The San Juan Mountains, situated in the southwest corner of Colorado, serve as a crucial water source for numerous people across multiple states in the western United States. They hold immense cultural significance as the ancestral lands of the Ute, Puebloan, and Diné peoples, serving as a hub of human activity for thousands of years. These mountains exemplify the impacts of climate change, experiencing declines in precipitation, snowpack, and streamflow due to rising air temperatures, shifts in jet streams, and the effects of dust-on-snow.
Our working group has identified this region as a focal point for addressing the issue of dust-on-snow. We will be working with the region as a whole and have pinpointed geographies to the east (San Luis Valley, CO), and west (Cortez, CO) as areas of interest.
Dust-on-snow is an especially complex problem because the processes through which wind erosion and dust emission impact water resources and agriculture span multiple ecosystems (dryland, forest, alpine), land uses (rangeland, cropland, urban), and communities across the southwest US. The interactions include aeolian, ecological, hydrologic, atmospheric, and socioeconomic feedback that influence management responses to mitigate wind erosion and adapt to changing water availability. Land and water are at the nexus of these interactions.
While the catchments immediately impacted by dust-on-snow are well-defined to include those of the Upper Colorado River Basin and Rio Grande Basin, the geographic extent of regions experiencing wind erosion and producing dust are not currently described in sufficient detail to inform local or regional management responses. Addressing wind erosion at-source will be critical for mitigating dust-on-snow and requires an understanding of the location and timing of wind erosion, source area soil properties and ecology, land use and management practices, and the social-ecological context for current land use and management decisions and capacity of land stewards to adopt soil conservation practices and adapt to changing water resources. In addition to the impacted catchments, dust source areas could extend across the Great Basin and Lower Colorado River Basin. Similarly, the impacts of dust-on-snow on water resources potentially extend through agroecological systems dependent on the Lower Colorado River and Rio Grande.
We aim to work with communities across the southwest US – in eroding dust source regions and in catchments impacted by changing water resources due to dust-on-snow.
By physical necessity and by state mandate, farmers and ranchers in the San Luis Valley of Colorado are grappling with recovering their aquifer system to sustainable levels, after long periods of overdraft and/or periods of surface water overuse relative to what is required by the interstate Rio Grande River Compact. This is an undertaking which now involves the dry-up of previously irrigated croplands and hay meadows, to bring the system into balance. With this dry-up has also come the potential of massive tracts of bare ground being generated, aggravating an already difficult situation with dust generation and its accompanying impacts on the people who live and work here, on the ecosystem, and on the small water cycle (including the potential of adding more dust to snowpack in surrounding mountains). The San Luis Valley also has many innovative and motivated landowners who wish to work towards soil conservation and towards growing healthier soils, as well as many supportive organizations keen to be of help in making this happen despite the dry-up of many tens of thousands of acres. Keeping these lands as functional components of the small water cycle, and as actively managed working lands, remains a focus of our efforts locally.
The biggest dust events in the San Luis Valley have come during spring windstorms. Some of this dust finds its way onto snowpack in the San Juan and Sangre de Cristo mountain ranges. All of the agriculture, and all of the communities of the San Luis Valley ultimately rely upon snowmelt to replace depletions to the aquifer from groundwater pumping for irrigation, municipal, and domestic wells. When dust events, from numerous sources (the San Luis Valley included) occur, snowmelt tends to happen fast and early from upland snow sheds. This results in water swelling in creeks and rivers often too early to be of benefit to the upper basin’s hydrology, making less water available to support vegetation in the uplands and on the valley floor.
The proposed dry-up initiative will extend to lands dotted across the valley floor within Conejos, Costilla, Alamosa, Rio Grande, and Saguache counties. Landowners from these counties intent on seeing revegetation and soil stabilization done in thoughtful and effective ways, on a voluntary basis, are the ones with whom we will work with.
During the period of 2010 to present, Mosca-Hooper Conservation District (MHCD – Alamosa county’s soil and water conservation district) has convened many field days and community gatherings on the topic of soil health and water conservation, seeing dust as a prime indicator of the lack of soil health. Between 2019 and present, MHCD has coordinated with dozens of landowners from the region and with multiple agencies to survey people on their perspectives related to the multiple crises we face in the region, all which focus on the intersection of healthy soils, functioning water cycle, and reduction or elimination of dust. In 2023, MHCD led an effort to interview dozens of landowners, business owners, agency personnel, and land and water use policy makers to assess the community’s sentiment around the topic of adaptation. This resulted in the formation of multiple peer-to-peer learning groups around the northern half of the San Luis Valley in 2024, and generated great interest in developing support for more groups of the same type to form all around the valley in the near future. The interview process and the formation of a work plan for developing and supporting these peer-to-peer learning networks was done using a participatory and adaptive consensus process.
Within the San Luis Valley communities there are many great initiatives already in the making. By working directly with the people driving these initiatives we aim to bring an interdisciplinary thinking in how to further support and grow the efforts while also highlighting how individual actions and regional policies that relate to land management can have a cascading effect on others and on the water productivity of the whole.
Cortez, Colorado presents an intriguing intersection of mountains, agricultural lands, tribal lands of the Ute Mountain Ute, and serves as a gateway to the Colorado Plateau, a significant source of dust mobilization. We are partnering with the Center for Earth Theology, a new non-profit field station dedicated to building community through understanding and restoring drylands ecology.
Cortez is where the desert meets the mountains, characterized by strong spring winds and several reservoirs storing mountain water resources. The region is rich in land, water, and culture, with a rural community deeply connected to land management and stewardship. Dust from the Four Corners deserts obscures views and impacts health, traveling through Cortez to the mountain snowpack. This area relies on water from the San Juan Mountains for its agricultural economy.
The Center for Earth Theology, a new field station, retreat, and leadership center in the Four Corners region, offers an ideal location for measuring soil health and experimenting with restoration techniques. The land features sagebrush, creekside plant communities, and wildlife. The land hosts native plants from the Southwest and some invasive species like Tamarisk and Kochia. Some areas lack sufficient vegetation cover, producing dust and posing challenges for land health restoration.
The focus at the Center for Earth Theology is to use it as a case study where diverse ways of knowing converge around shared issues. Engaging tribal communities, private landowners, regional caretakers, conservation and education organizations, higher education institutions, and local residents, the aim is to foster collaboration. Community members will be invited to the Center for Earth Theology for hands-on activities and shared meals, learning from the land and each other. Participants will collect data on soil health, such as pH levels, organic matter, and bare ground extent, working together to develop effective land health strategies. Through conversations and relationship building, we aim to understand community needs and share stories about the land.