News

A new paper in Sustainability Science finds that the use of alternative water supplies, such as rainwater harvesting and greywater use, could offset up to 30 percent of total outdoor water demand for the Phoenix Metropolitan Area under modest implantation of these policies.

The paper, Simulating alternative sustainable water futures, is the work of sustainability scientists David Sampson and Nancy Grimm, sustainability fellow David Iwaniac, UREX affiliate Elizabeth Cook and CAP LTER affiliate Melissa Davidson. The authors adapted ASU’s WaterSim tool to explore differences in water demand and supply, as influenced by runoff, rainfall, changes in land use and land cover, population growth and improvements in water use efficiency.

The abstract follows.

Continue Reading

This month, Pat Gober will be retiring from ASU’s School of Geographical Sciences and Urban Planning full-time faculty to focus on research and professional service projects. Gober, a population geographer and demographer, was the founding director of the Decision Center for a Desert City.

Over the course of her 45-year tenure at ASU, Gober held a range of appointments including a term as chair of the Department of Geography, where under her leadership it grew into a nationally-ranked geography doctoral program. She also held appointments as distinguished honors faculty fellow in Barrett, The Honors College; policy research associate, Morrison Institute for Public Policy; senior sustainability scientist, Julie Ann Wrigley Global Institute of Sustainability; and interim director in the School of Geographical Sciences and Urban planning.

Continue Reading

An interdisciplinary team of researchers at Arizona State University has received a $1 million grant from NASA’s Earth Science Division to provide long-range scenarios for water management for the Colorado River Basin.

“Water management is a pressing issue for Arizona,” said Senior Sustainability Scientist Enrique Vivoni, principal investigator of the project and professor in the School of Earth and Space Exploration and the School of Sustainable Engineering and the Built Environment. “This grant will assist in helping local, state and federal entities with their drought contingency planning.”

Continue Reading

The Julie Ann Wrigley Global Institute of Sustainability at Arizona State University had a presence at the Ten Across Initiative's second summit, held in Phoenix March 26-28. Ten Across examines the U.S. Interstate 10 corridor and engages this region as a living laboratory for resilience, innovation and new narratives for the future.

Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey opened the summit by noting the Phoenix metro area uses less water than it did in 1957 when Dwight Eisenhower was president. “This didn’t happen by accident,” Ducey said. “Along this I-10 corridor, we all have unique challenges with water. … I’m confident if we work together, there’s no challenge we can’t overcome.”

Continue Reading

From the rise of artificial intelligence to the future of water, Arizona State University faculty and students discussed a slew of science topics at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). AAAS is the world’s largest science and technology society, and its annual meeting (held Feb. 14–17 in Washington, D.C.) draws thousands of scientists, engineers, educators, policymakers and journalists from around the world.

At the AAAS meeting, School of Sustainability researcher Veronica Horvath addressed the future of the American West’s most precious resource, water. Horvath, an Arizona State University Master of Science in sustainability student and Decision Center for a Desert City research assistant, is a first-place awardee of the 2018 Central Arizona Project Award for outstanding water research.

Continue Reading

Ray Quay, a senior sustainability scientist in the Julie Ann Wrigley Global Institute of Sustainability at Arizona State University, was awarded the 2019 William R. and June Dale Prize for Excellence in Urban and Regional Planning. This year's award theme was "From Blueprint to Resilience: Planning when Change is the Norm," and Quay was the practitioner prize winner in honor of his decades of work in the arena of urban and regional planning for a rapidly-changing world.

Quay is also the director of stakeholder relations and a research professional for ASU's Decision Center for a Desert City. Read more about his work on the prize website.

On December 5, Arizona State University’s Decision Center for a Desert City, a unit of the Julie Ann Wrigley Global Institute of Sustainability, hosted a panel discussion called "Innovative Stormwater Management: Resilience for Extreme Weather."

Directing more stormwater toward permeable surfaces so it trickles down into the aquifers beneath the city and catching more in rain barrels at homes were some of the ideas discussed. Multipurpose installations that collect water and can also be used as an amenity, like a park, or that protect from flooding while directing water towards aquifers are high on planners’ radars.

The discussion was part of the center’s Water/Climate Briefings, held on a regular basis. These briefings are a regular forum for the water-policy community, DCDC researchers and students to exchange knowledge and ideas.

Read the full story on ASU Now.

Red-tailed hawks can live to be up to 20 years old. If a fledging had caught a thermal in 1994 and spent the next two decades aloft above the U.S.-Mexico border, it would have witnessed some startling changes:

Mexican border cities like Ciudad Juarez and Tijuana ballooning as thousands streamed north to work in maquiladora factories, assembling products like garage door openers to be sold in the U.S. and Canada. Farmland around American cities morphing into suburbs. Mexican land being turned into agricultural fields.

What would not be visible from the air is the depletion of Mexican groundwater to grow the fruits and vegetables sent north.

Continue Reading

Veronica Horvath, an Arizona State University Master of Science in sustainability student and Decision Center for a Desert City research assistant, is a first place awardee of the 2018 Central Arizona Project Award for outstanding water research. This is the first time a DCDC research assistant has won this award. Horvath presented her work at the Arizona Hydrological Society's annual symposium on September 21 alongside several ASU sustainability scientists who research water.

“As an aspiring water scholar, I feel extremely grateful to receive this award for water research, especially because the Central Arizona Project and Arizona Hydrological Society are significant players involved with addressing Arizona's water future beyond academia,” Horvath said. “It is an honor to share this work with Arizona's dedicated practitioners, policy makers and water managers, and is a true representation of how ASU, DCDC, and the School of Sustainability foster use-inspired research.”

Horvath answered a few questions for us about her research and experience at ASU.

Continue Reading

Six Arizona State University students spent 10 days in the Okavango Delta in Botswana, one of the most remote places on Earth, studying a critically important ecosystem with some of the top experts in the world.

The study abroad trip is a new project of the PLuS Alliance, the two-year-old partnership among ASU, King’s College London and UNSW Sydney in Australia. The ASU team joined seven students from the other two universities in an immersive three-credit research course titled, “Intersection of Water, Ecosystems and Governance.”

The point was to look at one of the world’s last unspoiled aquatic environments from an interdisciplinary perspective, according to sustainability scientist Dave White, a professor in the School of Community Resources and Development, who was the ASU professor on the trip. The other experts were professors from KCL and UNSW, who were experts in aquatic ecosystems, and Claire McWilliams, an instructor in tourism the School of Community Resources and Development.

Continue Reading

Beginning this summer, members of 12 rural communities throughout Arizona will get the chance to explore the past, present and future of water’s environmental and cultural impact in Arizona and beyond when the Smithsonian Institution's traveling exhibit Water/Ways visits their town. The first location to see Water/Ways is the Bisbee Mining and Historical Museum between June 2 and July 15.

Presented by Arizona State University and Arizona Humanities, the exhibit's journey continues through March 2020.

“Partnering with the Smithsonian on this project gave us an opportunity to expand the scope and impact of the work being done at the Decision Center for a Desert City to well beyond Phoenix and Arizona, to provide an informal educational experience in rural areas and reach an audience much broader in scope and background than we had previously been able to reach,” said David White, director of DCDC and a senior sustainability scientist at ASU’s Julie Ann Wrigley Global Institute of Sustainability.

As Cape Town, South Africa nears “Day Zero” when authorities turn off the taps — expected in the first half of April 2018 — Senior Sustainability Scientist Dave White expresses the pressing need to adapt urban water systems to stresses like climate change.

White, who directs ASU's Decision Center for a Desert City, says that the causes of Cape Town's water crisis are familiar to water managers in water-scarce cities around the world – like Phoenix. These include limited supplies, dramatic population growth, aging and inefficient infrastructure, persistent drought, inadequate reservoir storage and climate change impacts.

Luckily, White provides a number of ways to improve water resilience. Among them are greater public engagement in water management planning and decision making, public and private investment in technology and infrastructure, rainwater harvesting, enhanced recycling and reuse of wastewater, cross-sector conservation and demand management, and development of new renewable supplies where feasible.

One of the most pressing global challenges for sustainable development in the era of the Anthropocene is freshwater management. Water is a fundamental human necessity and essential to improve social equity, promote broad economic development and protect the functioning of the earth system.

That’s why ASU’s Decision Center for a Desert City collaborated with scientists, managers, policymakers and other stakeholders in Pernambuco, Brazil – to build local capacity to manage existing and future water resources efficiently, sustainably and equitably. Together, the team developed modeling tools and a decision support system that prepares users for whatever water scenarios come their way.

We’ve portioned out more of the Colorado River’s water than it can deliver. What now?

Senior Sustainability Scientist Dave White, who directs ASU's Decision Center for a Desert City, delivered his ideas for staying afloat in a March 2017 KED Talk. He demonstrated how the lessons he learned while rafting the Colorado River in 1998 are applicable to today's proverbial water rapids – namely drought, climate insecurity, population growth and overallocation.

"The solutions to these problems will require courage, skilled and experienced leadership," says White, "....and the recognition that the vitality of the American West depends on everyone paddling together."

In his January 2017 lecture "How Much Water Does Arizona Need?," author and journalist John Fleck drew from over two decades of reporting on western water issues to offer a surprising perspective on challenges unique to the region.

Fleck, who serves as director of the water resources program at the University of New Mexico, explained how cooperation and innovation have enabled the Southwest to grow and prosper in the face of diminished water supplies – not conflict, as some believe. That rich communities take water from poor communities was another notion Fleck labeled as a myth, saying that ideas like these make it difficult to establish collaborative relationships.

The lecture, co-sponsored by Decision Center for a Desert City, was part of an ongoing ASU conversation the examines water from a range of disciplines – from science and conservation to law and policy.

The "Museum on Main Street," conceived by the Smithsonian Institution, brings exciting exhibits to small towns throughout the United States. Among these exhibits is WaterSim, an interactive water management tool developed by researchers at ASU's Decision Center for a Desert City.

According to School of Sustainability Dean Chris Boone, “WaterSim America is a great platform to educate the broader public on what they can do as individuals and groups to manage water in ways that lead to positive change.”

WaterSim achieves this by simulating the impacts of factors like population growth and drought on a given state's water supply and demand. Users then respond to challenges by selecting policies that steady their state’s water system.

ASU's Decision Center for a Desert City was one of only 30 National Science Foundation-funded projects invited to represent the organization at the USA Science and Engineering Festival in Washington, D.C., from April 16-17, 2016.

Visitors to the DCDC  booth learned about water in the West through WaterSim – a simulation tool created by the center to estimate water supply and demand for the Phoenix Metropolitan Area. It allows users to explore how various factors like regional growth, drought, climate change and water management policies influence water sustainability.

The festival – the largest and only national science festival, as well as the largest STEM education event in the United States – saw an estimated 350,000 visitors over the course of two days.

“We have more interest, more data, and more planning tools than we’ve ever had."

This was a sentiment expressed by James Eklund – director of the Colorado Water Conservation Board – at Decision Center for a Desert City's annual keynote on March 3, 2016.

The discussion, titled "A Conversation about Solutions for Water Sustainability in the Colorado River Basin," also included Eklund's Arizona counterpart Tom Buschatzke – director of the Arizona Department of Water Resources.

The two water chieftains, moderated by sustainability scientist Wellington “Duke” Reiter, explained that Arizona and Colorado have an ample water supply as the result of very careful planning and conservation.

They stressed that this fact should not keep residents of the states from viewing water as the precious resource it is.

Alongside the January 2016 U.S. Conference of Mayors in Washington, D.C., leaders from Phoenix, Mesa, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Aurora and Fort Collins, Colorado, met to discuss what actions their cities are taking to address urban water supply and demand issues in an era of changing climate.

The “Western Mayors Water and Climate Change Summit” was hosted by Dave White – director of the ASU Wrigley Institute’s Decision Center for a Desert City –  and Phoenix Mayor Greg Stanton. The mayors of participating cities covered topics like the role information technology will play in conserving water and the importance of educating the next generation of leaders in government, industry and environmental policy.

“The idea of thinking about providing a secure, sustainable water supply for future generations is this notion of a public good that really crosses sectors — public, private, nonprofit — and requires us to train leaders in all of them,” White said.

Building on the initial meeting, the group will evaluate a series of principles developed by Decision Center for a Desert City with the goal of refining, and ultimately moving toward, a consensus for implementation.

A paper authored by Decision Center for a Desert City researchers, published today in the journal Sustainability, synthesizes a decade of water research in the Phoenix metropolitan area. Titled "Decision-Making under Uncertainty for Water Sustainability and Urban Climate Change Adaptation," the paper explores human–environment dynamics, gaps in knowledge and practice, social learning and the evolution of an interdisciplinary research and boundary organization, which has enhanced adaptive and sustainable governance in the face of complex system dynamics.

"This research exemplifies the transdisciplinary approach advanced by ASU," says DCDC Director Dave White. "The knowledge generated here was developed by a team of social, behavioral, economic and sustainability scientists collaborating with biophysical scientists, engineers, a network of stakeholders and an internationally-recognized group of scientists and practitioners on our advisory committee."

In addition to White, the paper was authored by sustainability scientists Kelli Larson, Pat Gober and Amber Wutich.