WSP05845

• File Number: 8507
• Description: Rio Grande Project
• State: CO
• Basin: Rio Grande
• Date: 7/1/1997
• Title: Water Management Study: Upper Rio Grande Basin part 2
• Water Supply Pro - Doc Type: Report/Study

Water Management Study: Upper Rio Grande Basin

bottom-line problems. One of them focuses on the resources themselves, and
the other on the economies and communities dependent on the resources.
We then describe several of the factors that create, exacerbate, or prevent
mitigation of the bottom-line problems. We call these the contributory
problems.

A. Bottom-line Problems

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There are two bottom-line problems associated with the management of
water and related resources in the Upper Rio Grande Basin. One arises
because, although the ecosystem embracing these resources has a finite
ability to produce goods and services for human consumption, the demand for
these goods and services does not fully recognize these limits. As a result,
some of the resources of the Basin are being exploited and degraded at
unsustainable rates. The second arises because the economies and
communities of the Basin every day forgo opportunities to use the water and
related resources to create higher levels of economic benefits and to
distribute these benefits in a manner that many would consider fair. Both of
these problems represent less than ideal outcomes for the national economy.

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A.1. Bottom-Line Problem #1: The Resources are Finite, but the
Demands are Not

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The Basin's water and related resources are components of, and produced by
an ecosystem.' This ecosystem, like all others, has limits on how much water
and other resources can be extracted from it at any particular place and,
hence, the ecosystem's ability to support and sustain humans is limited.
Biophysical scientists sometimes refer to these limits as the ecosystem's
carrying capacity. This carrying capacity can change over time in response
to three factors: changes in the ecosystem, such as those that occur when
species become extinct; changes in human behavior, such as the adoption of
resource-conservation technologies; and changes in the larger global climate,
such as an increase in temperature and aridity.

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1 An ecosystem is the co=unity of organisms and their physical environment that
interact as an ecological unit (Salwasser et aI. 1993). The ecosystem of the Upper Rio Grande
Basin comprises numerous smaller ecosystems. To facilitate the discussion, we generally do
not enumerate the smaller ecosystems, but speak of the Basin's overall ecosystem or oflarge
subsets, such as the riverine-riparian ecosystem.

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