AZ Experts Well-Represented at Conference Connecting Land & Water

Two of Arizona’s water policy experts are the conference committee co-chairs for the upcoming AWRA Virtual Summer Conference Connecting Land & Water for Healthy Communities. Exploring the relations among water resources management, utility operations, and land use planning, the conference aims to foster "a new understanding and strengthened personal networking connections across disciplines and professions critical to water and community sustainability." The co-chairs, WRRC Director Sharon B. Megdal and Babbitt Center for Land and Water Policy Director Jim Holway are also moderating conference sessions. Holway will lead a session titled, “Exploring Impacts and Opportunities at the Climate/Water/Land Use Interface,” and Megdal will lead a session titled, “Gila River Indian Community: Sovereignty and Water Policy Connecting Land and Water.” In addition, Megdal will MC a tribal lunch panel, “Collaborative Approaches to the Use of Earth Observations in Indigenous Communities,” as well as a round of lightning talks on “Climate Change Adaptation & Water Supply Planning.”

 

Other Arizona participants include ASU’s Global Institute of Sustainability and Innovation Research Professional Ray Quay; Zachary Sugg, Senior Program Manager at Babbitt Center for Land and Water Policy; and Kathy Jacobs (Director, Center for Climate Adaptation Science and Solutions) and Philip Stoker (Assistant Professor, Landscape Architecture and Planning) from UArizona. WRRC alum Jacob Petersen-Perlman (now at East Carolina University) shares moderating duties with UArizona graduate student Tamee Albrecht on a session titled, “Using Land Use-Water Use Indicators in the American West.” UArizona graduate student Nikki Tulley and the Navajo Nation Department of Water Resources Crystal Tulley-Cordova, along with her colleague Carlee McClellan, will join other panelists in discussing efforts to increase the Indigenous geospatial community of practice and highlighting specific geospatial and cloud-based water and land management tools co-developed to meet the needs of Indigenous communities. Participation in a two-part post-conference workshop on land/water integration research, taught by Quay and Sugg, is included in the conference registration. A special free edition of the March/April 2021 Water Resources IMPACT Magazine, companion to this conference, is linked to your conference registration confirmation.