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.