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The New Mexico Water Resources Research Institute (NM WRRI) is pleased to present the latest issue of the Divining Rod. (Vol. XXXV, No. 2, April 2012)

Video presentations from the conference held October 18-19, 2016 at Utah State University. As climate changes, forests are being impacted by severe drought, longer fire seasons, and impressive insect epidemics. New approaches to landscape restoration are needed to cope with these disturbances. The 2016 Restoring the West Conference offered presentations by experts in climate science, landscape restoration, and forest ecology on techniques for this uncertain future, and gave examples where these techniques are working.

Two decades ago, the San Juan River Basin Recovery Implementation Program was established to recover two endangered fish, the Colorado pikeminnow and razorback sucker, in the San Juan River and its tributaries in Colorado, New Mexico, and Utah. Today, a diverse group of partners is working toward that goal.

There's a movement afoot in the acequia community to keep water flowing for traditional uses. While it doesn't necessarily relate to environmental flows, the environmental community may find inspiration-or at the very least, better understand rural communities, the challenges they face, and their attempts at protecting the waters flowing through acequias and ditches.

During the early part of the 20th century, the Pecos River had been channelized to create ponds that would attract waterfowl. Barricaded behind a wall of invasive salt cedar, the Pecos had also become disconnected from the plains through which it flows.

The River Ecosystem Restoration Initiative Reports on developments in river restoration in New Mexico.

In June, Audubon New Mexico completed a reader-friendly brochure on environmental flows restoration. Titled "Hanging in the Balance: Why our rivers need water and why we need healthy rivers," it includes information on environmental flows, the economic benefits of health rivers to New Mexico, and an overview on a recent EPA-funded study about which rivers in the state are most in need of environmental flows restoration. The brochure also details two collaborative projects currently underway as well as recommendations for restoring elements of natural flow patterns to New Mexico's rivers.

The purpose of this guide is to provide a general foundation for the reader in several interrelated disciplines for the purpose of enabling him/her to characterize and quantify the water needs of riparian and wetland vegetation. Topics discussed are wetland and riparian classification, characteristics and ecology, surface and groundwater hydrology, plant physiology and population and community ecology, and techniques for linking attributes of vegetation to patterns of surface and groundwater and soil moisture. Rocky Mountain Research Station Online Publication.

WaterSense recently announced its intent to modify its specifications for certification programs for irrigation professionals and the WaterSense irrigation professional partnership. The notification of intent outlines EPA's evaluation of the benefits and challenges associated with the existing irrigation partnership program, its experience in running the certification program, and its desire to expand the program's scope to attain additional water savings. The outlined intended revisions are two-fold: development of a consolidated and common set of general requirements that will apply to all professional certifying organizations and removal of the individual irrigation partnership designation to allow the benefits of partnership to extend to all professionals certified by WaterSense labeled programs. WaterSense is soliciting input from stakeholders who would like to provide comment on the Agency's proposal.

This final report discusses the development of a database of freshwater biological traits. The database combines several existing traits databases into an online format. The database is also augmented with additional traits that are relevant to detecting climate change-related effects, especially traits related to temperature tolerances and flow.