NMSU El Rito Soil Moisture July 2010

Despite the obvious importance of global climate projections, their coarse resolution presents serious limitations to regional and local water management. To address these challenges, we develop a climate monitoring system in NM to: (1) assess current hydroclimatic change in existing model simulations and datasets; (2) scale-down and apply climate change projections to several key watersheds selected for intensive study; and (3) develop an innovative, sustainable regional hydroclimatological modeling and monitoring capacity capable of generating quantitative hydrologic information useful to stakeholders, including consideration of the statewide socioeconomic impacts of changing flows. The overall goal of developing a multiple-scale, end-to-end picture of hydrologic processes is to frame a science-based statewide policy discussion of water resource management based on significant enhancements to the observational network and the analysis of network
measurements.