Arid Lands & Resources

Rising temperatures due to climate change dramatically reduced the snowpack that feeds the Upper Missouri River Basin.

Global warming turned what would have been a moderate 19-year drought into one of the most severe 'Megadroughts' of the last 1200 years.

Climate change and unregulated wells are depleting the West’s groundwater reserves.

The Cultural Walk reminds us that we are newcomers, just the latest arrivals in a long line of people who have found refuge and made a home in the Sonoran Desert. The informational plaques explain that the Hohokam arrived in the 1100s. Yet even they were far from the first to make this valley their home. People have been residing here for almost 4,000 years.

A bill to remove an outdated “use it or lose it” policy in state water law is sailing through both houses at the Legislature, a sign that progress is inching forward as Arizona prepares for a drier future. 

Nonperennial rivers are a major—and growing—part of the global river network. New research and science-based policies are needed to ensure the sustainability of these long-overlooked waterways.

Loss of groundwater may accelerate drying trends in the eastern United States, according to research that applied supercomputing to create an in-depth model of how groundwater will respond to warming.

The Colorado River Basin has experienced incredibly large flood events in the past. Present-day river deposits can be used to understand the size and timing of floods that have happened within the region.

The world's hottest rainforest isn't the Amazon. It's not even in the tropics. It's kept under glass in the desert of Southern Arizona.