Click the link to access the article on the AGU website (Mahbod Taherian, Ali A. Ameli). Here’s the abstract:

January 9, 2026

Understanding how snowmelt is partitioned into different hydrologic flowpaths/storages—and how this partitioning varies over time—is essential for predicting water availability and quality under climate variability. In this study, we examine the time-variance of snowmelt partitioning patterns (SPP) in response to interannual variations in antecedent (Fall) rainfall before snowmelt seasons, across two snow-dominated catchments in Canada and Sweden with contrasting geologic and topographic features. Using integrated subsurface–surface flow and transport modeling, combined with observational data, we simulate the partitioning of snowmelt into shallow flowpath, deep flowpath, evapotranspiration, and long-term storage. To generalize our findings beyond the two case studies, we design a suite of virtual experiments that systematically vary catchment slope and the extent of the hydraulic conductivity’s vertical and lateral heterogeneity. Results show that lateral heterogeneity in conductivity mediates the sensitivity of snowmelt partitioning to interannual variations in antecedent rainfall. While laterally homogeneous catchments display minimal sensitivity of snowmelt partitioning pattern to wet or dry Fall rainfall conditions, catchments with heterogeneous lateral structure store a significantly larger portion of snowmelt and reduce snow-sourced shallow flow contributions in years with high pre-snow rainfall than years with low pre-snow rainfall. In contrast, while slope and vertical conductivity architecture govern SPP, they play a limited role in mediating SPP’s temporal sensitivity to antecedent rainfall variability. These findings reveal that subsurface structure—including the extent of lateral subsurface heterogeneity—modulates the influence of climate variability on snowmelt partitioning and catchment hydrologic function. This has implications for predicting streamflow responses, groundwater recharge, and solute transport under changing climate regimes, and highlights the importance of representing time-variable hydrologic behavior in hydrologic models.

Plain Language Summary

Knowledge of how snowmelt moves through a watershed is essential for managing water supplies and ecosystems in snow-dominated regions. Snowmelt can either run quickly to streams or infiltrate to recharge groundwater, and this balance shifts from year to year with climate and watershed structure. We studied two snowy watersheds that differ in slope and subsurface properties to test how late-summer/fall rainfall (which sets pre-snowmelt wetness) shapes winter snowmelt pathways. In steep terrain with horizontally variable (patchy) subsurface hydraulic conductivity, dry pre-snowmelt conditions direct meltwater horizontally to streams, whereas wetter pre-snowmelt conditions favored deeper infiltration and storage. To generalize, we ran virtual experiments that systematically altered the extent of horizontal variability of hydraulic conductivity. A consistent signal emerged: patchy subsurface hydraulic conductivity produced stronger year-to-year swings in how snowmelt is partitioned between runoff and storage, while horizontally uniform subsurface hydraulic conductivity led to more predictable, stable watershed responses. These results show that antecedent wetness and the horizontal structure of subsurface permeability jointly control the time-variability of snowmelt partitioning. Incorporating these controls can improve forecasts of streamflow and groundwater recharge, and guide planning for flood and drought risks in snow-dependent watersheds under increasing climate variability.

Key Points

• Pre-snow rainfall variability alters snowmelt partitioning pattern (SPP) into storage versus runoff, with the magnitude of impact mediated by the extent of hydraulic conductivity’s lateral heterogeneity
• Catchments with greater lateral heterogeneity in hydraulic conductivity store (release) a larger (lesser) portion of snowmelt in years with large pre-snow rainfall
• Slope and vertical conductivity architecture influence SPP but exhibit limited modulation of SPP temporal sensitivity to pre-snow rainfall variability

Jordan Kraft Lambert, Colorado State University; Jennifer Martin, Colorado State University; Kim Stackhouse-Lawson, Colorado State University, and Sara Place, Colorado State University

Cowboys guided a herd of longhorn cattle through downtown Denver to celebrate the opening of the annual National Western Stock Show on Jan. 8, 2026. As ranchers bring their best cattle to compete for blue ribbons over the course of this month, it’s a good time to consider whether beef production can be part of a circular economy.

Circularity is an economic model where raw materials are responsibly sourced, waste products are put to best use and the system maximizes ecosystem functioning and human well-being.

As with most human activities, beef production provides a valuable contribution to human health while also impacting the natural environment, sometimes in negative ways.

We are innovators and researchers who live in Colorado and study the beef supply chain. Our work broadly focuses on investigating ways to make beef production more circular and sustainable.

Kim Stackhouse-Lawson and Sara Place are experts in cow burps and technologies to mitigate the methane associated with them. Jennifer Martin is an expert in meat processing and supply chains for byproducts like organ meats. Jordan Kraft Lambert is an expert in commercializing technologies that help farmers and ranchers steward the environment while feeding the world.

Beef is a source of complete protein. It has the full complement of amino acids humans need to build muscle and is a rich source of vitamin B12, which is necessary to ensure nervous system function and red blood cell formation. Beef produced in the U.S. each year meets the total protein needs of 40 million people and provides enough B12 to meet the needs of 137 million people, according to research.

In 2019, U.S. beef cattle production comprised about 3.7% of the country’s greenhouse gas emissions. Beef cattle production is also responsible for approximately 5% of U.S. water withdrawn from surface or groundwater, and 0.7% of the nation’s fossil fuel energy use.

New tech to reduce environmental impact

Cows are able to digest tough, fibrous plant material that humans, pigs and chickens can’t. This makes them an important part of a circular economy because they can digest what would otherwise be considered waste from other industries, like the grain left over from making beer and almond hulls from almond milk. By using these ingredients to feed cattle instead of letting it rot in landfills, U.S. feedlots decreased the amount of human-edible feeds required to produce more beef protein.

When cattle are being fed waste products like almond hulls and spent grain, it’s easy for producers to include feed additives, like herbs and custom-made molecules. These additions may reduce the cows’ methane production by changing how the microbes in their stomachs process carbohydrates.

For the same reason that cows can digest what would otherwise be considered waste, cows are able to eat grass. Grazing is important in dry regions like the mountains and high plains of Colorado. If the grass isn’t removed via grazing, it dries and becomes tinder for wildfire. In addition, many of these mountainous areas are too cold, rocky and steep to grow crops. Grazing can turn land that would otherwise be difficult to farm into food-producing land.

Until now, grazing required physical fences, which are costly to maintain and limit wildlife movement. But new technologies like virtual fencing allow Western Slope ranchers to use their smartphones to set digital boundaries. A collar on the cow beeps and buzzes to tell the cows where to go. Virtual boundaries are easy to change and visible only to the cow; thus, they support more environmentally-friendly grazing practices, protect streams and wildlife habitat and reduce wildfire fuel in dry seasons. While our recent research shows that this technology needs more development, it could be an important tool for beef’s role in a circular economy.

Beyond steak: Organ meats, pet treats and leather

In our experience, many U.S. consumers rarely eat cuts beyond steaks and ground beef — often due to a bad first experience with organ meats, like liver, or unfamiliarity with how to cook lesser-known cuts, like heart.

When customers won’t buy these cuts, Colorado’s beef producers who sell online or at farmers markets have to send them to the landfill. That costs the producer money and wastes the water, land and feed used to make these cuts.

Studies show that these cuts are among the most nutrient-dense parts of the animal, providing high levels of iron, B vitamins, choline and and other micronutrients. Making use of these lesser-known cuts can reduce emissions by using more of the animal and keep edible meat out of landfills, where it would otherwise rot, releasing greenhouse gases.

This does not mean anyone has to suffer through a meal of rubbery liver to save the planet. Many cultures globally value organ dishes, and U.S. tastes are expanding to include foods like lengua tacos made from beef tongue. Meanwhile, cooking tools such as sous vide can improve tenderness and juiciness by holding meat at precise temperatures for longer times.

Pets also benefit from eating organ meats, so these cuts are a key ingredient in pet foods and treats.

Consumer fashion choices matter too. About 270 million bovine hides are produced globally each year, and about 70% are turned into leather. Due to insufficient demand, remaining hides are burned or sent to the landfill, both of which release greenhouse gases.

Rather than letting these hides rot, they can be turned into leather, a durable, breathable and biodegradable high-performance material. When consumers choose to buy genuine leather boots, belts and car seats, they’re engaging in the circular economy.

For these reasons, Colorado State University is hosting Future Cowboy on Jan. 25, 2026, at the National Western Stock Show. It’s an event that lets Colorado foodies, fashionistas and cattle producers come together to explore circularity firsthand. The event will feature a leather fashion show, a ranch technology showcase and an opportunity try chef-prepared bison tongue and beef heart.

Jordan Kraft Lambert, Director of Ag Innovation and Partnerships, College of Business, Colorado State University; Jennifer Martin, Associate Professor of Animal Sciences, Colorado State University; Kim Stackhouse-Lawson, Professor of Animal Science, Colorado State University, and Sara Place, Associate Professor of Feedlot Systems, Colorado State University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Click the link to read the article on the NOAA website. Here’s an excerpt:

January 15, 2026

From the catastrophic wildfires in Southern California to historic low-water levels on the Mississippi River and record-low streamflow in the Northeast, drought and its impacts touched nearly every corner of the country. The year saw the unusual return of two La Niña events and devastating weather whiplash that brought historic floods to drought-stricken Texas. 2025 showed us that drought is even more devastating when compounded with other climate hazards, such as wildfire and flood. This list breaks down some significant drought-related events of 2025 that made 2025 a year of water extremes across the United States. 

Our thoughts are with those who lost loved ones, homes, and livelihoods in the Texas flooding and California wildfires. We hope for healing and comfort for those dealing with significant losses from these events.

Most of the U.S. Experienced Some Drought Last Year

Much of the West started and ended 2025 in drought, according to the U.S. Drought Monitor. Drought impacted the Upper Missouri River Basin and Northeastern U.S. as winter turned into spring, just as Extreme and Exceptional Drought (D3-D4) emerged in Florida and the Southwest. By late summer, drought largely improved in the East, only to emerge again in force in the Northeast U.S. In fall, drought developed in the Midwest and Southeast, and expanded in the Southern Plains and West. New Year’s Eve found drought covering 35.8% of the Nation. 

Below is a slideshow of US Drought Monitor maps for 2025.

2025: A Warm Year Overall  

Across much of the U.S., 2025 was a warm year, with annual temperature averages of up to 5° Fahrenheit (F) above normal in most areas. The greatest departures were in the Great Basin, Northern Rockies, and along the southern border. A few spotty areas around the Nation were slightly cooler than normal in 2025, particularly east of the Mississippi River. 

2025 brought a mix of precipitation to the U.S. The Pacific Northwest, Mountain West, Midwest, South, and Northeast were drier than normal. Conditions were particularly poor in the Mountain West and South Texas, where annual precipitation was 50-90% of normal. Southern California, the Dakotas, and southeastern Arizona were wetter than normal. 

Heatwave Leads to Early Snowmelt, Runoff in Western U.S. 

In the West, about 70% of the water supply comes from snow stored in the mountains. Across the West, snow water equivalent on April 1, 2025 was near-normal in most northern watersheds and below normal in watersheds south of the Central Rockies. But April and May brought heatwaves to the mountains, melting snow out much earlier than normal. Rapid melt out occurred across Utah, Colorado, and New Mexico, pushing some basins from above-average snowpack to snow drought conditions in under a month, with snow disappearing 1-4 weeks early. 

La Niña Double Dips 

2025 was shaped by two La Niña events. La Niña is one of two phases of the El Niño-Southern Oscillation. La Niña typically brings cool, wet winter conditions to the Northwest U.S., and warm, dry winter conditions to the Southern U.S. The first La Niña was a borderline event, which peaked around January 2025, and then waned by the end of spring. The second was a little stronger, but still considered weak compared to most historical La Niña events. It began developing around August and continues through winter 2025-26.

Low Water Levels on the Mighty Mississippi

Extremely dry conditions across the Ohio River Basin and southern portions of the Midwest in August and September led to the rapid expansion of drought and decreased flows on the Ohio River and portions of the Lower Mississippi River. In Mid-September, the Ohio River was contributing only 8% of the overall water flow in the Lower Mississippi River, compared to its typical 50% contribution. The Ohio River at Cairo, Illinois (where the Ohio meets the Mississippi River) fell below 10 feet. 

Drought Peaked in November at 36%

In late November, the 2025 drought reached its national peak, with 36.65% of the U.S. in drought (D1-D4) according to the U.S. Drought Monitor. November 2025 temperatures were above to much above average throughout most of the Western and Central U.S. Idaho, Nevada, Oregon, Texas, and Utah set new statewide records for November average temperatures. Portions of the northern Great Basin, Northwest, and Rockies and much of the country east of the Mississippi River saw below-average precipitation.

Winter Brings Rain Instead of Snow to the West

Winter 2025-2026 kicked off with warm weather and rain instead of snow. Nearly every major river basin in the West experienced a November among the top 5 warmest on record. On December 7, 2025, snow cover across the West was the lowest amount for that date in the MODIS satellite record (since 2001), at 90,646 square miles. Water Year 2026 (October 1, 2025–September 30, 2026) precipitation to date was near or above median for many parts of the West in late December. However, much warmer-than-normal temperatures caused precipitation to fall as rain instead of snow in many basins, leading to snow drought despite wetter-than-normal conditions across most of the West. At the end of 2025, snow drought was most severe across much of the Sierra Nevada in California, the Cascade Range in Washington and Oregon, the Blue Mountains of Oregon, and the Great Basin in Nevada.

Keep Up With the Latest Conditions and Outlooks 

Find maps, publicly accessible data, and recent research about drought and wildfire on drought.gov. You can also subscribe to NIDIS emails for the latest regional drought updates, webinars, and news in our drought early warning system regions. To stay up to date on the latest drought conditions, sign up to receive drought alerts for your city/zip code when the National Weather Service updates their U.S. Drought Outlooks.  

Shuang-Ye Wu, University of Dayton

The summer of 2025 brought unprecedented flash flooding across the U.S., with the central and eastern regions hit particularly hard. These storms claimed hundreds of lives across Texas, Kentucky and several other states and caused widespread destruction.

At the same time, every hurricane that formed, including the three powerful Category 5 storms, steered clear of the U.S. mainland.

Both scenarios were unusual – and they were largely directed by the polar jet stream.

What is a jet stream?

Jet streams are narrow bands of high-speed winds in the upper troposphere, around four to eight miles (seven to 13 kilometers) above the surface of the Earth, flowing west to east around the entire planet. They form where strong temperature contrasts exist.

Each hemisphere hosts two primary jet streams:

The polar jet stream is typically found near 50 to 60 degrees latitude, across Canada in the Northern Hemisphere, where cold polar air meets warmer midlatitude air. It plays a major role in modulating weather systems in the midlatitudes, including the continental U.S. With winds up to 200 mph, it’s also the usual steering force that brings those bitter cold storms down from Canada.

The subtropical jet stream is typically closer to 30 degrees latitude, which in the Northern Hemisphere crosses Florida. It follows the boundary between tropical air masses and subtropical air masses. It’s generally the weaker and steadier of the two jet streams.

These jet streams act like atmospheric conveyor belts, steering storm systems across continents.

Stronger (faster) jet streams can intensify storm systems, whereas weaker (slower) jet streams can stall storm systems, leading to prolonged rainfall and flooding.

2025’s intense summer of flooding

Most summers, the polar jet stream retreats northward into Canada and weakens considerably, leaving the continental U.S. with calmer weather. When rainstorms pop up, they’re typically caused by localized convection due to uneven heating of the land – picture afternoon pop-up thunderstorms.

During the summer of 2025, however, the polar jet stream shifted unusually far south and steered larger storm systems into the midlatitudes of the U.S. At the same time, the jet stream weakened, with two critical consequences.

First, instead of moving storms quickly eastward, the sluggish jet stream stalled storm systems in place, causing prolonged downpours and flash flooding.

Second, a weak jet stream tends to meander more dramatically. Its broad north-south swings in summer 2025 funneled humid air from the Gulf of Mexico deep into the interior, supplying storm systems with abundant moisture and intensifying rainfall.

This moisture surge was amplified by unusually warm conditions over the Atlantic and Gulf regions. A warmer ocean evaporates more water, and warmer air holds a greater amount of moisture. As a result, extraordinary levels of atmospheric moisture were directed into storm systems, fueling stronger convection and heavier precipitation.

Finally, the wavy jet stream became locked in place by persistent high-pressure systems, anchoring storm tracks over the same regions. This led to repeated episodes of heavy rainfall and catastrophic flooding across much of the continental U.S. The same behavior can leave other regions facing days of unrelenting heat waves.

The jet stream buffered US in hurricane season

The jet stream also played a role in the 2025 hurricane season.

Given its west-to-east wind direction, the southward dip of the jet stream – along with a weak high pressure system over the Atlantic – helped steer all five hurricanes away from the U.S. mainland.

Most of the year’s 13 tropical storms and hurricanes veered off into the Atlantic before even reaching the Caribbean.

Climate change plays a role in these shifts

So, how does climate change influence the jet stream?

The strength of jet streams is controlled by the temperature contrast between the equatorial and polar regions.

A higher temperature contrast leads to stronger jet streams. As the planet warms, the Arctic is heating up at more than twice the global average rate, and that is reducing the equator-to-pole temperature difference. As that temperature gradient weakens, jet streams lose their strength and become more prone to stalling.

This increases the risk of persistent extreme rainfall events.

Weaker jet streams also meander more, producing larger waves and more erratic behavior. This increases the likelihood of unusual shifts, such as the southward swing of the jet stream in the summer of 2025.

A recent study found that amplified planetary waves in the jet streams, which can cause weather systems to stay in place for days or weeks, are occurring three times more frequently than in the 1950s.

What’s ahead?

As the global climate continues to warm, extreme weather events driven by erratic behavior of jet streams are expected to become more common. Combined with additional moisture that warmer oceans and air masses supply, these events will intensify, producing storms that are more frequent and more destructive to societies and ecosystems.

In the short term, the polar jet stream will be shaping the winter ahead. It is most powerful in winter, when it dips southward into the central and even southern U.S., driving frequent storm systems, blizzards and cold air outbreaks.

Shuang-Ye Wu, Professor of Geology and Environmental Geosciences, University of Dayton

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Click the link to read the article on the Inside Climate News website (Bob Berwyn):

December 4, 2025

As global warming accelerates, about 480 million people in North Africa and the Arabian Peninsula face intensifying and in some places unsurvivable heat, as well as drought, famine and the risk of mass displacement, the World Meteorological Organization warned Thursday.

The 22 Arab region countries covered in the WMO’s new State of the Climate report produce about a quarter of the world’s oil, yet directly account for only 5 to 7 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions from their own territories. The climate paradox positions the region as both a linchpin of the global fossil-fuel economy and one of the most vulnerable geographic areas.

WMO Secretary-General Celeste Saulo said extreme heat is pushing communities in the region to their physical limits. Droughts show no sign of letting up in one of the world’s most water-stressed regions, but at the same time, parts of it have been devastated by record rains and flooding, she added.

“Human health, ecosystems and economies can’t cope with extended spells of more than 50 degrees Celsius. It is simply too hot to handle,” she said. 

The region in the report stretches from the Atlantic coast of West Africa to the mountains of the Levant and the deserts of the Arabian Peninsula. It spans more than 5 million square miles, roughly the area of the continental United States west of the Mississippi River. Most people live near river valleys or in coastal cities dependent on fragile water supplies, making the entire region acutely sensitive to even small shifts in temperature and rainfall.

Egypt’s Nile Delta, one of the world’s lowest-lying and most densely populated coastal plains, is particularly vulnerable. The delta is sinking and regional sea levels are rising rapidly, putting about 40 million residents and more than half of the country’s agricultural output at risk. 

The most recent Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report warns that large parts of the Nile Delta will face chronic flooding, salinized soils, and permanent inundation under nearly every future warming scenario. Some projections indicate that a third of the area’s farmland will be underwater by 2050. Because the delta is so low and flat, even modest sea-level rise will push saltwater far inland. 

The new WMO report shows that the foundations of daily life across the Arab region, including farms, reservoirs and aquifers that feed and sustain millions, are being pushed to the brink by human-caused warming.

Across northwestern Africa’s sun-blasted rim, the Maghreb, six years of drought have slashed wheat yields, forcing countries such as Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia to import more grain, even as global prices rise. 

In parts of Morocco, reservoirs have fallen to record low levels. The government has enacted water restrictions in major cities, including limits on household use, and curtailed irrigation for farmers. Water systems in Lebanon have already crumbled under alternating floods and droughts, and in Iraq and Syria, small farmers are abandoning their land as rivers shrink and seasonal rains become unreliable.

The WMO report ranked 2024 as the hottest year ever measured in the Arab world. Summer heatwaves spread and persisted across Syria, Iraq, Jordan and Egypt. Parts of Iraq recorded six to 12 days with highs above 50 degrees Celsius (122 degrees Fahrenheit), conditions that are life-threatening even for healthy adults. Across the region, the report noted an increase in the number of heat-wave days in recent decades while humidity has declined. The dangerous combination speeds soil drying and crop damage. 

By contrast, other parts of the region—the United Arab Emirates, Oman and southern Saudi Arabia—were swamped by destructive record rains and flooding during 2024. The extremes will test the limits of adaptation, said Rola Dashti, executive secretary of the Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia, who often works with the WMO to analyze climate impacts.

Climate extremes in 2024 killed at least 300 people in the region. The impacts are hitting countries already struggling with internal conflicts, and where the damage is under-insured and under-reported. In Sudan alone, flooding damaged more than 40 percent of the country’s farmland. 

But with 15 of the world’s most arid countries in the region, water scarcity is the top issue. Governments are investing in desalination, wastewater recycling and other measures to bolster water security, 

but the adaptation gap between risks and readiness is still widening.

The worst is ahead, Dashti said in a WMO statement, with climate models showing a “potential rise in average temperatures of up to 5 degrees Celsius (9 degrees Fahrenheit) by the end of the century under high-emission scenarios.” The new report is important, she said, because it “empowers the region to prepare for tomorrow’s climate realities.”

Click the link to read the article on the Aspen Journalism website (Paul Andersen):

November 15, 2025

As generous and readily available as local land grants were, the Roaring Fork Valley was small potatoes compared with enormous public land grants that mark vast Western landscapes today and could foreshadow a similar trend if the political powers that be in Washington take on the directives and intentions of the current Trump administration.

“… a shady world of back-room deals, special interests and cronyism.”

— Erica Rosenberg, Western Lands Project

The future of federal public lands lies in the hands of the U.S. Congress as empowered by the American public. Whatever winds of influence and ideology blow through Washington also stir across vast acreages of American lands in the public domain of the commons.

In Aspen, Pitkin County and the greater Roaring Fork Valley, land giveaways have been many, although nothing near the scale of the decades preceding Aspen’s founding when, throughout the American West, land grants were excessive and often rife with fraud and scandal. By the time Aspen was settled in the 1880s, the outrages of earlier land grants had received pushback by a concerned public and were acted upon by congressional oversight that ended the most egregious giveaways.

Still, plenty of public land was doled out regionally to mining interests, homesteaders, railroads, schools, churches and others for what today seem like absurdly low valuations. An Aspen Journalism analysis conducted by Data Editor Laurine Lassalle of records available through the Bureau of Land Management (BLM), General Land Office and Pitkin County turned up 1,175 patents issued in Pitkin County between 1880 and 1900. Information below is based on a further review of 97 of those patents. 

For example, Roaring Fork Valley rancher Fred Light (1856-1931) filed for 160 acres of public lands in 1883 and, in 1886, paid $200 when the patent was approved. Light bought the land under a federal provision that invited homesteaders to file for patent under the 1820 Sale Cash Entry Act. The price was $1.25 per acre, about $40 per acre in today’s dollars.

Light’s “Box L Ranch,” in the Capitol Creek Valley, grew by additional acquisitions, including Light’s purchase of his wife’s family’s nearby ranch. A tribute written about Light as a civic leader recounted the profitability and size of his holdings. “Owning and operating with skill and success one of the finest ranches in Pitkin County, which is of ample size, comprising nine hundred and forty acres, and sufficiently fertile and productive to yield abundantly of cereals and hay and liberally support large numbers of cattle and horses. Frederick Light, of near Snow Mass, is so situated that he may laugh adversity to scorn and feel secure of an expanding and substantial prosperity during the remainder of his days.”

Light’s former homestead has, of course, escalated in value since his ownership. Today, the average value per acre in the Capitol Creek Valley is $69,000 for agricultural properties and $171,500 for agricultural/residential, according to an analysis of Pitkin County Assessor’s Office records. 

Under a different federal land grant program, mining claims were granted to anyone who could prove that a property was economically viable, a stipulation of the Mining Law of 1872. Under this law, which is still on the books and widely considered antiquated, miners paid $5 per acre for both surface and mineral rights. Filers would often accrue multiple claims, as did a number of local partnerships from the early 1880s in Aspen’s first acquired mineral patents.

In 1884, a partnership of 10 individuals — including Josiah Deane, Aspen’s first lawyer and later patriarch of the T-Lazy-7 Ranch on Maroon Creek — was issued a patent on 4.49 acres for a mineral lode called “Mountain Ranger,” located near Little Annie Basin on the backside of Aspen Mountain. They paid $22.45 on the location claim first filed in 1881, the year the city of Aspen was incorporated with Deane’s legal guidance.

In 1884, a six-way partnership filed for a patent on a 5.85-acre mineral patent claim named “Grand Prize,” for which they paid $29.25. The partnership included David R.C. Brown and Henry “Grandpap” Cowenhoven, two of Aspen’s founding fathers who had arrived here in the summer of 1880 by wagons over Taylor Pass — the first wagons to enter the Roaring Fork Valley.

Brown is recorded in another partnership filed in 1887 with three others for the “Monongahila,” a mineral lode of 8.31 acres for which they paid $41.55. Brown and Cowenhoven partnered again in 1889 with four others on a claim called “Idlewild” of 13.04 acres for which they paid $65.20. Brown and Cowenhoven (sometimes in the name of Cowenhoven’s wife, Margaret, and Brown’s wife, Catherine, the daughter of the Cowenhovens’) appear in numerous entries, attributing to sound investments that made them Aspen’s first self-made millionaires.

Another Aspen namesake, Henry Tourtelotte, also appears in a number of entries, establishing patents on claims named “Tanner,” “Buckhorn,” “Castle” and “Silver Bell.” Many of these claim names are familiar today as mountain peaks, ski runs and campgrounds. Another local mining scion, Horace Augustus Warner (HAW) Tabor, shows up in many records associated with Montezuma Basin and the Montezuma claim, a mine he owned that remains visible today at a nosebleed altitude high above Castle Creek. Tabor, known as “The Silver King of Leadville,” brought his entrepreneurial reputation to Aspen along with an opera singer named Baby Doe with whom he had a notorious love affair.

Prominent founding Aspenites David Hyman and Jerome B. Wheeler are also listed in numerous patent entries as among the earliest investors in Aspen mining claims such as “Mose,” “Little Maggie,” “Dolly Dot,” “Morning Star,” “Little Nell,” “Alaska,” “Siberia” and “Durant.” Hyman and Wheeler represented Eastern capital, which was essential to Aspen’s development and which enabled the nascent city to sustain ore production years before the city’s two railroads ran tracks to Aspen and gave it economic viability. Hyman was a prominent lawyer from Cincinnati and was Aspen’s first major mining investor. Wheeler, for whom the Hotel Jerome and the Wheeler Opera House are named, was married into the Macy family wealth, owners of New York City’s first department store.

The Smuggler Mining Co., whose name still marks the mountain and open space playground bounding Aspen to the east, shows patents that provided access and ownership to one of Aspen’s richest silver mines. It was from the Smuggler Mine in 1893 that the largest-ever nugget of almost-pure silver, weighing more than 1,800 pounds, was broken into three pieces so it could be extracted and paraded on a horse-drawn wagon through the thriving city at the verge of the Silver Crash of 1893 when silver was demonetized and the U.S. currency shifted to the gold standard, abruptly and dramatically curtailing Aspen’s thriving mining industry.

Today, historic patented mining claims hold far-different valuations, not for industrial mining potential, but as real estate valued as high-end properties in Aspen’s resort economy. For what the records show as “mines” in Aspen, the valuation goes from an historic low of $4.50 per acre to $500,000 per acre today.

The Denver & Rio Grande Western (D&RGW) and the Colorado Midland built their tracks to Aspen from Leadville, surmounting the Continental Divide on trestles, through tunnels and around winding switchbacks, the construction of which required monumental physical labor. Those rights-of-way remain public thoroughfares today as the Rio Grande Trail (D&RGW) and Highway 82 (Colorado Midland).

The railroads were granted swaths of public lands as an incentive to build tracks and open the West to resource development. Roaring Fork commerce served silver mining and agriculture for which two competing railroads laid tracks over and through the mountains. Unlike earlier railroad ventures in the U.S. that brought commerce and trade to the nation and received vast land grants, Aspen’s two local railroads were granted only their rights-of-way, which still added up to considerable acreage, albeit linear and confined to specific corridors.

Cashing out the commons

As generous and readily available as local land grants were, the Roaring Fork Valley was small potatoes compared with enormous public land grants that mark vast Western landscapes today and could foreshadow a similar trend if the political powers that be in Washington take on the directives and intentions of the current Trump administration.

In a comprehensive 2009 report published by the Western Lands Project, “Carving Up the Commons: Congress & Our Public Lands,” its author, Janine Blaeloch, lays out the history of public land divestitures and describes the many ways public lands can become privatized, something the Trump administration has been applying as a means of capitalizing on extractive national assets. This is not the first time a Republican administration has attempted to commoditize the commons.

“Ronald Reagan’s Interior Secretary, James Watt, famously proposed during Reagan’s presidency (1981-1989) that public lands be sold to pay down the federal deficit,” Blaeloch wrote. “The Bush administration’s (2001-2009) budget for 2007 called for the sale of $800 million worth of U.S. Forest Service lands over five years and $182 million in public lands managed by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) in the same time period.

“These periodic high-profile, sweeping, ideologically driven land disposal schemes gain the public’s attention because they are so over the top. What the public is largely not aware of is the fact that smaller scale disposal schemes are being enacted every day — often by the same politicians who declaim their love for the environment and public land.”

Legislative initiatives are receiving strong encouragement from the current Trump administration to parcel and sell off, trade or otherwise divest national public lands and put them into private hands, severing existing protections, means of preservation and ultimately public access. Although such current directives may lead to a new precedent of commoditization, they are part of a long and controversial history.

On April 23, historian and blog phenomenon Heather Cox Richardson wrote in her daily “Letters From an American” a warning that the Department of Agriculture (which administers the U.S. Forest Service) and the Bureau of Land Management (which is under the Department of the Interior) have been gearing up for a wholesale liquidation of the American commons.

“Today,” wrote Cox Richardson, “the White House under President Donald J. Trump celebrated Earth Day by announcing that the White House champions ‘opening more federal lands and waters for oil, gas and critical mineral extraction.’”

Cox Richardson pointed out that, in fact, public lands already benefit the nation by generating billions of dollars a year for the United States through tourism. 

“Since the 1970s,” she wrote, “the right wing has come to see the public ownership of lands as an affront to the idea that individuals should be able to use the resources they believe God has put there for them to use.

“Developers have encouraged that ideology, for privatization of America’s Western lands has always meant that they ended up in the hands of a few wealthy individuals.” 

The conservative political agenda outlined in Project 2025, she noted, calls for a giveaway to oil and gas and mining interests by “opening up more of our federal land to energy development, rolling back protections on federal lands, and selling off more land to private developers.”

Interior Secretary Doug Burgum made it clear in his January confirmation hearings, Cox Richardson wrote, “that he sees selling the public lands as a source of revenue, referring to them as ‘America’s balance sheet.’”

“We’ve got $36 trillion in debt,” Burgum said, as quoted by Cox Richardson, “but we never talk about the assets, and the assets are the land and minerals. The Interior Department has got close to 500 million acres of surface, 700 million acres of subsurface, and over 2 billion acres of offshore. That’s the balance sheet of America. I believe we ought to have a deep inventory of all the assets in America. We ought to understand … what [is] our assets: $100 trillion, $200 trillion? We could be in great shape as a country.”

Bipartisan support for public lands

The Trump-era initiative to monetize public lands hit a roadblock, however, after bipartisan support for public lands overwhelmed the direction Burgum and the Trump administration had fomented both as an ongoing policy directive and as described in the GOP’s Big Beautiful Bill, which was voted in by Congress and signed into law by the president July 4.

A draft version of that bill had called for selling 0.5% to 0.75% of  U.S. Forest Service and BLM lands in 11 Western states and for selling 0.25% to 0.5% of BLM lands within 5 miles of the border of a U.S. population center.

“A proposal to sell federal public lands,” Caitlyn Kim on Colorado Public Radio News reported June 29, “has officially been taken out of the Republicans’ spending and tax bill after facing strong pushback from hunters, fishermen, outdoor recreation users and, most importantly, Republicans in the U.S. Senate and House.”

U.S. Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah), the chief elected Republican advocate for the sell-off, announced the removal of the public lands divestiture from the bill, blaming the decision on the budget reconciliation process and explaining that he could not get a safeguard to guarantee that the land would be sold only to American families.

CPR News reported that Lee “said he continues to believe the federal government ‘owns far too much land’ that he said is mismanaged and that ‘massive swaths of the West are being locked away from the people who live there.’ He indicated that he wasn’t giving up altogether, adding that he would work with President Donald Trump to ‘put underutilized federal land to work for American families.’”

However, according to the CPR report, “the decision [to delete public-land sales] also came after other Senate Republicans from the West said they opposed the idea and would offer an amendment to get it taken out of the bill. Five House Republicans also said they would vote against the GOP’s Big Beautiful Bill if it remained in.”

Colorado lawmakers celebrated the removal of public-land sales from the GOP bill as a defining endorsement for the value most Americans feel toward protecting the American commons. Rep. Joe Neguse (D-Colo.) wrote on social media: “The American people — and our public lands — have won!”

CPR News reported that Neguse and Rep. Jeff Hurd (R-Colo.) had issued a joint statement opposing public-land sales in an acknowledgment of unity for protecting a key American legacy that crosses the aisles of Congress. “Republican or Democrat — representing red, purple or blue districts — one sentiment continues to ring true: Public lands are not for sale.”

Sen. Michael Bennet (D-Colo.) wrote on social media: “This is a huge victory for Colorado and the West. Thank you to everyone who made their voice heard and fought back against this dangerous provision. America’s public lands belong to all of us.”

“Protecting public lands is the most nonpartisan issue in the country,” Chris Wood, president and CEO of Trout Unlimited, said in a statement quoted by CPR News. “This is certainly not the first attempt to privatize or transfer our public lands, and it won’t be the last. We must stay vigilant and defend the places we love to fish, hike, hunt and explore.”

Taking a stand on the land

Despite this most recent halt of public land sales, the threat is far from over, warns Blaeloch, whose 20-year advocacy mission before the Western Lands Project ceded its role to Wild Earth Guardians in 2016 was to “scrutinize public land trades, sales, giveaways and any project that would cede public land, and their impacts on habitat and wildlife, natural resources, land use and communities. The goal of Western Lands Project is to keep public lands public.”

“We are about to return to the Golden Age of land acquisitions for private benefit,” Blaeloch said in an Aspen Journalism interview in April. In her focused role as public lands defender, Blaeloch said, “We realized that the Forest Service and BLM conduct hundreds of land deals every year, mostly without public involvement. I like clarity and transparency, and I thought it was unfair that deals were being made without the public interest.”

Erica Rosenberg, a former president of Western Lands Project, concludes in the introduction to Blaeloch’s report: “Congressional processes threaten to trade away, sell or give away our public land heritage — piece by piece — through a shady world of back-room deals, special interests and cronyism.”

So, Blaeloch, digging into her background as a career environmental planner, has pushed back with the goal of making federal land management agencies accountable by tracking land deals, educating the public at the grassroots, and also by educating Congress on what has long been a veiled aspect of American land use on the federal level.

Free land for railroad and lumber industries 

Blaeloch’s report for the Western Lands Project stated that the most opportune era in U.S. history for collusion in acquiring public lands dirt cheap or at no cost at all took place from the mid-1800s up to the early 1900s through manipulative deals benefitting large railroad interests and the fast-growing lumber industry.

“Between 1850 and 1870,” writes Blaeloch, “the federal government granted 131 million acres of public land to railroad corporations as incentive for westward expansion. These railroad land grants comprised one of the largest categories of public land disposal in U.S. history, after cash sale, homestead grants to individuals, and grants to the states for education and other purposes.”

For example, Blaeloch reports, “the Northern Pacific Railroad, which was to construct its line from St. Paul, Minnesota, to Tacoma, Washington, was granted 38.9 million acres, including 9.6 million acres in Washington state. Several other land grants were added to what would more than a century later become the Burlington Northern-Santa Fe Railroad, for an additional total of more than 47 million acres.”

These generous railroad land grants were typically given in alternating square miles extending out from the railroad lines and forming a “checkerboard” land-ownership pattern of public/private land that is still visible on many maps and to anyone who chances to gaze out the window of an airplane while flying over the clear-cut forests of the Pacific Northwest.

Land giveaways to railroads were originally intended to encourage Western settlement as the American frontier expanded. It was assumed that land along the railroad lines would become desirable, enabling the railroads and federal government to capitalize by selling their alternating public/private parcels to settlers who would benefit from nearby rail service.

“In fact,” writes Blaeloch, “the railroads kept much of their grant land, and the federal government designated many of its checkerboards as national forest. Nearly all of the railroad land ‘grants’ were in fact intended to be temporary transfers of public land that the railroads were supposed to sell in turn to ‘actual settlers’ to raise money for railroad construction.” 

Some railroad companies kept their land grants even though they failed to build, and some transferred former public lands and the wealth they generated to cronies, including elected officials.

“By 1870,” writes Blaeloch, “the public had grown disgusted with the scandals and waste flowing from the railroad land grants, and this particular brand of public land giveaway ceased. By this time, too, the public was increasingly concerned about having reached the limits of free land and resources, and there was great controversy around the rapid liquidation of the country’s forests.”

By the end of the 19th century, the debate between forest preservation and utilitarian wise use was at full pitch. Preservation was strongly advocated by Sierra Club founder John Muir and his disciples. Utilitarian wise use was advocated by Gifford Pinchot, the country’s first Forest Service chief under President Theodore Roosevelt. Timber and mining industries actively lobbied for Pinchot’s view of the land as commodity, countering Muir’s view of the natural landscape as a necessary and valid public benefit.

Despoiling the garden

In his 1982 book, “Westward in Eden: The Public Lands and the Conservation Movement,” author William K. Wyant, a former Washington correspondent for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, raises, as a popular conception, the idea of the land as ultimately exploitable: “The American has usually seen real estate as expendable,” he writes. “It is something of which there is assumed to be plenty more … somewhere else.”

When Ronald Reagan won the presidency in 1980, writes Wyant, the Republican mandate was to shrink government and its influences, and to cut regulations on industry. This afforded a propitious launch of the Sagebrush Rebellion, which advocated shifting federal lands in the West to the states. “The United States had at the outset an incomparable Garden of Eden to dress and keep, as the Old Testament phrases it,” wrote Wyant. “Its husbandry has been at sometimes profligate, greedy and short-sighted and at other times blessed with extraordinary vision.”

Wyant idealistically describes the continental United States as a vast and pristine wilderness, “a domain of incredible richness — virgin forests, great rivers, the prairies and high plains, the shining Rockies, the arid and sandy wastes and the golden Pacific shore. The early settlers found it majestic and unspoiled, and they plunged into it, defiant of restraints.”

But without restraints, the commons suffered immeasurable abuse and exploitation, as a statement from Pinchot made clear in the early 20th century: “Outside the tropics, American forests were the richest and most productive on Earth, and the best able to repay good management. But nobody had begun to manage any part of them with an eye to the future. On the contrary, the greatest, the swiftest, the most efficient and the most appalling wave of forest destruction in human history was then swelling to its climax in the United States; and the American people were glad of it.”

Rapacious companies such as logging giant Weyerhaeuser saw forested public lands not as cathedrals, as did Muir, but as wood lots. By 1974, cites Wyant, Weyerhaeuser owned outright more than 5.5 million acres, a holding bigger than the state of Massachusetts.

U.S. Sen. Gale McGee (1915-92) who served in Congress from 1959 to 1977 as one of the last Democrats to hail from Wyoming, in testimony in 1971, said, “Today, the once-great forests of our nation have been depleted to the point that would shame Paul 

Bunyan. It is time to cease measuring the value of our public forests on the scale of board-feet of timber.”

Vast land giveaways were enabled by the 1862 Railroad Act, writes Wyant, when a number of private railroad companies were allocated $65 million in federal loans and handed a total 110 million acres of public domain. In 1864, an even more generous provision was made when the Northern Pacific Railroad, then building a 2,128-mile line from St. Paul to Tacoma received millions of acres of public lands, including about one-fourth of the state of North Dakota and 15% of Montana.

This largesse was coupled with political influence from railroad magnates who lobbied Congress for more land. Support for outrageous public behests also came from politicians who favored rail subsidies in exchange for locating lines in cities and towns that benefitted their constituents in blatant acts of patronage. Industry and business were in on the take at the expense of the commons.

“All in all,” writes Wyant, “Congress gave to the railroads an area nearly twice the size of Colorado and one-third as large as Alaska.” Another gift of the commons came to the railroads in the Forest Management Act of 1897, which allowed land-holders within newly designated and protected forest reserves to exchange, acre-for-acre, their holdings for lands that were outside the reserves.

Under this act, writes Wyant, rail barons were permitted to swap millions of acres of mountainous, desert, cutover or otherwise useless land for “in lieu” timber acreage of far greater value. The railroads then made deals with lumber companies by not only selling their holdings, but transporting for a profit the timber that was harvested from them. Loggers and railroads latched onto the mutual benefits of collusion in the exploitation of public lands, with no evident moral, ethical or ecological considerations.

After a hue and cry of protest from rising ranks of conservationists, the “in lieu” provision was repealed in 1905. However, eight years of rampant profiteering had already privatized huge chunks of the commons.

“In addition to the scars on the land,” writes Blaeloch, “the behavior pattern, too, was carried forward, and the companies established a paradigm that brought them enormous profits at the expense of the public interest, neatly disguised as ‘win-win’ deals. It is a pattern that shows itself time and again in land deals driven by politics, privilege and greed.”

A regional comparison is necessary to grasp the scale of land acquisitions by logging companies: The White River National Forest covers 2.3 million acres, one of the largest forests in the United States. The Emmerson family, which owns and operates Sierra Pacific Industries, a family legacy company since 1949 that logs usable lumber after forest fires and sells it to lumber retailers, owns 2.4 million acres in three Western states: California, Oregon and Washington. How did one family carve out of the American commons acreage greater than the largest national forest in Colorado? Timber.

Still, Wyant surmises, rising ranks of professional and educated conservationists have achieved national influence in the aftermath of public lands feeding frenzies. “An impressive machinery for the defense of the environment and public lands has been built,” he concludes. “Until it is more firmly in place and has the steady acceptance of the American people, we shall owe a heavy debt to the corporal’s guard of environmental lawyers and professional conservationists who man the ramparts while others sleep.”

Click the link to read the release on the University of California San Diego website:

November 03, 2025

A new University of California San Diego study uncovers a hidden driver of global crop vulnerability: the origin of rainfall itself.

Published in Nature Sustainability, the research traces atmospheric moisture back to its source—whether it evaporated from the ocean or from land surfaces such as soil, lakes and forests. When the sun heats these surfaces, water turns into vapor, rises into the atmosphere, and later falls again as rain.

Ocean-sourced moisture travels long distances on global winds, often through large-scale weather systems such as atmospheric rivers, monsoons, and tropical storms. In contrast, land-sourced moisture—often called recycled rainfall—comes from water that evaporates nearby soils and vegetation, feeding local storms. The study finds that this balance between oceanic and terrestrial (land) sources strongly influences a region’s drought risk and crop productivity.

“Our work reframes drought risk—it’s not just about how much it rains, but where that rain comes from,” said Yan Jiang, the study’s lead author and postdoctoral scholar at UC San Diego with a joint appointment at the School of Global Policy and Strategy and Scripps Institution of Oceanography. “Understanding the origin of rainfall and whether it comes from oceanic or land sources, gives policymakers and farmers a new tool to predict and mitigate drought stress before it happens.”

A New Way to Forecast Drought Risk

Using nearly two decades of satellite data, Jiang and co-author Jennifer Burney of Stanford University measured how much of the world’s rainfall comes from land-based evaporation. They discovered that when more than about one-third of rainfall originates from land, croplands are significantly more vulnerable to drought, soil moisture loss and yield declines – likely because ocean-sourced systems tend to deliver heavier rainfall, while land-sourced systems tend to deliver less reliable showers, increasing the chance of water deficits during critical crop growth stages.

This insight provides a new way for farmers and policymakers to identify which regions are most at risk — and to plan accordingly.

“For farmers in areas that rely heavily on land-originating moisture — like parts of the Midwest or eastern Africa — local water availability becomes the deciding factor for crop success,” Jiang explained. “Changes in soil moisture or deforestation can have immediate, cascading impacts on yields.”

Two Global Hotspots: The U.S. Midwest and East Africa

The study highlights two striking hotspots of vulnerability: the U.S. Midwest and tropical East Africa.

In the Midwest, Jiang notes, droughts have become more frequent and intense in recent years — even in one of the world’s most productive and technologically advanced farming regions.

“Our findings suggest that the Midwest’s high reliance on land-sourced moisture, from surrounding soil and vegetation, could amplify droughts through what we call ‘rainfall feedback loops,’” Jiang said. “When the land dries out, it reduces evaporation, which in turn reduces future rainfall—creating a self-reinforcing drought cycle.”

Because this region is also a major supplier to global grain markets, disruptions there have ripple effects far beyond U.S. borders. Jiang suggests that Midwestern producers may need to pay closer attention to soil moisture management, irrigation efficiency and timing of planting to avoid compounding drought stress.

In contrast, East Africa faces a more precarious but still reversible situation. Rapid cropland expansion and loss of surrounding rainforests threaten to undermine the very moisture sources that sustain rainfall in the region.

“This creates a dangerous conflict,” Jiang said. “Farmers are clearing forests to grow more crops, but those forests help generate the rainfall that the crops depend on. If that moisture source disappears, local food security will be at greater risk.”

However, Jiang sees opportunity as well as risk:

“Eastern Africa is on the front line of change, but there is still time to act. Smarter land management — like conserving forests and restoring vegetation — can protect rainfall and sustain agricultural growth.”

Forests as Rainmakers

The research underscores that forests and natural ecosystems are crucial allies in farming. Forests release vast amounts of water vapor into the atmosphere through evaporation and transpiration (when plants produce moisture), effectively seeding the clouds that bring rain to nearby croplands.

“Upland forests are like natural rainmakers,” Jiang said. “Protecting these ecosystems isn’t just about biodiversity—it’s about sustaining agriculture.”

A Tool for Smarter Land and Water Management

Jiang’s research provides a new scientific framework connecting land management, rainfall patterns and crop planning — a relationship that could become central to future drought resilience strategies.

The study’s novel satellite-based mapping technique could help governments and farmers identify where to invest in irrigation infrastructure, soil water storage and forest conservation to maintain reliable rainfall.

Read the full paper, “Crop water origins and hydroclimate vulnerability of global croplands.”