January 20, 2026
The New Mexico Bureau of Geology and Mineral Resources (NMBGMR) at New Mexico Tech will present the 2026 Earth Science Achievement Award for Public Service and Public Policy to retired U.S. Bureau of Reclamation Hydrologist Dagmar Llewellyn. A longtime public servant and expert on New Mexico’s water resources, Llewellyn will receive the award on Jan. 30 at noon during a ceremony at the New Mexico State Capitol rotunda in conjunction with Earth Science Day.
Llewellyn has dedicated the last 25 years of her 40-year career to addressing New Mexico’s growing water challenges through science, resource management, policy, and public outreach. In 2025, she retired from the Bureau of Reclamation, where she developed and managed water planning programs for both the Upper Rio Grande and Upper Colorado River systems. She also worked to advance Bureau of Reclamation programs related to science and technology, water supply forecasting, snow and evaporation monitoring, wildfire planning, and climate change planning, as well as grant programs that help state and local entities fund improvements to their own water monitoring, management, and infrastructure. Through this work, she built partnerships with many other federal, state, and local agencies and community organizations. Through a multi-year effort, she also initiated the ongoing Rio Grande Basin Study in which over 40 partners in the Rio Grande in New Mexico are working collaboratively to evaluate and model changes to water supply and demand in New Mexico—including the growing impacts of climate change—to create a collaborative tool to support future decision-makers in making technically sound water-management policy decisions.
“Dagmar is well known to the water management community in New Mexico because of the foundational studies she has authored that provide a basis for a lot of water management in our state,” said NMBGMR Director and State Geologist Mike Timmons. “This award recognizes those contributions as well as her passionate outreach related to water policy and management.”
The spectrum of outreach championed by Llewellyn cuts across technical, policy, leadership, and community audiences. In 2017, she delivered a keynote address to the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM) on management strategies for large river basins. This presentation highlighted water management challenges on the Rio Grande. It led to an ongoing partnership with NASEM regarding the potential for congressional modification of operating authorities for reservoirs on the Rio Grande and its tributaries, allowing local managers to better manage the river system. She has served on a panel and given presentations for the NASA Western Water Applications Office, highlighting her expansion of the use of NASA applications to support water management in New Mexico. She also delivered a series of presentations for the American Society of Civil Engineers on incorporating resilience principles as the country prepares its infrastructure for the impacts of climate change.
Llewellyn’s efforts to reach nontechnical audiences are equally inspired and have sometimes taken novel forms. At an annual meeting of the University of New Mexico’s Resilience Institute, she worked to use art to convey scientific information, pairing students presenting technical posters with community artists who developed art to represent the research. During her career, Llewellyn expanded her collaborations with artists, including musical portrayals of the Rio Grande and documentaries that use powerful visuals to show changes in our landscapes. Artists have honored her for these collaborations, such as through her inclusion in a project by the Albuquerque-based Herstory Printmaking Collective, which produces portrait murals honoring prominent and influential women.
Before joining the Bureau of Reclamation, she worked as a contractor for the New Mexico Interstate Stream Commission. In that role, she and her staff authored studies characterizing surface water and groundwater supplies and developed models and decision-support tools that directly assisted state and local agencies in managing water resources more effectively. She has also been an adjunct faculty member at the University of New Mexico since 2010, teaching classes on water science, policy, and management.
The New Mexico Bureau of Geology will present the Earth Science Achievement Award to Llewellyn in cooperation with the state Energy, Minerals and Natural Resources Department. New Mexico Tech's earth science research divisions, as well as earth science-focused state, federal, and private sector organizations, will staff tables in the rotunda from 9 AM to 3 PM. The public is invited to visit the New Mexico State Capitol (aka Roundhouse) and attend the awards ceremony at noon.