The 416 Fire near Durango, Colorado, ignited on June 1.
In early June, more than 1,000 people near Durango, Colorado, had to leave their homes as the 416 Fire swept across the landscape.
Following a dismal snowpack, the region experienced a spring so hot and dry that the U.S. Drought Monitor labeled conditions “exceptional drought,” the worst category.
“We have to fundamentally change the mindset of the public, and the way we manage this resource,” says Newsha Ajami, a hydrologist and the director of urban water policy at Stanford University’s Water in the West program.
This spring, the Colorado River Research Group, an independent team of scientists focused on the river, labeled the climate transition in the Colorado River Basin “aridification,” meaning a transformation to a drier environment.
As Brad Udall, a member of the research group and a water and climate researcher at Colorado State University, puts it: “Words matter.” Linguists have long argued over the extent to which words and language influence one’s thoughts and worldview.
One commonly cited example of evidence that they do is an Indigenous Australian language that doesn’t use words for left and right.
Research suggests that in their thoughts and interactions with others, their conceptions of space are radically different from those who speak languages with relative spatial terms.
This spring, a year after California Gov.
How people perceive and value water is essential to shaping how much of it they use, says Patricia Gonzales, a doctoral student studying water resources at Stanford University.