Since mid-April, the United States Department of Agriculture has classified all of Montezuma county as experiencing “exceptional drought,” its most severe classification.
As drought conditions around the county began to worsen this year, the Mancos Conservation District stepped in to respond.
In March, the organization began a regular river monitoring program to keep Mancos landowners and other locals up to date with the health of the Mancos River watershed, a major source of water for local properties.
Monitoring includes sampling river water, nearby plants and wildlife, riverbank soil and other indicators of the health of the water system.
The new monitoring program will provide better information to local residents and landowners who depend on the health of the watershed for their well-being.
Riparian assessments provide data that are most useful when collected over an extended period of time.
Jeff Fowlds, district technician for the Mancos Conservation District, is in charge of doing the monthly assessments.
Measures like these can provide information to local water consumers of the impact their consumption is having on the health of the watershed, and how they can respond to localized ecological events such as drought.
Beyond looking at the livelihood of bug and animal life in and around the Mancos River, the Conservation District has also started regularly sending water and soil samples to the River Watch of Colorado, a statewide water quality-monitoring program run primarily by volunteers and an educational nonprofit Earth Force.
River Watch collects volunteer-submitted samples from rivers around the state in an effort to monitor the amount of dissolved metals in the water, the amount of nutrients in the water and the livelihood of bug species affected by the health of the water system, among other watershed health indicators.