Ogallala Commons is hosting a playa lakes field day in Clovis, NM on Thursday, April 17th, 2025. Registration link here.

The playa field days are held several times each year and the intent is to educate the public about playas in general, how to restore playas, and to demonstrate that healthy, functional playas are critical to providing a sustainable water supply to all of the communities that have been sited atop the Ogallala Aquifer. If there are no functioning playas, there will be no water, and without water most of the communities in the Great Plains will disappear.

The City of Clovis, NM is emerging as a leader in active playa lakes education, restoration, and conservation, showing that natural resource management is not only for ranchers or stewards or ecologists, but municipalities, too.

Groundwater levels in some areas of the Ogallala Aquifer region have declined significantly over the years, especially in areas where the landscape is used for irrigated row crops like corn, cotton, and sorghum. Areas with the most drastic declines are in the southern portion of the Aquifer, a region known as the Llano Estacado. More than 60% of the grassland that once covered the Llano Estacado has been removed to support row-crop agriculture and confined area feeding operations. Projected climatic changes toward a hotter and drier scenario continue to make row-crop agriculture all but impossible in the Southern Great Plains.