Based on successful efforts in developing models for water markets in the Middle Rio Grande, SAHRA researchers David Brookshire and Craig Broadbent (UNM), Vince Tidwell (Sandia Labs), and Don Coursey (U. of Chicago) have been asked by the New Mexico Office of the State Engineer (OSE) to develop a project for the Active Water Resource Management (AWRM) area of the Mimbres Basin. Project objectives include creation of a decision support tool to explore water leasing market ideas, issues, and consequences, and a pilot water market, with the aim of providing a means for efficient, short-term reallocation of water, while protecting senior water rights.

The AWRM area of the Mimbres Basin has seen rapid growth in domestic well installation and pumping, and presents a variety of challenges in microcosm. As a small portion of the Mimbres basin, the area has 9 individually operated irrigation ditches (with different priority dates) serving 140 farms. The senior ditch is downstream of all junior ditches, and domestic well users are the lowest priority. The Bear Canyon Reservoir is used for summer irrigation and recreation.

The SAHRA team has been meeting and collaborating with the Mimbres Water Users Group and OSE since April 2006. Alison Williams, a recent UA HWR graduate now at Sandia, is building the hydrologic model, which is being linked to the market storefront. Participants are

helping design the market through a series of trading experiments. The project is providing real-time management tools that incorporate information on type of crop, flow rate requirements, priority orders, total acreage, and other factors.

Can We Have It All?Save the date! SAHRA’s Southwest Hydrology magazine has joined forces with the Arizona Hydrologic Society to offer a regional symposium, “Sustainable Water, Unlimited Growth, Quality of Life: Can We Have It All?,” Aug. 29-31, 2007, at La Paloma Resort in Tucson. The event will coincide with the AHS 20th Annual Symposium. Abstracts are due Feb. 2; details soon at www.swhydro.com.

NSF Science and Technology Center for Sustainability of semi-Arid Hydrology and Riparian Areas

www.sahra.arizona.edu520-626-6974

Ephemeral FlowA NEWSLETTER ABOUT SAHRA

W elcome to the November/December issue of Ephemeral Flow, a newsletter for sharing information within the SAHRA community. Ephemeral Flow is

sent to SAHRA researchers, staff, and students at all participating institutions approximately every two months. Your contributions and suggestions are always welcome. Please send items to Mary Black at mblack@sahra.arizona.edu.

FEATURES

UPCOMING EVENTSDec. 11-15, 2006: AGU Fall Meeting, San Francisco, CA

Jan. 14-18, 2007: Amer. Meteorological Soc. 87th Annual Mtg., San Antonio, TX

Aug. 29- Sept. 1, 2007: Southwest Hydrology / AHS Regional Symposium, Tucson, AZ (see below)

Please let us know when you have news to share or a reason to brag. Students, let us know for example when you have completed your oral exam, defended your thesis/dissertation, or accepted a position in the real world (or even academia). Faculty members, are you offering a new course, hosting a workshop, leading a panel, editing a new journal? Anonymous or second-party tips on newsworthy announcements are also gratefully accepted.

CONTACT US!

November/December 2006

Mimbres Water Leasing Market

Aug. 29 - Sept. 1, 2007Westin La Paloma Resort & Spa

Tucson, Arizona

More info at:www.azhydrosoc.org

www.swhydro.arizona.edu

AHS 20th AnnualSymposium

Southwest Hydrology

2007 Regional Hydrology Symposium

Sustainable Water Unlimited Growth Quality of Life

Sustainable Water Unlimited Growth Quality of Life

CanWe Have It All?CanWe Have It All?

to present

joins with&

PAGE 2 November/December 2006

Science Supporting Water ManagementSAHRA’s 6th annual meeting, “Science Supporting Water Management,” held October 11-13 in Scottsdale, AZ, was a resounding success, according to an informal poll of attendees. Keynote speakers included ASU V.P. for Research Jon Fink, California DWR Director Lester Snow, and newly inaugurated UA President Robert Shelton.

The event was held concurrently with NSF’s annual site visit, and featured six breakout sessions organized to promote dialog with stakeholders and receive feedback on SAHRA science, education, and outreach efforts.

The meeting was well attended by stakeholders representing state and federal agencies in AZ and NM (ADWR, AZ Geo Survey, BLM, Central Arizona Project, Cooperative

Extension Service, Elephant Butte Irrigation District, NM Office of the State Engineer, Army Corps of Engineers, National Weather Service, Salt River Project, USDA-ARS, Verde Watershed Association), local governments (cities of Phoenix and Tucson, Pima County), tribal governments (Gila River Indian Community, Hualapai Tribe, Navajo Nation, Salt River Pima-Maricopa Indian Community),

NGOs and museums (AZ-Sonora Desert Museum, Ctr. For Biological Diversity, Consortium for Science Policy and Outcomes, Phoenix Zoo, Utah Museum of Natural History, Valles Caldera National Trust), and hydrologic consultants.

Shelton’s address emphasized the UA’s commitment to sustainability and water research, complementing his inaugural address later in the month, in which he stated “If questions about things like water sustainability are to be answered, I want those answers to be found first and best right here at The University of Arizona.” An auspicious start to his tenure at UA!

Prizes for the top three student posters went to:

• 1st place ($300): Marty Frisbee, NMT, “On the selection of the Saguache Creek Watershed for catchment scale hydrological investigations, Pt. 1: Hydrological Processes”

• 2nd place ($200): Julio Cañon, UA, “The Drought Frequency Index applied to umltireservoir operation optimization”

• 3rd place ($100): Scott Simpson, UA, “Riparian aquifer recharge mechanisms in the Upper San Pedro River”

AGU SessionsThe following sessions scheduled for the AGU Fall Meeting in San Francisco have been organized by SAHRA collaborators, past and present:

• Linked hydro processes across surface water, vadose zone, water, and groundwater – B. Mohanty, Tex. A&M; I (posters) Mon 8:00; II Weds. 8:00; III Weds. 10:20

• Impacts of land use/land cover change and climate variability on water resources – T. Hogue, UCLA; I Mon. 8:00; II Mon. 10:20; III (posters) Mon. 1:40.

• Extreme hydrometeorological events – Y. Hong, NASA; I (posters) Tues. 8:00; II (Flood) Tues. 1:40; III (Climatology) Tues. 4:00

• Water quality of hydrologic systems (posters) – P. Brooks, UA, Tues. 1:40

• Recent progress in community initiatives for environmental science (posters) – R. Hooper, CUAHSI, Tues. 8:00

• Numerical modeling in support of water resource decision-making and policy implementation – V. Tidwell, Sandia; I Weds. 1:40; II Weds. 4:00; III Thurs. 8:00

• Improved water management through water cycle science and its integration with engineering and economics – S. Eden, UA; I (posters) Thurs. 8:00, II Thurs. 4:00

• Measuring the pulse of the planet: Observatories, instrumentation networks, and data needed to address the fundamental questions of environmental science (posters) – T. Meixner, UA, Fri. 8:00

• Scenario planning for water resources management – H. Hartmann, UA, and T. Wagener, PSU; I Fri. 10:20; II (posters) Fri 1:40

• Applications of seasonal climate predictions in hydrology, water management, and other end-use sectors – H. Hartmann, UA; I Fri. 8:00; II (posters) Fri. 1:40

Doug James and Jim Shuttleworth announce poster winners.

UA President Robert Shelton addresses the UA’s role in water sustainability

PAGE � November/December 2006

RESEARCH

New Book on Arizona Water PolicyHot off the RFF (Resources for the Future) Press is Arizona Water Policy: Management Innovations in an Urbanizing Arid Region, a volume sponsored by SAHRA and the Water Resources Research Center at the UA and co-edited by SAHRA collaborator Bonnie Colby and deputy director Kathy Jacobs. The book received high acclaim from former Secretary of the Interior Bruce Babbitt, who calls it “a brilliant introduction to water conflicts, politics and economics in a desert state renowned for little water and much innovation. This book has important lessons for coping with looming water shortages in virtually every river basin and nation on this planet.” The book can be ordered online at www.rff.org/rff/RFF_Press/CustomBookPages/ArizonaWaterPolicy.cfm

RG Salinity ManagementEngineering advisors to the Rio Grande Compact met on Aug. 29 to discuss salinity management issues. James Hogan was invited to discuss SAHRA’s Rio Grande salinity research and presented a summary of projects, including isotopic results on salinity sources, dynamic simulation modeling of Rio Grande salinity levels, and detailed research on salinization processes in the El Paso region. Also present was Jack Barnett, the executive director of the Colorado River Salinity Control Forum. The engineering advisors discussed these presentations with the possibility of forming a Rio Grande Salinity Control Forum. As a next step, a technical workshop to seek input on developing such a forum and to exchange knowledge on water quality research in

the New Mexico and Texas border regions is tentatively planned for early 2007.

Gardening with Rain: The New Chic?With programming by Ramon Vazquez and funding from EPA, Steve Stewart ran stormwater trading experiments at the University of Cincinnati in late October. Undergraduate and graduate students tested the software, which is designed to help EPA and the city of Cincinnati determine the value of raingardens to property owners in certain watersheds in the region. The purpose of a raingarden is to capture stormwater runoff in a distributed and aesthetically pleasing way. Instead of a big, ugly, expensive retention facility downstream in a watershed, the same amount of runoff can be controlled if enough property owners upstream are willing to install these raingardens.

EPA is hoping that property owners in subdivisions will be willing to lease 12’ x 12’ portions of their land for three or more years and allow EPA to install and maintain the gardens. The experiment aims to see how much EPA would have to pay property owners for the leases.

A raingarden is basically just a large hole filled at the bottom with gravel and sand, with soil and plants on top. As Steve reports, “We used to call it landscaping, but some soil sciences assistant prof renamed it a raingarden, caught the world by storm and got tenure!”

New Scenario Analysis WebsiteA website is being developed by SAHRA to facilitate the development of scenarios for SAHRA modeling and process studies (www.sahra.arizona.edu/scenarios). The

website will also serve the purpose of sharing and exchanging information/resources about scenario development with SAHRA researchers and the general environmental research community. Important features of this website include a glossary of general terminology and guidelines for scenario development, discussion boards for critical issues in scenario development, important scenario-related literature/links/news/case studies,

and specific activities involved in the development of SAHRA scenarios.

With this website, we hope to move SAHRA and the broader water community forward in the

area of scenario development for long-term decision support under uncertainty.

GRANTS/LEVERAGING

New TIES to MexicoSAHRA will benefit from a new $620K grant to the Dept. of Hydrology and Water Resources at UA and Universidad Autónoma de Baja California, Mexicali, from the U.S.-Mexico Training, Internships, Exchanges, and Scholarships (TIES) partnership program of U.S.-AID. The UA share is $290K. The project aims to contribute to watershed management and riparian restoration practices in the Lower Colorado, focusing on base flow and riparian vegetation recovery in the Colorado Delta in Mexico.

Activities will include faculty and student exchanges between the two institutions, short courses and workshops on the use of community-based collaborative conservation for watershed management, and workshops on hydrological and ecological modeling in support of restoration activities. The Sonoran Institute and Pronatura are collaborators on the project.

Students test the stormwater training software.

PAGE � November/December 2006

R & R

Another SAHRA Person Lost to MarsWe regret to report that Carla Bitter, Education Programs Director, has been spirited away by Martians to the UA Lunar and Planetary Lab, coincidentally following Dean Jones’ departure to the same lab, different project (see Sept./Oct. Ephemeral Flow). Carla has accepted a position as coordinator of education and outreach for NASA’s Phoenix Mars Lander Mission, scheduled for launch in August 2007. We wish Carla best of luck in her new endeavor and remind her that while her heart may be on Mars, she will always be close enough to join us for a Zach’s Pizza run!

Students who finished degreesCongratulations to Deirdre Brosnihan, who dared to defend her MS in Hydrology and Water Resources at UA on Halloween. Her thesis, “Supporting community water harvesting efforts:

Impact of water harvesting on street runoff quantity and quality,” was also the title of a poster she presented at the UA Water

Forum two days later, which won her a second-place, $100 prize. Not a bad week in all! She is pondering multiple job offers, one here in Tucson. Deirdre’s principal advisor on the project was Gary Woodard.

Kudos also to Rosalind Bark, who completed the requirements for her Ph.D. in arid lands studies at the UA in October, with a minor in agricultural economics. In lieu of a thesis, Rosalind defended a six-paper option, “Muddy waters: Case studies in dry land water resource economics.” She was advised by Bonnie Colby.

PEOPLEANNOUNCEMENTS

Benchmark Papers in HydrologySAHRA Director Jim Shuttleworth has announced that SAHRA will jointly publish a number of SAHRA-relevant volumes in the International Association of Hydrological Sciences (IAHS) Benchmark Papers in Hydrology series. The series is collecting the most significant scientific papers published in the 20th century that have contributed to the current thinking in the subfields of the hydrological sciences. The following theme areas are anticipated to be among the volumes co-sponsored by SAHRA: paleohydrology; evaporation; hydrogeomorphology; runoff modeling; semi-arid hydrology; and isotope and chemical tracer hydrology. Dr. Shuttleworth is seeking advice on to whom we should distribute the first 150 copies of the co-sponsored volumes, with an emphasis on minority-serving institutions and minority-related professional entities in the Southwest, Mexico, and semi-arid and arid regions worldwide. For more information or to offer suggestions, please contact Rannie Fox at Rannie@hwr.arizona.edu.

ADMINISTRATIVE NOTES

Make NSF and Mary HappyAvoid the nagging and update your OMS records now! Simply return to the email you received but may have ignored on Nov. 10 and follow the instructions. All SAHRA participants and project managers are required to take part in this annual exercise.

We want to hear from all new students at all participating institutions. Please send information about your academic background, current research interests and the name of your academic advisor to Mary Black at mblack@hwr.arizona.edu.

Carla is pursued by the Mars Lander.

Recent grad Deirdre now has $$ to go with her good looks.

The SAHRA administration and Ephemeral Flow staff send best wishes to all for a happy holiday

season and a healthy, prosperous new year.