Paradox Creek

Evolution of the network

Gage flow trend & changepoints

Of the 6 gages with enough record, 3 are trending down and 0 up, and 3 carry a detected shift. The clearest is DOLORES RIVER AT BEDROCK, CO, -30.5 points of its long-term median per decade over 60 years (p<0.0001). The other 3 show no clear signal either way.

3 other gage(s) show no significant trend or changepoint (not shown).

How the measurement network itself changed

This basin was not always measured the way it is today — the API-era record is dense and recent, the early record sparse. 3 gage(s) and 24 structure(s) report in 2026, but structure reporting only reached half its modern level around ~1973. Every historical claim below is checked against this: long-term shifts that co-move with the growth of the network carry an explicit measurement-evolution caution, and abandonment screens whose idleness begins before the modern reporting era are flagged †.

Mass-balance (network closure) trend

Structure divrec-history backfill coverage as of the last check: 34% of 101 schematic-relevant structures. 8 year(s) clear the 30% coverage gate so far (1976–1983) -- the trend activates automatically once qualifying years span a full decade. No action needed; the nightly backfill keeps extending the record.

Reach gain/loss shifts (1950–2026)

Mass-balance kinks computed for every summer month back to 1950 (85 reach-snapshots) — which reaches gain or lose water, and how that has shifted across decades. Each shift is cross-checked against the observation record above: as more diversions became metered, "unaccounted" water shrinks mechanically, which can masquerade as a hydrologic shift.

No reach shows a statistically significant long-term gain/loss shift.

Groundwater now has its own tab: 9 monitored well(s), water-table trends, stream corridors, and the advisory depletion screen.

Reservoirs now has its own tab: 1 reservoir(s), end-of-year storage back to 1993, click-to-chart histories.

Cross-gage pattern fingerprint

Not enough gages with a long enough common-coverage window yet to fingerprint shared patterns.

42 water-level measurements across 9 monitored well(s) — 4 alluvial, 0 bedrock — plus 13 administered well(s) reporting metered pumping.

Well map

3D aquifer x-ray

Every aquifer unit as its own head surface, animated through time.

Water-table trends

Of 0 well(s) with enough record for a trend test: 0 declining, 0 rising.

Wells labeled by administrative world before anything else is said about them: tributary alluvium participates in the priority system; designated-basin and Denver Basin bedrock aquifers are governed differently and are excluded from stream-connection reasoning. Read bedrock declines differently too: deep bedrock aquifers recharge negligibly on human timescales, so a falling bedrock level is storage mining — effectively permanent — not a drought response that a wet year undoes. All screens advisory.

1 reservoir(s) with 1,056 storage measurement(s), 1993–2026. Basin storage as of 2025-10-31 (the record's own end — reservoir records publish ~annually): 14 AF across 1 reservoir(s).

Reservoir map — how full is each vessel?

Basin storage, end of each water year

End-of-water-year totals; per-year reservoir counts shown because reporting coverage varies -- a total is only comparable to years with similar counts.

Largest reservoirs on record

Click a reservoir to chart its full storage history.

If a call were placed at a given seniority, which structures in this basin would be out of priority, and how much of their decreed rate would be curtailed? Computed from this basin's cached decrees.

Pick a calling right

Real decrees from this basin, ordered by administration number — that is, by actual seniority. The years will look out of order, and that is correct: an administration number encodes the adjudication date as well as the appropriation date, so a right appropriated in 1970 can be administered ahead of one from 1950. A senior call curtails almost everything; a junior one curtails almost nothing.