Australia Drought Portends Future for Russian River?

At the SWRCB meeting 5/6 hearing the protest by the Contractors about the proposed RR flow cutbacks, Vicky Whitney (staff in charge of water rights) presented a graph of historic droughts (423 years) in the Russian River watershed, from the Univ. of Arizona, showing length of historic drought events based on Blue Oak tree rings, and the necessity now of planning for longer term drought periods.
See:  http://www.fs.fed.us/psw/mtnclim/talks/pdf/Griffin_Poster2008.pdf

Sip your juleps this weekend, but don’t waste the water. There is no more coming for a long time.

David

sjfr2@aol.com wrote:

Jim

Thanks for this link.

The tree rings indicate it’s happened here before … and, presumably, could happen again.

Stephen

Very interesting article in the April National Geographic Magazine.  A little scary.  Sounds like they are describing the Russian River Basin 10 to 20 years from now… no more water and the dreadful consequences.

Jim Doerksen

http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2009/04/murray-darling/draper-text.html