Bosque Hydrology
Group
The Middle Rio Grande Bosque Initiative's
Bosque Hydrology
Group
Next
Meeting:
Water Quality
Summit. October 25 at the National Hispanic Cultural Center in Albquerque with
a follow up half day session on October 26 at the FWS NM Ecological Services
Field Office. Agenda (PDF) Please
contact Paul Tashjian for more information.
Some
of the documents below are in .pdf format. To access them you will need
Adobe Acrobat Reader.
John
Taylor Web Site
FLO
2D Model Development Documentation:
The Middle Rio Grande FLO 2D model is a very useful tool for assessing the connection
between the channel and the floodplain. For information about the latest (2/2004)
status of the model please view "Development
of the Middle Rio Grande FLO-2D Flood Routing Model: Cochiti Dam to Elephant
Butte Reservoir" by Tetra Tech Inc. (PDF).
Climate
PDF's and Links:
Recent ideas regarding ocean temperatures and continental U.S. climate: 1)
Patterns and sources of multidecadal oscillations in drought-sensitive tree-ring
records from the central and southern Rocky Mountains, by Gray et al., 2)
Pacific and Atlantic
Ocean influences on multidecadal drought frequency in the United States, by
Mcabe et al., 3) The Atlantic multidecadal
oscillation and its relation to rainfall and river flows in the continental
U.S., by Enfield et al.. For more information on tree ring records please
got to Henri Grissino-Mayer's
Ultimate Tree-Ring Web Pages. For a very nice overview of Southwestern
United States climate, please view
"The
Climate of the Southwest"
by Sheppard et al..
Planning
Documents:
Links to planning documents: 1) Middle
Rio Grande Ecosystem: Bosque Biological Management Plan, 2) Albuquerque
Bosque Restoration Projects, 3) Phase
III of the Conceptual Restoration Plan for the Active Floodplain of the Rio
Grande - San Acacia to San Marcial, 4) "Hope
for a Living River", A FrameWork for a Restoration Vision for the Rio Grande,
5) Coming soon- 2003 Bosque Biological Managment Plan Update!
Featured
Link: "Geomorphic
and Sedimentologic Investigations of the Middle Rio Grande Between Cochiti Damand
Elephant Butte Reservoir" by Mussetter Engineering Inc. as contracted
by the New Mexico Interstate Stream Commission
Middle
Rio Grande Reach Hierarchy Proposal:
The Bosque Hydrology Group is proposing a habitat
reach hierarchy for the Middle Rio Grande. PDF
for hierarchy. Please e-mail comments to Paul
Tashjian. Thanks!
Restoration
Information:
Rehabilitation
Conceptual Frameworks: Albuquerque Reach, Socorro
Reach,
Reach Specific Restoration Constraints
and Promising Features
More
Exciting Features:
"Quantification
and Prediction of Lateral Channel Adjustments Downstream
From Cochiti Dam, Rio Grande, New Mexico"
PhD Dissertation by Gigi Richard,
PDF format.
"Seasonal
estimates of actual evapotranspiration from Tamarix
ramosissima stands using 3-dimensional eddy covariance"
by James Cleverly, Clifford Dahm, James Thibault,
David Gilroy , and Julie Coonrod, PDF format
Get
Adobe Acrobat Reader.
Welcome to the Middle
Rio Grande Bosque Initiative's Bosque Hydrology Group Home Page. The Middle Rio Grande
is the portion of the Rio Grande in New Mexico from the outflow of Cochiti Reservoir to
the headwaters of Elephant Butte Reservoir. This stretch is roughly 175 river miles and
spans Native American Pueblos, the urban center of Albuquerque, farm lands, and
wilderness. Bosque is a Spanish word for riparian forest. The bosque of the Middle Rio
Grande is a composite of native vegetation including cottonwood and willow trees, and non
native vegetation including salt cedar and Russian olive trees. Over the past decade there
has been an increasing concern over the health of the Middle Rio Grande Bosque. In 1993
the Bosque Biological Management Plan was published to "bring change to the way the
biological resources of the riparian ecosystem are managed". This plan is a thorough
analysis of the health of the Middle Rio Grande Bosque as well as a road map towards a
more healthy ecosystem.
In order to accomplish the hydrologic and physical
goals of the Bosque Biological Management Plan, the Bosque Hydrology Group (BHG) was
formed in the summer of 1995. The goal of this group is to enhance the coordination,
communication and synthesizing of bio-hydrologic data efforts within the Middle Rio
Grande. Members of the group include both agency and academic parties who are directly
involved with collecting and analyzing information on the physical health of our bosque
including representatives from; the Army Corps of Engineers, Bureau of Reclamation, U.S.
Fish and Wildlife Service, Middle Rio Grande Conservancy District, University of New
Mexico, New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology, and FLO Engineering.
Why is there concern
over the health of the Bosque? Go to top of page
The ecosystem that we refer to as the
Middle Rio Grande Bosque is a dynamic interaction between biological and physical
processes. When we talk about this ecosystem as being in disrepair we are really talking
about this interaction as not functioning properly. The native plant and animal
communities associated with the bosque evolved and adapted to a Rio Grande that overbanked
annually and, at a 5 to 10 year recurrence, witnessed major floods. These floods were a
key component to both the regeneration of the cottonwood-willow riparian communities and
the maintenance of in stream habitat for the historic minnow community (at the turn of the
century there were 5 native pelagic spawning minnow species in the Middle Rio Grande, now
there is only one). In this century the Rio has witnessed an abrupt disruption of floods,
a narrowing of the floodplain, and excessive bank stabilization by both jetty jacks and
our friends the Russian olive and the salt cedar. Correspondingly, a deterioration of both
riparian and in stream habitat has occurred. It is projected in the Bosque Biological
Management Plan that if key components of physical processes are not returned to the
Middle Rio Grande, the bosque will deteriorate and in many places be extirpated within the
next 50 years.
The need for flood control within the Middle Rio Grande is both important and necessary.
The struggle that agencies responsible for the Middle Rio Grande are grappling with is; 1)
Can we restore components of the historic floods to the system while maintaining a safe
Rio? and, 2) Where can we maintain a healthy bosque within the modern hydrology? For these
questions it is a very important first step to understand and map the modern physical
setting of the Middle Rio Grande including flooding potential, soil salinity, channel
geomorphology, levy and jetty jack configurations, and the physical properties of
vegetative composition.
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Use the following form with keywords (including operators such as
'and', 'or') to search the entire Bosque Hydrology Group Web Site.
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For further information please contact:
Paul Tashjian
Bosque Hydrology Group Coordinator
(505)-248-7958
Paul_Tashjian@fws.gov
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Region.
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