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There is a need to support applied, community‐relevant hydrologic research within changing climate, population, and socioeconomic conditions to better inform water policy and management. We hypothesized that providing a rural agricultural community in a semiarid valley with the necessary monitoring tool to meet local water management needs would increase adaptive capacity within the context of long‐term drought. Through a community science approach, researchers installed a telemetry monitoring system at participating acequia irrigation diversions that remotely sent water data to a web interface every 15 min. Two surveys distributed before and after web interface access targeted seven adaptive capacity indicators. After the first season of improved data accessibility, the following adaptive capacity indicators significantly increased: information diversity, cognitive social capital, leadership, and proactivity. Rather than focusing on the water savings aspect of real‐time monitoring, this paper summarizes a novel water resources study that assessed the social impact of real‐time irrigation water delivery monitoring on adaptive capacity. This study suggests that bridging the gap between community need and hydrologic research through community science, sociologic analysis, and stakeholder engagement provides significant benefits for communities facing water management challenges, further supporting problem‐driven water resources research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In New Mexico in the arid southwestern United States, groundwater recharge is crucial to sustain groundwater (GW), which is vitally important to life, agriculture, industry, and ecosystems. To better understand the changes in recharge statewide, we explored the changes in groundwater recharge (RE), precipitation (P), surface water inflow (SWin), outflow (SWout), diversions (SWdiv), returns (SWret), and surface water and GW evapotranspiration (SWE and GWET) in five New Mexico counties: Taos, Torrance, Doña Ana, Eddy, and Lea during 1975-2015. The results show that the change-point of RE was in the 1990s, leading to contrasting tendencies in RE before and after the change-point with a decreasing rate during the latter one. There was a significant positive relationship between RE and P for Taos. The highest contribution rate (CR) to RE was SWout for Taos, whereas GWET ranked as the top CR for the other counties. Furthermore, the annual CR of GWET to RE increased significantly in all counties except Lea. The above results reveal that P and surface water flows played the dominant role in impacting RE in northern New Mexico where surface water is the primary local water resources, whereas GWET had the highest and increasingly continuous influence in central and southern New Mexico where the surface water is much less than that in northern New Mexico. This study shows that water budgets are important to identify differences in regional hydrological regimes that affect planning to maintain RE to groundwater. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Currently, there is no agreed upon method for estimating evapotranspiration (ET) across large regions such as the state of New Mexico. Remote sensing methods have potential for providing a solution, but require validation. A comparison between field‐scale ET measurements using a portable chamber ET measurement device and modeled ET using the remote sensing Regional Evapotranspiration Estimation Model (REEM) was performed where the model had not been previously evaluated. Data were collected during the growing season of 2015 in three irrigated agricultural valleys of northern New Mexico in agricultural and nonagricultural settings. No statistically significant difference was observed in agricultural datasets between means of measured (M = 3.7 mm/day, SE = 0.31 mm/day) and modeled (M = 4.0 mm/day, SE = 0.01 mm/day) daily ET; t(17) = −1.50, p = 0.15, α = 0.05. As there was no statistical difference observed between agricultural datasets, results support the use of REEM in irrigated agricultural areas of northern New Mexico. A statistically significant difference was observed in nonagricultural datasets between means of measured (M = 1.7 mm/day, SE = 0.22 mm/day) and modeled (M = 0.0 mm/day, SE = 0.00 mm/day) daily ET; t(9) = 1.79, p = 5.7 × 10−6, α = 0.05. With additional calibrations and air temperature sensors placed outside of agricultural areas, REEM may be suitable for use in nonagricultural areas of northern New Mexico. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]