When it comes to agriculture, water is often our most important tool! To help our region learn about water resources and plan for water scarcity, the Agroecosystem Resilience in Times of Drought (ARID) project connects farmers, ranchers, land managers and scientists. The project includes a website with dozens of resources, and showcases information such as daily precipitation at various locations in the southern high plains. This project was funded by the USDA and was developed in collaboration among New Mexico State University, University of Oklahoma, and Oklahoma State University.
The main goal of the ARID project is to assist farmers, ranchers, land managers, and scientists in developing, communicating, and supporting drought resilience strategies. The website features many educational resources and an interactive map that allows you to access regional precipitation for up to the past 90 days.
The ARID website has resources on topics including planning for drought resources, managing drought conditions, recovering from drought, how to protect your water resources, and alternate sources of income. The rainfall portal displays daily, weekly and monthly county-level daily precipitation maps generated by New Mexico State Climatologist Dr. Dave Dubois' team using data from CoCoRaHS (the Community Collaborative Rain Hail and Snow network). These maps include all counties in New Mexico and selected counties in Colorado, Oklahoma, Kansas and Texas.
In collaboration with Dr. Rossana Sallenave, Extension Aquatic Ecologist, NMSU Department of Extension Animal Science and Natural Resources, Dr. Catriana Steele of the USDA Southwest Climate Hub, and Dr. Kate Zeigler, Zeigler Geologic Consulting, the Innovative Media Research and Extension team produced two short videos for the ARID project, “Monitoring Well Water” and “Determining the Age of Well Water.” The videos address how groundwater managers and well owners can test the quality and quantity of water in their wells and learn about the time scale of recharge via tritium and carbon-14 dating. These videos can be viewed from the Resources header under Well Monitoring.
To learn more, go to https://arid.nmsu.edu or visit the ARID project on Twitter @AgroEcoResil, Facebook @AgroEcoResilience or Instagram @agroecoresilience.
For more information about this project contact the project director Dr. Caitriana Steele or email arid@nmsu.edu
Written by: Emalie Hames, Student Assistant and Jaqueline Magana, Student Assistant