Research in Texas, New Mexico and Oklahoma aimed at understanding decline of snowy plovers in relation to declining aquifer From 2013 to 2015, the Ogallala Aquifer showed a decline of 10.7 million acre-feet, according to the United States Geological Survey.
The snowy plover is a small migratory shorebird, similar to the familiar killdeer and the piping plover, said Kristen Heath, a graduate research assistant in the Department of Natural Resources Management in the College of Agricultural Sciences and Natural Resources at Texas Tech University.
Water crisis Heath said snowy plovers can be seen during the breeding season and during migration in saline lakes (salinas) and salt flats in eastern New Mexico and the Texas High Plains, including Lynn, Terry and Bailey counties.
These regional saline lakes have provided fresh water for millennia to indigenous peoples, migratory birds, and other wildlife from artesian springs fed by the Ogallala Aquifer, but the lakes are drying up.
The basin of these saline lakes is also the top of the Ogallala Aquifer – and as water levels continue to decline, spring flow declines, and the basins dry out.
Research Heath said her research focuses on the movement and connectivity of the snowy plovers throughout the High Plains region during the breeding season and to locations on the Gulf Coast and Mexico during migration and winter.
Heath is not the first to do research on snowy plovers at Texas Tech.
Contamination "These recent studies, which we finished in 2016, indicated that snowy plovers do have some arsenic and selenium levels of concern, mainly selenium levels," Conway said.
Because they do not know where the snowy plovers are wintering, they do not know exactly where the birds are being exposed to the potential contaminants or if they are having survival issues of which the researchers were simply unaware.
"These birds are certainly an indicator of what’s happening to the Ogallala," Conway said, "and frankly, in terms of dealing with those declining water tables and declining water availability, it’s going to change how people on this landscape live."