Abstract
As cities and agricultural areas face water challenges associated with climate change, it is important to develop a better understanding of how human and natural systems will respond at the scales at which those changes will occur. This requires analytical tools to systematically explore regional contexts where multiple interdependent water, agricultural, and urban infrastructures interact. Toward this end, we develop and analyze a stylized model of a regional-scale system in the Southwestern U.S. The system is comprised of the Phoenix and Tuscon metropolitan areas and surrounding agricultural districts within the Central Arizona Project service domain and the water delivery infrastructure that connects these areas to the Colorado River basin. We use the model to analyze the impacts of changes in runoff in the upper Colorado River basin and the Salt, Verde, and Agua Fria basins on water supplies in the Central Arizona Project service area. Specifically, we explore how conceptualizing the Phoenix and Tuscon metropolitan areas and surrounding agricultural districts as an integrated system of urban, agricultural, and conjunctive ground and surface water management infrastructures can lead to strategies to meet water demand while maintaining groundwater neutrality.
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Notes
The Fourier transform assumes the data are stationary. We recognize that, due to climate change, the data are not stationary. The frequencies extracted from the data by the Fourier transform should thus be viewed as approximate and illustrative. They provide a general picture of trends that we use in the scenarios to illustrate the system’s capacity to cope with changes in precipitation variability. They are not intended for accurate prediction.
We divide the total demand into relatively more and relatively less rigid pools for our scenarios. The term “rigid” refers to the capacity to reduce demand substantially from 1 year to the next, in theory. Demand in the agriculture sector can be reduced substantially and quickly by not growing a crop. Of course, doing so requires infrastructure to address livelihood implications. The rigid demand streams, on the other hand, are more difficult to reduce quickly and substantially. The Native and Riparian potion of this rigid demand (about 0.32 maf) is part of the agricultural demand pool listed in Table 1.
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Acknowledgments
The authors would like to thank David Sampson for interesting discussions on reservoir area-depth relationships and David White for comments on an earlier draft of the manuscript.
Funding
The authors received financial support for this research from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Sectoral Applications Research Program, CSI Award NA110AR4310123, and the U.S. National Science Foundation, grant number GEO-1115054.
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Communicated by: Juan Ignacio Lopez Moreno
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Anderies, J.M., Smith-Heisters, S. & Eakin, H. Modeling interdependent water uses at the regional scale to engage stakeholders and enhance resilience in Central Arizona. Reg Environ Change 20, 100 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10113-020-01654-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10113-020-01654-1