Kelly Mott Lacroix first joined the WRRC as a graduate research associate in 2011. She received her PhD in Arid Lands Resource Sciences from the U of A in 2015 and continued her work at the WRRC as a research analyst until 2016, when she joined the US Forest Service (USFS) as a hydrologist in Washington, DC.

Fall Fest 2026, hosted by U of A’s Arizona Institute for Resilience (AIR) on September 9 at the ENR2 building, attracted participants from across campus and beyond, including several WRRC staff and graduate students. Two sections, Water & Weather and Indigenous Resilience, shared the program.

WRRC Director Sharon B. Megdal recently sat down with Mikayla Kelley from U of A University Marketing and Communications to answer questions about the US Bureau of Reclamation’s recently released 10-year framework for Colorado River water allocations and what it means for Arizona and Tucson. The September 8 Q&A, titled Water Wisdom Following the New Colorado River Framework, covered the new framework’s reductions to Arizona’s Colorado River water deliveries, Tucson Water’s use of stored Central Arizona Project (CAP) water, and the importance of continued water conservation.

University of Arizona researchers are helping design a new large-scale hydrologic model driven by AI. Hydrologic models help describe and predict how water moves through the environment by simulating the physical interactions of plants, land, water, and people. Communities and industries use these models to prepare for droughts and floods, and to understand their changing water availability. Laura Condon, a professor of hydrology and atmospheric sciences and interim director of Biosphere 2, uses “physically based equations” to create models that can answer questions about how a certain stream or groundwater system might behave under various conditions.

Arizona has been in a drought since the 1990s. Today, increasing temperatures, a growing population, and declining groundwater levels exacerbate the scarcity of our state’s water resources.

On Tuesday, September 8, the WRRC held a small meet-and-greet event to welcome our new and returning students.

WRRC director Sharon B. Megdal discusses the Department of the Interior's August 21st issuance of the 2027-2028 Operating Guidelines and the Record of Decision for the Post-2026 Colorado River Operations with Morning Voice host Ted Maxwell.

WRRC Director Sharon B. Megdal and Rosario Sánchez co-authored an editorial introducing the completed Water Special Issue in August 2026, “Working Across Borders to Address Water Scarcity: Science, Governance, and Cooperation in a Fragmented World.”