The hydrologic impacts of warming trends on mountain sources of water are projected to include later seasonal transition from rain to snow, higher snow line, less total snowpack, earlier snowmelt in springtime, and increased evapotranspiration (ET) rates in the warm season. Currently, however, NM has neither the watershed-scale observational data collection network, nor the coupled atmosphere-land surface-hydrology modeling capability needed to examine and understand these processes. Objectives include:

• Significantly upgrade climate and hydrology observing networks in northern New Mexico.
• Map snowfall utilizing historic and current satellite data.
• Initiate transdisciplinary efforts to understand and simulate physical processes that couple large-scale climate fluctuations with watershed-scale hydrology, thus affecting stream flows statewide
• Apply and improve existing models for snowmelt runoff, surface water-groundwater interactions, and basin-wide partitioning of water resources for urban, agricultural and other uses.

• Improve New Mexico’s watershed-scale observational data base for meteorologic and hydrologic attributes and use these data to improve streamflow projections needed by resource mangers and policymakers.
• Initiate transdisciplinary and potentially transformative efforts to understand and simulate physical processes that couple large-scale climate fluctuations with watershed-scale hydrology, thus affecting stream flows statewide.
• The physical processes to be considered will include: (a) elevation-dependent generation of precipitation at temperatures near freezing (in winter) and associated with thunderstorm development (in summer) in a region of sharp and complex orography; (b) quantitative understanding of snow accumulation and ablation processes; (c) runoff generation associated with precipitation and snowmelt in these watersheds; (d) the dependence of (a)-(c) at the watershed scale on vegetation and soil moisture, and feedbacks between land surface conditions and the atmosphere, focusing on precipitation.

• Develop new and apply existing water quality sensors for the autonomous monitoring of stream waters in high altitude environments.
• Deploy a set of state-of-the-art, near-real-time, autonomous water quality sensors for monitoring the quality of surface water in at least two watersheds in New Mexico that are fed by snowmelt.
• Use data from co-located hydrology sensors and the water quality sensors to understand the controls on water quality in each watershed.