Abstract

The Rio Grande in New Mexico provides water to the urban environments of Albuquerque, Santa Fe, as well as surrounding small towns and rural agricultural communities. Long-term climate change projections suggest that New Mexico will experience ongoing drought in the coming decades, placing stress on a system already struggling to meet increasing water demands. Resilience theory provides a lens through which the governance challenges associated with climate change and other factors can be examined. The construction and operation of the many dams, reservoirs, and levees, along with channelization activities, have lowered the overall functional diversity of the river system through channel simplification and bed degradation, with implications for both riverine and riparian habitats. The earlier peak will require more nuanced and intensive water management, including more management flexibility. Changes in water governance strategies will be needed in order to adapt to increased temperatures and other challenges the future will bring. New strategies will include more aggressive management of the upland forest system to decrease the risk of wildfire in the watershed, more operational flexibility for dams and reservoirs, and a new approach to water storage and allocation.

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Acknowledgments

This work was developed in part under the Adaptive Water Governance Project, funded by the US National Socio-Environmental Synthesis Center (SESYNC) under funding from the US National Science Foundation, NSF DBI-1052875. The views set forth by contributors to this volume represent their own and do not represent the views of any public or private entity the contributor is affiliated with.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Haub School of Environment and Natural Resources, University of Wyoming, Laramie, WYO, USA

    Melinda Harm Benson

  2. Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Colorado State University, Fort Collins, CO, USA

    Ryan R. Morrison

  3. Department of Civil Engineering, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, NM, USA

    Dagmar Llewellyn & Mark Stone

Authors
  1. Melinda Harm Benson
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  2. Ryan R. Morrison
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  3. Dagmar Llewellyn
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  4. Mark Stone
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Melinda Harm Benson .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. College of Law and Waters of the West Program, University of Idaho, Moscow, Idaho, USA

    Barbara Cosens

  2. Department of Environmental Sciences, Emory University, Atlanta, Georgia, USA

    Lance Gunderson

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Benson, M.H., Morrison, R.R., Llewellyn, D., Stone, M. (2018). Governing the Rio Grande: Challenges and Opportunities for New Mexico’s Water Supply. In: Cosens, B., Gunderson, L. (eds) Practical Panarchy for Adaptive Water Governance. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-72472-0_7

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