I was wondering about that. Not sure what the breakdown is between feed for livestock vs veggies, fruit, nuts, etc.
Our World in Data has good data about this, although it's not specific to the Colorado River. Nuts do need a lot of freshwater to grow, but have a very low carbon footprint, land use footprint, and eutrophying emissions footprint.
Animal products, especially cow/lamb meat, and dairy have a very high environmental footprint in all categories (and prawns in all categories except land use), whereas peas and pulses have one of the lowest footprints in all categories.
Data for water use:
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/water-per-protein-poore
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/freshwater-withdrawals-per-1000kcal
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/water-withdrawals-per-kg-poore
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/scarcity-water-protein-poore
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/scarcity-water-use-kcals
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/scarcity-water-per-kg-poore
@katlin peas sure are great for the environment and taste great too. I like the idea of taking up upon them. But they're not native to the US that I know of, so pumpkin seeds is another option. Potatoes are nice too.
Nuts really are a challenge. Allergenic, anti-nutrients, requires soaking at times (even more water), etc. Sometimes they're just not even as nutritious as smaller plant seeds like flax and chia. Peas too.
Yes, pumpkin seeds, flax seeds and chia seeds are all great too!
GaryRLundberg
Crystal Zenith