Rural Community Responses to Water Challenges

Rural Community Responses to Water Challenges

Rural communities in the Southwest face increasing water scarcity due to climate change. Information about risks to local water supplies and tailored assessments of adaptation and mitigation strategies can help improve watershed management and planning. This project aimed to develop a replicable method for co-producing resilient, water-related community climate adaptation and mitigation strategies. Research focused on identifying the drivers of water-related risks and evaluating the feasibility of adaptation and mitigation options as identified through a collaborative process in three communities. The project equipped local partners with local and regional water and climate data through an online data hub and resulted in three watershed management plans for the Santa Cruz (2022), Cobre Valley (2022), and Aravaipa (2023) watersheds in Arizona.

CLIMAS Lead: Bonnie Colby

Research Team: Aaron Lien, Ashley Hullinger, Hannah Hansen, Mekha Pereira, Matthew Ford, Danielle Tadych, Brian McGreal

Publications

Colby, B. (2023). Teaching Water Resource Economics for Policy Analysis. Applied Economic Teaching Resources 5(3):1-18. https://doi.org/10.22004/ag.econ.338382 

McGreal, B., Colby, B. (2023). Effects of Economic and Climatic Factors on Arid Agricultural Water Use. Journal of Soil and Water Conservation 78(5):397-411. https://doi.org/10.2489/jswc.2023.00130 

Colby, B.G., Hansen, H. (2022). Colorado Basin Incentive-Based Urban Water Policies: Review and Evaluation. Journal of the American Water Resources Association 55:1098-1115. https://doi.org/10.1111/1752-1688.13041 

Ford, M. (2022). Connections Between Cropping Trends, Water Availability, and Groundwater Regulations. M.S. Thesis. Hydrology & Atmospheric Sciences, University of Arizona. 

Hansen, H. (2022). Climate, Prices, and Federal Programs: Choices for Irrigated Agriculture. M.S. Thesis, Agricultural and Resource Economics, University of Arizona. 

Pereira, M. (2022). Statistical Relationships Between Groundwater, Climatic, and Economic Factors in Southeastern Arizona. M.S. Thesis. Hydrology & Atmospheric Sciences, University of Arizona.

Colby, B. (2020). Acquiring environmental flows: ecological economics of policy development in western U.S. Ecological Economics 173:106655. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecolecon.2020.106655