In this overview of Arizona’s irrigated agriculture and its water supply, the focus will be on what is grown, where, with what water; how the water is managed by the state and by irrigators; water efficiency strategies; and economic impacts. The presentation will touch on current irrigation water supply issues concerning growers, their communities, and other water users.
Brown Bag Seminar Series
Bring your lunch and join us for a range of presentations on water-related topics of interest.
Access to the WRRC’s Brown Bag series now routinely includes offsite listeners through live webcasts via Goto-Webinar and in-house video coverage.
The slide presentations of most seminars are also available for viewing on the website.
Upcoming Brown Bag Seminars
September 27, 2018
Brown Bag
Brown Bag Seminar - Watering Irrigated Agriculture in Arizona
Looking Ahead
September 18 Courtney Crosson, Assistant Professor, UA CAPLA, Innovating the Urban Water System
September 26 Susanna Eden, Assistant Director, UA WRRC, Irrigated Agriculture in Arizona
November 8 Chase Saraiva, Head Brewer, Wilderness Brewing Co., Sustainability and Beer
Previous Brown Bag Seminars
September 18, 2018
Brown Bag
WRRC Brown Bag - Innovating the Urban Water System: The Architecture of a Decentralized Future
Globally, cities are facing increased water stress under growing populations, degrading infrastructure, and changing climate patterns. This imbalance between available water resources and projected urban water demands presents tremendous challenges for water resource management, necessitating novel planning and design strategies and tools. Rainwater harvesting (RWH) has been pointed to as one partial answer; however, the capacity of such a solution to address urban water deficits had been largely untested. This talk will investigate two components of decentralized water infrastructure’s
September 04, 2018
Brown Bag
The Art of Building a Citizen Science Program
Arizona Water Watch (AWW), a new citizen science program offered through the Arizona Department of Environmental Quality, is designed to train volunteers to collect credible scientific data on streams and lakes in Arizona. The program uses innovative ideas like visually friendly forms, hand stitched cloth streams for teaching, micro video lessons, and crowd sourcing data techniques to reach many levels of volunteers.
August 28, 2018
Brown Bag
The Santa Cruz River Heritage Project – Reviving an Urban River
In 2016, the City of Tucson initiated a discussion about using reclaimed water to restore perennial flow to a portion of the Santa Cruz River near downtown Tucson. This action could support riparian habitat in the urban core, improve long-term water management in the region, and stimulate economic activity. The concept was well received by a multitude of stakeholders and Tucson Water began the tasks of bringing this vision to reality. In May 2019, perennial flow will return to the Santa Cruz River near Tucson’ Birthplace, and a new era of water management will begin.
July 18, 2018
Brown Bag
Special Seminar - Food, Water, and Energy in the Arava Valley: Turning Disadvantage to Advantage in the Hyper-arid climate of the Region
The Arava Valley is a sparsely populated region in southern Israel. Its hyper-arid climate produces less than one inch of rain a year and its temperatures reach 115° to 120° f in the summer.
June 15, 2018
Brown Bag
Special Seminar - Diversification of South Africa’s Water Supplies Under Conditions of Drought
Certain parts of South Africa are experiencing drought and the country’s traditional water supplies are under stress. There is a need to unlock more water resources and drive efficiency in the use of existing supplies to ensure water security.
May 21, 2018
Brown Bag
Brown Bag Seminars - Policy Principles for the Red-Dead Conduit and Regional Solutions
Professor Uri Shani will address how active agreements between neighboring jurisdictions can lead to water solutions rather than conflicts. Like the Southwestern United States, Israel, Jordan, and the Palestinian Authority are experiencing increased water demands due to population growth and decreased supplies due to several factors, including changing climate.
April 26, 2018
Brown Bag
New Techniques for Mapping planted versus fallowed croplands using MODIS data
An important metric to monitor for optimizing water use in agricultural areas is the amount of cropland left fallowed, or unplanted. Fallowed croplands are difficult to model because they have many expressions; for example, they can be managed and remain free of vegetation or be abandoned and become weedy if the climate for that season permits.
April 25, 2018
Brown Bag
WRRC Brown Bag - Navigating Water Policy in Uncertain Times: New vs. Old Paradigms
What does water security mean in the 21st century and how do we reconfigure water policy for a more sustainable future? Although drought and water scarcity have driven conflict throughout history, there are increasing efforts across the U.S. to bring a more collaborative and systems-based approach to water governance. This talk examines the current water policy landscape and the ways in which a clash of paradigms is playing out between the legacy systems of the past and the new paradigm solutions of the future.
April 17, 2018
Brown Bag
WRRC Brown Bag - Advances in Forecasting Summer Monsoon Precipitation, Simulation of Convective Storm Processes
In his presentation, Dr. Chris Castro will describe research on the changing occurrence and intensity of monsoon rains. This research focuses on the simulation of severe weather events caused by mesoscale convective systems (MCSs), which account for much of monsoon rainfall in the central and southwestern portions of Arizona, downwind of the Mogollon Rim. Over the past 60 years, there have tended to be a fewer strong, organized MCS-type thunderstorms during the monsoon; however, when they do occur, their associated precipitation tends to be more intense.