Focus Area: Flood Irrigated Agriculture

  • Learning more about how irrigation intensification impacts sustainability of streamflow in the Western United States

    Learning more about how irrigation intensification impacts sustainability of streamflow in the Western United States

    A Q&A with David Ketchum, USGS remote sensing and geospatial information specialist David Ketchum’s research with the University of Montana, Irrigation intensification impacts sustainability of streamflow in the Western United States, looks into the relationship between irrigation intensification and in-stream flows in watersheds across the western United States. As climate-change-induced drought impacts water availability for…

  • Wetland Benefits of Flood-Irrigated Grass Hay

    Wetland Benefits of Flood-Irrigated Grass Hay

    SUPPORTING SCIENCE & RESOURCES Wetland Evaluation Tool This spatial wetland analysis product enables users to track changes in surface water over space and time. Download the Data Access the data behind the Working Wetlands Explorer. Contact Teagan Hayes for more information. Read the Insights The Intermountain Insights provides an overview of the science and its…

  • IWJV Science: Flood-Irrigated Grass Hay Sustains Western Wetlands

    IWJV Science: Flood-Irrigated Grass Hay Sustains Western Wetlands

    Flood irrigating grass hay meadows is a practice that has long enabled ranchers in the snowmelt-driven systems of the western United States to produce forage for livestock and sustain their operations. But as water scarcity increases throughout this semi-arid region, conversion to irrigation practices like center-pivot or other sprinkler systems, these irrigation systems are threatened—along…

  • Greater Sandhill Cranes

    Greater Sandhill Cranes

    Greater sandhill cranes are among the most iconic migratory waterbirds of western North America. Commonly considered seasonal harbingers, their movements throughout the predominantly rural landscapes of the Intermountain West are often celebrated with festivals and are timed with seasonal cycles important to agricultural communities. Sandhill cranes are inextricably linked to ranching and working lands. Their…

  • Shoring Up the Banks on Nevada Creek

    Shoring Up the Banks on Nevada Creek

    Decades of restoration are accumulating to keep a key tributary to Montana’s Blackfoot River functioning for ranchers and native trout. On a late August morning, Ryen Neudecker and Brent Mannix watch water drip out of a seep above a lazy section of Nevada Creek. The creek’s waters are languid as it runs underneath a thick…

  • Restoring Mesic Habitat in Idaho

    Restoring Mesic Habitat in Idaho

    Restoration work through the Idaho Mesic Rangeland Resources Enhancement Project is gaining momentum thanks to funds from the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law (BIL) passed by Congress in 2021. Back in the 1960s and 70s, late-season water from Succor Creek pooled up and spread out through Chipmunk Meadow, feeding a green oasis in the otherwise dry sagebrush steppe…

  • Sharing the Story of the Bear

    Sharing the Story of the Bear

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  • Targeted Conservation Program Benefits Community, Wildlife in the San Luis Valley

    Targeted Conservation Program Benefits Community, Wildlife in the San Luis Valley

    The final project funded by the 2022 round of the “Enhancing Flood Irrigation on the Rio Grande Corridor” Targeted Conservation Program (TCP) in Colorado’s San Luis Valley is an extensive one. A series of sloughs on the project property need to hold diverted irrigation water each April for the farmer to have a successful growing…

  • Reconnection + Renewal on the Sycan River

    Reconnection + Renewal on the Sycan River

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