RSS 1.0Colleges, Departments, and Organizations
ABOUT THE COLLECTIONS
Several University of Arizona organizations, such as colleges, departments, research and administrative groups, have established collections in the UA Campus Repository to share, archive and preserve unique materials.
These materials range from historical and archival documents, to technical reports, bulletins, community education materials, working papers, and other unique publications.
QUESTIONS?
Please contact Campus Repository Services personnel repository@u.library.arizona.edu with your questions about items in these collections, or if you are affiliated with the University of Arizona and are interested in establishing a collection in the repository. We look forward to working with you.
Sub-communities within this community
Recent Submissions
-
Arroyo 2026 - SpanishEl agua une comunidades, ecosistemas y economías sin importar las fronteras políticas. Esto es evidente en América del Norte, donde Estados Unidos, México, Canadá y las Naciones Indígenas comparten ríos, acuíferos y costas. Estos recursos hídricos compartidos sostienen a las comunidades y la industria, pero compartirlos trae desafíos. A medida que se intensifican las presiones del crecimiento demográfico, el clima y el desarrollo económico, la colaboración transfronteriza seguirá siendo la base para gestionar los recursos hídricos fronterizos. La edición de Arroyo de este año explora el tema del agua y las fronteras, basándose en los debates de la Conferencia Anual del WRRC de 2025, Fronteras compartidas, aguas compartidas. Esta publicación destaca la historia de la cooperación en materia de agua en Arizona, Estados Unidos, México, Canadá y las Naciones Indígenas, al tiempo que analiza las iniciativas actuales para ampliar, conservar y proteger los recursos hídricos compartidos mediante alianzas entre los sectores público y privado. El objetivo de esta edición de Arroyo es ofrecer a los lectores una visión clara de cómo la colaboración transfronteriza está configurando la gestión del agua en la actualidad y de cómo las alianzas pueden garantizar un acceso equitativo a un agua limpia y segura.
-
Arroyo 2026Water links communities, ecosystems, and economies irrespective of political borders. This is evident in North America, where the United States, Mexico, Canada, and Indigenous nations share rivers, aquifers, and coastlines. These shared water resources sustain communities and industry, but sharing brings challenges. As pressures from population growth, climate, and economic development intensify, cross-border collaboration will continue to form the foundation for managing border water resources. This year’s Arroyo explores the topic of water and borders, building on discussions from the 2025 WRRC Annual Conference, Shared Borders, Shared Waters. The publication highlights the history of water cooperation involving Arizona, the United States, Mexico, Canada, and Indigenous Nations while examining current efforts to expand, conserve, and protect shared water resources through public and private partnerships. This Arroyo aims to provide readers with a clear understanding of how cross-border collaboration is shaping water management today and how partnerships can ensure equitable access to clean, reliable water.
-
Arroyo 2025Arizona relies on a diverse portfolio of water resources to meet its overall water needs, including groundwater, Colorado River water, in-state rivers, and reclaimed water. While all that water may meet our needs today, there is uncertainty about the future.
-
Arroyo 2024Water resources in Arizona are under stress from climate change, a two-decade megadrought, and chronic overuse. These combined influences have led to surface water losses, drying streams and wetlands, and groundwater depletion as pumping exceeds replenishment. Communities are facing the possibility that the water sources they rely on now may shrink in the future, or even vanish. Uncertainty regarding Colorado River water — a large component of Arizona’s water portfolio and one that is shared with six other US basin states — also raises questions about Arizona’s water future. The quality of available water is a concern as well. Where supply is limited, lower quality water and wastewater can be valuable resources, but only if they can be treated to suitable standards. These concerns beg the question: What can be done? That very question was the focus of the Water Resources Research Center's 2023 annual conference, “What Can We Do? Solutions to Arizona’s Water Challenges.” Panelists and presenters highlighted ongoing efforts to address the state’s water challenges, as well as new and innovative solutions currently under development. During the conference, several additional themes emerged, such as the need for better, more accessible data, improved technology, and collaboration. Drawing from the 2023 annual conference, this Arroyo explores themes of water supply and quality, conservation, technological innovation, data, collaboration, funding, and workforce development. It provides an overview of the challenges facing Arizona’s water supplies and specific solutions discussed during the conference, including ongoing, new, and emerging ideas, applications, and examples.
-
Arroyo 2023Arizona’s development has been dominated by the five Cs—copper, cattle, cotton, citrus, and climate—three of which are products of agriculture. However, the cultural and economic contributions of the agricultural industry have declined with the increase of urbanization and economic diversification. Climate conditions and ongoing drought pose additional challenges to farmers. A megadrought has persisted in the western states for more than 20 years, resulting in a dangerous drop in available water storage. As drought forces difficult decisions on water use, food security — assured access to sufficient safe and nutritious food — is emerging as a key concern. Given these conditions and ever-increasing needs for food and fiber, what is Arizona’s agricultural outlook? This Arroyo aims to address this question by focusing on how the state can adapt to a new climate reality and sustain the agricultural productivity and culture that has defined the character of the state for so long. With water shortages in the Colorado River, policymakers and stakeholders are looking for every opportunity to increase water efficiency and decrease water use. Urban areas have been implementing successful conservation measures, but continued population growth still raises concerns about rising water use. Although irrigated agriculture in Arizona improved its efficiency, it still accounts for roughly 72 percent of the state’s water use. For this reason, it continues to receive attention as a potential source of water for other uses. With such a large portion of the state’s water budget, agriculture likely will have to absorb a large share of any cuts in Arizona’s water supplies, beyond the large cutbacks that central Arizona agriculture already has suffered from mandated reductions associated with the agreements that apportion Colorado River shortages. However, given agriculture's significant economic, social, cultural, and historical value, water management decisions affecting farming and ranching must be weighed carefully. In summer of 2022, the WRRC’s annual conference, Arizona’s Agricultural Outlook: Water, Climate, and Sustainability, highlighted the diversity of the state’s agriculture. Several topical themes emerged, including interactions between water and land use, adaptation to a new water regime, and sustainable agriculture. To better capture the insights into Arizona's agricultural landscape and outlook that were shared during the conference, this Arroyo has a new structure. It first presents a summary of the discussions around the three above-mentioned themes and then directs readers to relevant factsheets to learn more about specific topics.
-
Arroyo 2022The water resilience of Native peoples to climate and other exogenous shocks has depended largely on the perseverance of the Native Tribes themselves and will depend increasingly on their own intentions and agency. The University of Arizona Water Resources Research Center’s 2021 Annual Conference, Tribal Water Resilience in a Changing Environment, provided a platform for Native American participants to present and discuss their experiences, knowledge, and visions of water resilience. This Arroyo draws extensively on their words. The history of relations between Native Americans and European settlers in North America has been fraught with tension and conflict. For centuries, colonial powers forcefully asserted control over North American Native people and their lands. This power dynamic led to the existence of a “dominant culture” that has continued to disparage Tribal approaches and practices. Although some rights were secured by Native Tribes both by treaty and through federal court decisions, these rights were repeatedly violated as non-Native Americans pushed westward across what is now the United States. Rights to water were among the many disregarded by settlers, who frequently diverted water away from Tribal lands to support their own agriculture, mining, and growing municipalities. These often-sacred waters represent a vital aspect of Tribal identity and are fundamentally associated with many ancestral traditions and customs. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, some redress of Native American grievances regarding treaty rights was accomplished through legal action. A major change in the development of Indian law occurred in the 1970s, as a wave of Native attorneys emerged from law schools in the West, determined to advocate for the rights of their people. Notable among them was Rodney “Rod” Blaine Lewis, an Akimel O’odham (Pima) from the Gila River Indian Community (GRIC) in Arizona, who was a dedicated and tenacious Tribal lawyer. His efforts for GRIC culminated in the 2004 Arizona Water Settlements Act, by which GRIC's legal rights to water were recognized and quantified. Today, due in large part to the work of champions like Lewis, many of Arizona’s 22 federally recognized Tribes find themselves able not only to provide for the water needs of their people, but also to affect water policy statewide and throughout the Colorado River Basin. Despite the hard-fought legal victories of Native American activists over the last half century, Native people continue to face many water-related challenges. The Southwest, an arid region, is becoming hotter and drier due to climate change, placing enormous strain on water supplies for Arizona and neighboring states. Despite the development of water infrastructure on some Tribal lands, many Native Americans live without access to running water, an issue highlighted by the severity of the COVID-19 pandemic on the Navajo Nation. Native American leaders of today and tomorrow will have to deal with these water challenges, but they are aided in this task by their heritage and culture, their deep connections to their lands, and the progress made by those who came before them. Much of the information and many of the quotations contained on the following pages are drawn directly from presentations given by Native American participants at the WRRC's 2021 Annual Conference. This Arroyo would not have been possible without these presenters and the perspectives and experiences they shared. Full video recordings of each of their presentations are available on the Water Resources Research Center website.
-
Arroyo 2022 - Special EditionThis Special Edition Arroyo was funded by the International Arid Lands Consortium. Its publication represents IALC’s final activity. After more than 30 years of supporting ecological sustainability of the world's drylands, the International Arid Lands Consortium has concluded operations.
-
Arroyo 2021The passage of the 1980 Arizona Groundwater Management Act (GMA) represented a major change in Arizona’s attitudes toward sustainable groundwater management. Prior to enactment of the GMA, there were essentially no restrictions on groundwater withdrawal, except that its use be “reasonable.” Today, groundwater use in most of the populous regions of Arizona is monitored and regulated in the effort to preserve a dependable water supply for generations to come. The GMA made much of this progress possible, but significant challenges remain that must be addressed by Arizona’s policy, planning, and management decision makers. Among these are diminishing flows, increasing demands, increased competition for water from the Colorado River, and rapid water level declines in groundwater-dependent rural communities that lack the financial, legal, or natural resources to secure alternative supplies. Groundwater depletion also is affecting rivers and streams, resulting in diminished or absent stream flow. The water rights of many of Arizona’s Native Nations have not been legally quantified through adjudication or settlement, an additional impediment to tribal water development. These and other problems are the next set of hurdles Arizonans must clear in the pursuit of a sustainable and equitable water future. Taking its inspiration from the WRRC’s 2020 Annual Conference, “Water at the Crossroads: The Next 40 Years,” this Arroyo covers the history of the GMA and the mechanisms through which the act made groundwater use in Arizona more sustainable. It examines some of the state’s broader water use issues that impact groundwater management and explores innovative solutions policymakers, managers, and stakeholders are developing to address these issues.
-
Arroyo 2020Arizona’s communities, large and small, face water supply challenges that are distinct yet share common features. Communities throughout Arizona can learn from the experiences of their neighbors in tackling their own challenges. This Arroyo presents examples of these challenges and community-based solutions. It illustrates the themes that emerged from the Water Resources Research Center’s (WRRC) 2019 conference, Arizona Runs on Water: Scarcity, Challenges, and Community-based Solutions, and draws on presentations and discussions from that conference along with supplemental information from conference speakers and other sources.
-
Arroyo 2019Few pairings provoke as passionate a response as the coupling of water and money; however, water is deeply rooted in our market economy, often in invisible ways. In classic free-market economic theory, price should reflect value, but water’s value is obscured by its nature, and by history, cultural attitudes, and related factors. As the economist Adam Smith wrote in the 18th century, “Nothing is more useful than water but scarcely anything can be had in exchange for it.” This observation reflects the absence of a market for water in the classical sense, which requires well-defined and easily comparable products. The relationship of water’s price to its value can be complicated and counter-intuitive. Compare, for example, the water prices in Flint, Michigan to those in Phoenix, Arizona. As of 2015, the average water bill for a household in the desert city of Phoenix was approximately two-thirds the average water bill for a household in Flint, a metropolis less than 40 miles from the Great Lakes. Several factors account for this incongruity. Flint, a city experiencing the urban decline common to many post-industrial midwestern cities, struggled to pay for water infrastructure and services for a dwindling population with a declining tax base and suffered serious public health consequences as a result. Younger western cities experiencing population and economic growth are better able to absorb infrastructure and service costs. As these cities age, however, the need to replace infrastructure and maintain reliability will put upward pressure on water prices. A discrepancy also exists between the economic return received from different water uses. Disregarding factors such as capital investment, differences in economic returns from water use can be striking. For example the amount of water used to grow $6,000 worth of lettuce in Yuma County is approximately the same amount used to produce $13 million worth of microchips in Silicon Valley. Yet, about 70 percent of the water used in the Southwest goes to irrigated agriculture. Gross economic benefit comparisons like this, however, fail to account for important non-market values, such as food security, wildlife habitat, ecosystem services, and rural cultures dependent on agricultural water use. Some economists and other experts maintain that the principal water dilemma in the Southwest and other dry areas worldwide is not one of scarcity, but one of inefficiencies in the use and distribution of water caused largely by failures of water management to respond to market signals. Between market signals and water management responses stand barriers such as centuriesold water laws, strong cultural and societal attitudes regarding water rights, and the unique nature of the water resource itself. The business of water functions within a complex, dynamic, and uncertain space in which market pressures meet entrenched institutional and societal positions and change threatens the status quo. For Arizona, a nearly 20-year-long drought in the Colorado River watershed, combined with overallocation of river water supplies, is resulting in an troubling but predictable decline in the elevation in Lake Mead. The Colorado River supplies nearly 40 percent of Arizona’s water demand. An official shortage declaration will trigger water reductions and potentially cause the price of water and goods to increase. Despite the state’s history of strong and innovative groundwater regulation, reductions in the Colorado River supply is likely to lead to increased pressure on groundwater and could very well produce a policy crisis as more and more areas bump up Global climate change impacts combined with population growth and changing patterns of land use and water use are resulting in dramatic reductions in water supply worldwide and increasing conflict among water users. It is unsurprising that a recent report listed water among the top five risks to businesses. The report noted a growing awareness among business leaders of their dependence on water and the importance of managing costs, reducing exposure to risk, and creating commercial opportunities through water-related strategies. Reflecting a parallel trend, the public sector is engaging more with the private sector to tackle water issues requiring significant capital expenditure, and governments are incorporating business principles into water policy with the aim of managing water more efficiently. Partnerships among business, government, and civil society are initiating programs that emphasize water sustainability and just distribution of benefits and costs. Although most people in the Southwest are aware of the challenges to water supply caused by growth and climate, they continue to expect that this life-sustaining resource will flow reliably from their taps. It is the business of water to meet this expectation at minimal cost, while fostering associated benefits, such as economic opportunity, social well-being, public health, and natural landscapes. Given these expectations, understanding water from a business perspective is essential to establishing policies for managing water in a beneficial, efficient, equitable, and sustainable way. Focusing primarily on Arizona and the greater southwestern region, this Arroyo begins with an introduction to water markets and transfers, including the various forms of water transactions, such as buying and selling, short-term and long-term leasing, dry-year options, water banking, and exchanges. These transactions occur between government entities, including Tribal Nations, utilities, and various configurations of government actors, private citizens and citizen groups, businesses, and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs). This Arroyo also looks at public-private partnerships and other forms of water infrastructure financing, including investments not only in projects, but also in new technologies. It then describes how businesses incorporate both water risk management and corporate water stewardship and responsibility into their business models. Finally, a section on water and economic development examines contributions of creative public-private initiatives that promote civic goals of economic and environmental sustainability.
-
Arroyo 2018Why is so much of Arizona’s water used to irrigate crops in the desert? A partial answer to this question is that Arizona provides at least two of the three prerequisites for producing crops: ample sunshine, high-quality soils, and adequate water. Although the desert lacks sufficient rainfall to grow most crops, Arizona’s rivers have supported agriculture for thousands of years, and aquifers in Arizona’s desert valleys hold vast quantities of groundwater. Ongoing drought, coupled with the water demands of a growing population, however, threaten those rivers and aquifers. In this context, it is useful to reexamine irrigated agriculture: its benefits, water using practices, constraints, and trends. This Arroyo seeks to provide a comprehensive picture of Arizona’s irrigated agriculture, presenting first a brief history of the state’s desert agriculture, followed by profiles of agricultural regions in Arizona, their water sources, uses, and crops. Following sections offer background and discussion on the two major sources of water for irrigated agriculture in Arizona: groundwater and the Colorado River. A description of agricultural water use efficiency and conservation, including new crops that may reduce water application follows. Voluntary fallowing of farmland for water conservation and transfer to other uses is discussed. Collaboration opportunities with university and government agencies on conservation and water efficiency improvements are outlined. The reader will come away with a deeper understanding of how Arizona achieves sustainable food and fiber production in a desert climate.
-
Arroyo 2017Throughout this Arroyo, water banking refers to the storage of water underground in natural aquifers for future use. In Arizona, this underground storage is achieved through recharge projects permitted by the Arizona Department of Water Resources (ADWR) through the Underground Storage, Savings and Replenishment Program. When there is a need to use stored water, it is recovered through wells permitted for recovery also by ADWR. While simple in concept, the actual functioning of water banking, recharge, and recovery in Arizona can be very complicated. The purpose of this Arroyo is to describe, in a clear and straight forward way, how water banking, recharge, and recovery actually work. A decade ago, the Arroyo examined the issue of artificial recharge, reviewing the status of legislation, regulation, and recharge projects in Arizona. While covering some of the same background information, this issue has a broader goal—to describe how all the elements of water banking, recharge, and recovery operate to provide future water security to Arizona’s water users. This Arroyo is organized into seven major sections, beginning with this introduction. The second section discusses groundwater management in Arizona and the Groundwater Management Act of 1980, subsequent amendments and legislation. In the third section, the laws related to water banking, recharge, and recovery are examined. The fourth section provides an overview of the ways in which the laws are translated in practice, drawing on both aggregate statistics and specific examples. The fifth section looks at two important entities in water banking, recharge, and recovery efforts—the Central Arizona Groundwater Replenishment District (CAGRD) and the Arizona Water Banking Authority (AWBA). As explained in that section, these two entities serve different purposes and operate according to very different models. The sixth section explores the question of recovery of stored water; that is, how to bring water into use after it has been stored underground. The Arroyo concludes that important questions related to the sustainability of water in Arizona can be addressed through a better understanding of how water banking, recharge, and recovery work. Sources for this issue include annual reports and plans of operation for the AWBA and CAGRD, other agency resources, and news and journal articles. While some sources are cited in the text, others are not. Please see the suggested reading section for further information.
-
Arroyo 2016The potable reuse of water has occurred throughout time as communities that grew up along rivers took their supplies from the river and disposed of their waste into the same river. The natural flow of the river served as a physical and symbolic purification mechanism that made reuse acceptable to downstream communities. Increases in knowledge about water contamination led to an expanding suite of water treatment technologies, but did not change the basic relationship. Now, although potable reuse of water is not a new concept, the intentional reuse by one community of its own wastewater is new to most people. For this reason, a great deal of study and debate surrounds the issue, as water managers, policy makers, regulators, and public safety advocates face prospects for its implementation. The United States Census Bureau estimates that the U.S. population will reach 360 million by 2030, and population shifts toward drier regions of the country will continue. By the same year Arizona’s population is expected to reach 8.5 million people. This population growth is anticipated to increase stress on developed water supplies. In addition, projections of future climate indicate higher temperatures and increased likelihood of drought. According to reporters Mike Bostock and Kevin Quealy, who have been mapping the spread of drought across the United States for the New York Times, Palmer Drought Severity Index data show that drought levels in 2015 approached those of the dust bowl era, with the 10-year average increasing for nearly all of the last 20 years. The Western United States is particularly hard hit; this area is strongly influenced by drought extremes, but also continues to experience unprecedented population growth. The resulting strain on fresh water resources is prompting the people responsible for ensuring a reliable supply of water to turn to alternative sources previously considered undesirable. One of those alternative sources is treated wastewater for potable reuse.
-
Arroyo 2015There is an acknowledged gap between future water demand and supply available in Arizona. In some parts of Arizona, the gap exists today, where water users have been living on groundwater for a while, often depleting what can be thought of as their water savings account. In other places, active water storage programs are adding to water savings accounts. The picture is complicated by variability in the major factors affecting sources and uses of water resources. Water supply depends on the volume that nature provides, the location and condition of these sources, and the amount of reservoir storage available. Demand for water reflects population growth, the type of use, efficiency of use, and the location of that use. In a relatively short time frame, from 1980 to 2009, Arizona’s population grew from 2.7 million people with a $30-billion economy to nearly 6.6 million people with a $260-billion economy. Although it slowed since 2007, growth is expected to continue. Growth also varies by location, so projections of water demand for different areas varies from sufficiency to shortage. Legal and political factors, as well as economic and financial factors, play a part in the availability, distribution, and uses of water. As a result, there is no one-size-fits-all solution to closing the water demand-supply gap.
-
Arroyo 2014Difficulties in describing the value of water are many. This Arroyo seeks to lay out those difficulties and then examine the concept of water’s value from various perspectives. The price of water is addressed first, as that is the first and most obvious aspect of value people in the United States encounter. This section answers the question, “What makes up the price typically paid for water supplied by water providers?” The next section looks into the costs facing water-using sectors that produce their water from groundwater or acquire it from raw water suppliers, such as the Central Arizona Project or the Salt River Project. The third section describes transactions in water, including water rights and long-term storage credits. The following three sections examine estimates of value that have been generated for water in the environment; values associated with effluent and reclaimed water; and the concept of virtual water. After presenting these various perspectives on the economic value of water, this Arroyo provides examples of non-monetary valuation based on water’s cultural and spiritual importance. The conclusion calls on readers to appreciate the challenge of understanding the value of water.
-
Whiteflies, Stewardship, and Proactive Resistance ManagementThis publication summarizes the principles of integrated whitefly management and resistance stewardship in desert agriculture. Prompted by unusually high whitefly populations observed during spring 2026, it highlights the importance of biological control, selective insecticide use, cross-commodity cooperation, and landscape-scale resistance management. The publication also introduces the Proactive Resistance Management (PRM) app, a decision-support tool designed to help preserve insecticide efficacy and support sustainable pest management across Arizona agricultural systems.
