LANDSCAPE LEVEL RECHARGE ENHANCEMENT IN ARIZONA

Efforts to make Arizona’s water supplies more reliable and resilient are driving innovations to enhance landscape level recharge processes. These innovations include evaluations of the water balance in upland landscapes and recommendations for alternative landscape management. To capture more water from evapotranspiration and sublimation requires the identification of areas with recharge potential that don’t conflict with existing water rights. At the request of the Arizona Department of Water Resources, researchers from the University of Arizona, Arizona State University, and Northern Arizona University, with a collection of partners and stakeholders are investigating methods for protecting and enhancing recharge across the state. Paired watershed studies from landscape scale forest restoration, new remote sensing data, statewide assessment of well, aquifer, and stream base-flow trend data, and downscaled hydroclimate data are being fused at a statewide level to improve groundwater management in the State.