Arroyo Roger:

Watershed Awareness

 

Arroyo Roger’s mission is to champion change to make the landscape green and resilient to climate change, and to restore arroyos (ephemeral streams) to healthy components of the ecosystem.  To achieve these goals, Arroyo Roger informs, educates, influences and mobilizes all segments of society.

 

Why Arroyo Roger?

Because our landscape needs a champion.

Given current growth trends and climate variability expected from climate change, Santa Fe, New Mexico as a whole and other arid areas in the world will face more severe water shortages. There is an obvious trend toward long-term desertification of watersheds, leading to the eventual collapse of the prosperity and quality of life. However, shifts in policy in combination with on-the-ground action can help mitigate this scenario.

Experts agree that within a few decades the trees will have vanished from many places, including the Santa Fe area, killed during droughts when they will not withstand dryness of both the soil and the air. This situation can be remedied, at least in some areas. The arroyos run through the landscape as arteries in our bodies. They are dying because water rushes down before it can infiltrate in the ground, the land is getting dryer, and the desert is creeping up.

There will also be extreme bursts of rainfall, causing flooding and land erosion. Stormwater will gush downhill in the arroyos, creating havoc and being lost as it will have no time to infiltrate in the ground.

Arroyo Roger has come to help solve the problem and bring together the various stakeholders.