As climate-driven drought slams farms in U.S. West, water solutions loom
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Drought has been stalking the U.S. West for 20 years now, but forecasts say dry times ahead will be worse. A recent U.N. assessment evaluated commitments by all the world’s nations to reduce their carbon emissions, and determined that those anemic pledges put us on the “catastrophic pathway” to 2.7° Celsius (nearly 5° Fahrenheit) of warming by 2100. Those elevated temperatures could result in the length of droughts increasing globally by an average of close to ten months, according to a study by Carbonbrief.
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Groundwater isn’t the only source put at risk by deepening drought. At the heart of far West water problems is the diminishment of the life-giving Colorado River, and its two immense reservoirs: Lake Mead and Lake Powell. Recent record declines of these water bodies due to alarming climate change have revealed long standing water mismanagement issues.
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But there is good news here: These are solvable problems, if officials, communities and farmers think in terms of building flexibility and cooperation into existing water systems — rather than shooting for rapid, revolutionary change, which tends to trigger gridlock, said Ellen Hanak, director of water policy at the Public Policy Institute of California.
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A 21st century toolkit of regionally specific tools is emerging, she said: a combination of new (and old) tactics to harden farms against the impacts of climate change. These include the planting of diverse cover crops to protect soil from heat, drought and extreme precipitation, while also rebuilding the soil’s underground architecture; eschewing tilling to avoid disrupting that soil architecture; and careful rotational grazing that avoids exhausting soil while also fertilizing it with livestock droppings — in a modern replacement for the vanished buffalo.
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