sa国际传媒官网网页入口

2026 is shaping up to be one of the worst years on the books for rivers in the Southwest. Last winter鈥檚 broken records speak for themselves: lowest snowpacks, warmest temperatures and the earliest recorded date of the Rio Grande going dry in sa国际传媒官网网页入口. This year鈥檚 dismal conditions have compounded upon the preceding 25 years of drought and a larger pattern of aridification across the Southwest, reminding us that a good winter or three won鈥檛 dispel this larger drying trend.

Global climate change is a primary driver of our local aridification, making the problem feel immense and intimidating. We cannot force the skies to open (cloud seeding is not a silver iodide bullet) or independently bring global carbon emissions into equilibrium. We can, however, address some substantial problems with how we use the water we do have.

The natural and human-made systems that provide clean, reliable water to our communities are at their breaking points. Note the recent failures among state and federal leaders to agree upon a system for sharing the Colorado River鈥檚 dwindling flows. Negotiations have focused almost exclusively on management of water rights and the river鈥檚 鈥済ray infrastructure鈥� 鈥� the large dams, diversions and canals constructed over the past century to store and move enormous volumes of water across our dry landscapes.

Meanwhile, we have underinvested in a vast network of older, more complex hydrologic systems, including wetlands, aquifers, floodplains and traditional irrigation. These 鈥済reen infrastructure鈥� systems have acted as the true backbone of Southwestern watersheds for far longer than their concrete counterparts. They have persisted in and adapted to dramatic changes and demonstrated a capacity for resilience that gray infrastructure alone cannot match.

Green infrastructure鈥檚 resilience relies on connectivity between waterways and their surrounding landscapes. During high flow events, like spring snowmelt or monsoonal storms, runoff spreads over wetlands and floodplains and soaks into soils and aquifers. Acequias and similar traditional earthen ditch networks mimic this process by spreading water over floodplain agricultural fields, to much the same effect.

Shallow aquifers store water and gradually release it back to the river or allow us to draw water from wells when we need it most. This process is harder to monitor and control compared to reservoir operations, but the aquifers under floodplains and wetlands have other compelling benefits over surface reservoirs, like lower evaporative losses, higher water quality and greater ecological benefit. Most of the Southwest鈥檚 large dams and diversions were built for rivers that no longer exist, and adapting them to today's lower water levels, higher salinity and increased sediment buildup can be prohibitively expensive. In contrast, green infrastructure consists of living and dynamic ecosystems that can more easily adjust and meet new challenges, if only we give them the opportunity to do so.

One particularly promising tool for restoring green infrastructure is improving environmental flows (or eflows) in rivers. Eflows are seasonal or multiannual patterns of higher and lower river flows, like large spring snowmelt pulses and winter low flows. They help rivers restore themselves by redistributing built-up sediment and reconnecting them to floodplains and aquifers. Alongside wetland and watershed restoration, eflows support rivers as living systems.

Eflows are already showing promise in some sections of New Mexico鈥檚 rivers, but we need investment, research and implementation at larger scales. We need to push our state legislators to support and invest in green infrastructure and eflows, while identifying opportunities to implement these solutions at the local level, through processes like regional water planning. In preparing for a hotter, drier future, New Mexico cannot afford to ignore the resilient benefits of restoring our rivers鈥� green infrastructure systems.

Aidan Manning is the Rivers and Waters Program associate at New Mexico Wild.