Rio Grande Water Fund
New Mexico, United States
Description: The Las Conchas Fire was a wakeup call heard by a million of New Mexicans. The 2011 conflagration that burned 160,000 acres in the Jemez Mountains was the largest recorded forest fire in New Mexico history. It threatened lives and property and unleashed post-fire flooding and debris-flows that prevented drinking water diversions for nearly a month in Albuquerque.
New Mexico’s Rio Grande river and its tributaries is critical for supplying water for wildlife and one million people. The health of these waterways is key to the health of Albuquerque, Santa Fe, Native American Pueblos, agricultural production, and other communities and is an essential ingredient for the state’s economic growth.
The Rio Grande Water Fund (RGWF) is a multi-stakeholder collaborative effort to increase the scale of forest restoration to reduce wildfire risk and secure water for the one million people in the state. Over 600,000 acres of at-risk forest within the RGWF project area cover 13 counties across northern New Mexico and southern Colorado. More than 100 signatories to a collaborative charter serves as the foundation of the Rio Grande Water Fund, as stakeholders recognized the need for a coordinated, leveraged, public-private effort to scale up the restoration of New Mexico’s forests.
CHALLENGES
In the United States, western states are experiencing an increase in catastrophic wildfires that can destroy livelihoods, ecosystem function, community infrastructure, wildlife habitat, and more. Wildfires are a natural—and necessary—ecological disturbance in fire-adapted forests in the west. However, climate change and historical land management practices, including suppressing naturally occurring low-intensity fires throughout the 20th century have led to larger, more severe wildfires today. From 1970 to 2003, the burned area in southwestern states increased by 650% (Garfin et al., 2014). Climate change has also brought along warmer winters in the region which allow tree-killing insects such as bark beetles to live year-round instead of dying off during the colder months. This has resulted in even more dry, dead forests—the perfect kindling and fuel for wildfire.
The season for southwestern wildfires generally ends when summer monsoons arrive, and flooding after large severe wildfires can quickly become a compounding disaster, especially for source watersheds. After the 2011 “Las Conchas” fire—the largest wildfire that New Mexico had ever experienced to that date — normal monsoonal rain became a life-threatening torrent, washing ash, trees, and enormous amounts of sediment and rock debris from the wildfire area into the Rio Grande. Flows left a 21-meter-deep sediment plug that nearly blocked the Rio Grande. Downstream, Albuquerque’s water treatment facilities had to shut down because of the ash and sediment load, depriving the city of its surface supply of freshwater for 40 days.
Unfortunately, the impacts of wildfires and postfire flooding are expected to get worse if the climate continues to change. More than one third of all watersheds in the western United States are projected to have a sedimentation increase greater than 100% after a wildfire by the 2041–2050 period (Sankey et al., 2017). In addition to overwhelming amounts of debris and soil erosion, wildfires can often negatively affect water quality by changing turbidity and pH and increasing concentration of nutrients, chemicals, and other runoff pollutants (O’Donnell, 2016). This can be detrimental not only to human health, but also aquatic habitat and biodiversity. The expected climate-change-induced extreme precipitation events will only exacerbate the problem.
Rio Grande Water Fund: Helping Nature Thrive
To ensure deer and wildlife thrive, The Nature Conservancy’s Rio Grande Water Fund works to improve the health of New Mexico’s forests - their home. Click on the image/play button to the left to watch this video in English.
Rio Grande Water Fund: Reducing the Threat of Forest Fires
Watch and discover how the Rio Grande Water Fund is restoring New Mexico's forests to help keep the Rio Grande River working for people and nature.
Continue Your Learning
Rio Grande Water Fund _Wildfire Risk Report
Rio Grande Water Fund _Wildfire Risk Report
Rio Grande Water Fund: Annual Report 2020
Rio Grande Water Fund_Annual Report_2022_FINAL
Higher tree density, more fuels, and a warmer, drier climate have caused an increase in the frequency, size, and severity of wildfires in western U.S. forests.
