John Fleck
Fleck has been director of the program since 2016. His work, as an academic and a writer for popular audiences, is focused on the Colorado River Basin - its problems as climate change collides with population growth, and its solutions, as communities learn to collaborate in the task of using less water.
His service as Water Resources Program director is an extension of that work, helping a new generation of water managers develop the technical skills and policy understanding needed to solve the region s problems.
“The job has exceeded the idle fantasies of my younger years,” Fleck wrote in a recent blog post. “So much fun to teach, and learn from, UNM Water Resources Students. So much fun to spend my days on a university campus with all the thinking and libraries and trees.”
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As Central New Mexico enters an unprecedented drought year, we are at risk of losing one of our most important tools for monitoring the health of the Rio Grande.
For the past quarter century, the Bosque Ecosystem Monitoring Program – BEMP to its friends and supporters – has collected data on 160 miles of Rio Grande riverside. Formed through a partnership between the University of New Mexico and Bosque School, BEMP has also brought more than 100,000 K-12 students into the bosque, collecting important scientific data while learning about their natural world.
Students count bugs and measure fallen leaves and the depth to groundwater. The data helps us understand the evolution of the bosque, while they gain hands-on science experience.