Wet/Dry Mapping
Rural communities in Arizona are facing critical water management decisions concerning their water supply vulnerability to climate variability. Empowering local communities to collect water resource data builds social capital in the identification and understanding of water resources, and developing water management strategies. Educational outreach and training is necessary to build capacity, sustain community partnerships, and assure appropriate data collection protocols. The objective of Wet/Dry Mapping is to create a map that shows where water is present in the river channel and where it is not. Wet/Dry mapping has revealed trends in flow since 2008, and reveals the interrelationship of groundwater and surface water in the watershed. Mapping is done on the driest time of the year when river base flow is least likely to include recent precipitation – the third Saturday of June.
Arizona NEMO is a Cooperative Extension educational outreach program with a mission to educate land use decision makers to make choices and take actions that will protect water quality and quantity, and to facilitate volunteer monitoring and data collection that empowers local planning.