Wind River Water Techs Complete Climate Summary Training With HPRCC, NDMC This Week

Three water technicians from the Tribal Water Engineer’s Office on the Wind River Indian Reservation in Wyoming attended a training in Lincoln July 14-16 to learn about how to put together a climate and drought summary for their region. This training was led by the High Plains Regional Climate Center (HPRCC) and the National Drought Mitigation Center (NDMC), and it was funded by the National Integrated Drought Information System (NIDIS). Al C’Bearing, Kenneth Ferris, and Rollin Ware attended the training, which included a mixture of sessions on basic climate and drought science, demos on how to obtain climate and water data, and opportunities for the techs to practice interpreting data and writing narratives on climate and water conditions in their region.

For the past year, the HPRCC has worked with the Wind River tribes and several other project team members to develop a quarterly climate and drought summary for the Wind River Indian Reservation and surrounding area that is intended for irrigators and water managers who make important decisions regarding natural resources management. The purpose of this training was to begin the process of transferring the development of the summary to the tribes. The incorporation of the tribes’ local and traditional knowledge into the summary is a valuable component that only the tribes can provide.

The climate and drought summary is one component of a large interdisciplinary project that is assessing drought vulnerability on the reservation, funding for which is being provided by the North Central Climate Science Center at Colorado State University. For more information on this vulnerability project, please visit the following website: http://revampclimate.colostate.edu/revamp/project/wind-river-drought-preparedness.