At the end of the river

Hiking to the last trickle of the Middle Rio Grande — plus three studies you shouldn't miss, environmental news, book nerd stuff, and River Church.

This morning, just after sunrise, I walked up the Rio Grande until I found the terminus of the river.

I left from the spot I always do, in every season and in all types of weather. I know this area better than the back of my hand, and I know the animals who live in this section of the bosque along the Middle Rio Grande in Albuquerque.

Heading toward the river, I spotted a porcupine trundling along the path. Passed through a patch of dying salt cedar full of more hummingbirds than I’ve ever seen in one place. Heard the dry crinkle of cottonwood leaves that have already turned yellow. Listened to blue grosbeaks, spotted towhees, and white breasted nuthatches.

Then I climbed into the river channel and hiked upstream — past empty dens and along beaver tail drags through the sand — until I came to water. Until I came to the end of the river. To where the water and foam trickle into the sand.

The end of the Rio Grande in Albuquerque.

There were coyotes, coopers hawks, songbirds, more hummingbirds, and a lone duck just upstream in a barely-running strip of water less than a foot wide. I didn’t hang around, knowing that as long as I lingered, wildlife would stay away from the water they needed. So I saluted the turkey vultures, walked upstream a little more to a fetid pond with a beaver den, and then headed back downstream again.¹

As of Monday morning, there were 11 miles dry in the Albuquerque reach, 21 miles dry in three sections of the Isleta reach, and 44 miles dry in the San Acacia reach.

Those numbers are likely bigger today. Just in the time I passed the three fingers at the end of the river, they had each receded a few feet. More ducks flew overhead, looking for water to land in, and I headed home. These are bad times. We have done our river wrong.

Summary of what’s ahead in this week’s newsletter:

• Three new scientific studies you shouldn’t miss

• Environmental news from around New Mexico and the Southwest

• This week’s Lesser Known New Mexico Podcast

• For the Book Nerds

• River Church

PDO’s not what we thought, Indigenous burning, and geomagnetic storms

There are three new studies out worth your attention this morning.

Over at The Conversation, Peter DiNezio and Timothy Shanahan write about how “(h)uman activity may be driving drought more intensely – and more directly – than previously understood.” The Pacific Decadal Oscillation has long been considered a natural climate pattern that swings between wet and dry times (think: La Niña and El Niño).

According to DiNezio and Shanahan:

Working with hundreds of climate model simulations, our team of atmosphere, earth and ocean scientists found that the PDO is now being strongly influenced by human factors and has been since the 1950s. It should have oscillated to a wetter phase by now, but instead it has been stuck. Our results suggest that drought could become the new normal for the region unless human-driven warming is halted.

Read that again. Because it’s huge news.

They also write, “This finding represents a paradigm shift in our scientific understanding of the PDO and a warning for the future. The current negative phase can no longer be seen as just a roll of the climate dice — it has been loaded by humans.”

Their piece on The Conversation is good for general readers, and to read the study itself, “Human emissions drive recent trends in North Pacific climate variations,” visit Nature.com.

Secondly, there’s a new study out showing how tree rings reveal Indigenous fire stewardship in Western Apache homelands in Arizona. Here’s an excerpt of “Tree rings reveal persistent Western Apache (Ndee) fire stewardship and niche construction in the American Southwest” from Christopher I. Roos, J. Mark Kaib, Nicholas C. Laluk, and Thomas W. Swetnam:

In this paper, we focus on the Ndee landscape north of the Gila River (hereinafter just Ndee or Western Apache territory) because the area south of the Gila overlaps with Chiricahua Apache territory (Fig. 1) and is close enough to the presidio and community of Tucson (est. 1775 CE) that traditional fire stewardship may have been regularly impacted by conflict with people of European descent and Indigenous Pima residents (21, 42). We further limit ourselves to the dry conifer forest biotic zone, particularly ponderosa pine and dry mixed conifer forests, because these are the areas from which most tree-ring fire history sites are located and the context for many ethnographic Ndee fire uses.

And, another newly published study looks at how increasing carbon dioxide levels will make the upper atmosphere less dense during future geomagnetic storms. This could affect satellite operations.

In their study, the authors write: “Geomagnetic storms lead to large changes in the Earth's upper atmosphere (ionosphere and thermosphere) that can have adverse effects on technological systems, such as GPS positioning and orbits of satellites in low-Earth orbit (200–2,000 km). It is now understood that increases in greenhouse gas concentrations result in a decrease in the thermosphere neutral density.”

You can read “Impact of Increasing Greenhouse Gases on the Ionosphere and Thermosphere Response to a May 2024-Like Geomagnetic Superstorm” in Geophysical Research Letters.

Lastly, you might have read some of the news coverage of the situation over on the Colorado River, but if you’d like to see the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation’s 2026 operating conditions and projections for Lake Powell and Lake Mead, you can find them on the BOR’s website.

In the News:

Federal agency finding clears path for construction to begin on divisive LANL power transmission line (Alaina Mercinger, Santa Fe New Mexican)

Amid strong opposition, New Mexico water board lets plan for more oil and gas wastewater use proceed (Danielle Prokop, Source NM)

State game commissioner removed after role in wolf media campaign discovered (Alaina Mercinger, Santa Fe New Mexican)

Gov removes Sabrina Pack from Game Commission (Marcella Johnson, Silver City Daily Press)

Federal disaster declaration extends to Doña Ana, Otero counties after monsoon floods (Danielle Prokop, Source NM)

Flow like the San Juan (Miles W. Griffis, High Country News)

Last dance for the lesser prairie chicken? Endangered species listing is vacated (Alaina Mencinger, Santa Fe New Mexican)

Sheriff fires deputies in bunny incident (Juno Ogle, Silver City Daily Press)

Lastly, this segment on Living On Earth is really cool. And God knows, with the way humans are treating this planet, animals need to be self-medicating. A lot.

On the Lesser Known New Mexico Podcast:

Episode 7: We’re Back! With Dr. Lawrence Leeman. This year, NM legalized the medical use of psilocybin. Andy finds out what that means. Plus: the dry Rio Grande, a sketchy new water proposal, and a new transmission line for Los Alamos.

Listen wherever you find your podcasts, or listen and subscribe on Substack.

For the Book Nerds:

Just finished: The Last Ranger by Peter Heller

Currently reading: Birds as Individuals, by Len Howard

Re-reading: Leslie Marmon Silko’s Ceremony (because I like to reread this book every few years)

Can’t wait to read: The Light Between Apple Trees: Rediscovering the Wild Through a Beloved American Fruit, by Priyanka Kumar (Kumar will be reading from this new book at Garcia Street Books on Sept. 25 at 5:00 p.m. RSVP online.)

And a big thanks to Grace Butler at Terrain for her sweet review of Water Bodies.

“…I thought of this man while I read the multi-genre collection called Water Bodies, edited by Laura Paskus. The collection’s subtitle is Love Letters to the Most Abundant Substance on Earth. These love letters come from 18 contributors. They take the form of personal essays, poems, and an exquisite illustrated poem. All these voices, snug in a thin volume, dedicated to illustrating ways a person might love water. The collection’s project is noble. Paskus closes her introduction with her hope that through these stories, “We’ll all love the waters that sustain us, challenge us, teaching us what it means to be present—and offer guidance for the future.”

The hinge of this, a most critical and ambiguous verb and noun, is love. Not just anyone’s love, but the reader’s love, guided by this collection of bright and varied voices. Given this introductory hope, I could not help but think of the audience this book reaches for…”

Duck seeking water for landing.

Lastly, there will be River Church in Albuquerque on Sunday before sunset. If you know what I’m talking about and want to join us, drop me a message and I’ll share the time and place.

Love, Laura

1. As an aside, if you decide to go to the river, please be respectful of the fact that wildlife are stressed. Don’t let your dogs run loose, and don’t harass animals.