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Managing Demand and
Rethinking Supply:
Adaptation, Conservation, and Planning in the Drought-prone
Southwestern United States and Northwest Mexico
Introduction:
Adaptation in water management is a greatly revered yet poorly understood goal and concept.
Assessments of the state of adaptation research suggest that there are a lack of studies that show how
adaptation is actually being delivered and what the barriers to effective delivery are. We propose to
address this gap both theoretically and methodologically in the Arizona-Sonora region of the U.S.-Mexico
border.
Our NOAA Climate Societal Interactions (CSI) research project launch marks the beginning of a two
year interdisciplinary assessment of adaptation strategies in the Southwestern US and Northwest Mexico.
The CSI research project builds off of findings from our research with the NOAA-SARP project Moving
Forward: Adaptation and Resilience to Climate Change, Drought and Water Demand in the Urbanizing
Southwestern United States and Northwestern Mexico.
The CSI project focuses on building adaptive capacity for water management in the transboundary region;
understanding the role of climate information within governance networks; developing innovations in
communicating climate science; and pilot development of a set of metrics for assessing adaptive capacity
in arid and border regions. The study sites include; Tucson; Ambos Nogales; Hermosillo; and the Delta/
Upper Gulf of California.
Research Questions & Methodology:
The key research questions driving this project
include what is the role of networks in
governance and the implications for using
climate knowledge; what are the most effective
climate services to support efforts to adapt;
and how can adaptive capacity best be
assessed and what metrics are important for
understanding adaptive capacity in water
management in this region.
We will examine these questions using
interactive stakeholder workshops, online
surveys, semi-structured interviews, webinars,
and annual scientist-stake-holder symposia.
NOAA-CSI Project Launch Fact Sheet
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Project Activities
1. Identify suite of potential adaptive strategies that may be appropriate for the Arizona-Sonora region.
2. Examine role of governance in urban water management, focusing on the degree and nature of
collaborative networks and insertion points for climate knowledge and the nature of the decisionmaking processes and institutional capacity of water management institutions in urban areas.
3. Expand the means of communicating climate science and uncertainty to decision-makers in the
Arizona-Sonora region by focusing on knowledge for proactive planning. Examine the potential to
increase regional capacity to use existing climate information, develop capacity for using drought
predictions and climate change projections and work with northwest Mexico weather and climate
center.
4. Pilot the development of a decision support tool for assessing adaptive capacity. Assess and refine
existing social science tools and help develop new decision support tools, and assess their relevance for
a transboundary/binational context.
5. Assess the implications of these findings for the Arizona-Sonora region.
Contacts:
Lead agency: University of Arizona (USA)
PI Margaret Wilder: School of Geography and Development / Center
for Latin American Studies / Udall Center for Studies in Public Policy
mwilder@email.arizona.edu
Co-PI Robert Varady: Udall Center for Studies in Public Policy
rvarady@email.arizona.edu
Co-PI Gregg Garfin: Institute of the Environment / School of Natural
Resources and the Environment
gmgarfin@email.arizona.edu
Marcela Vásquez-León: Center for Latin American Studies / Bureau of
Applied Research in Anthropology, UA
Karl Flessa: Geosciences, UA
Laura López: Hoffman: School of Natural Resources and the
Environment/ Udall Center for Studies in Public Policy, UA
Christopher Scott: School of Geography and Development / Udall
Center for Studies in Public Policy, UA
Gigi Owen: Climate Assessment for the Southwest, UA
George Frisvold: Agriculture and Resource Economics, UA
Diane Austin: Bureau of Applied Research in Anthropology, UA
Collaborators:
Luís Brito-Castillo: Northwest Center for Biological Research (Mexico)
Francisco Lara Valencia: Arizona State Universtiy
Maria Carmen Lemos: University of Michigan
Bradfield Lyon: International Research Institute for Climate and Society
Laura Norman: United States Geological Survey
Nicolás Pineda: El Colegio de Sonora (Mexico)
Patricia Romero-Lankao: National Center for Atmospheric Research
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Student Research Assistants:
Heide Bruckner: Geography
Joel Correia: Latin American Studies
Sarah Kelly: Geography
Sasha Marley: Anthropology
NOAA - CSI Project Launch Fact Sheet