The third Arid Low Impact Development Conference was held in Tucson, Arizona from March 27-29, 2012. With over 200 participants, the conference attracted people from 10 states and Canada who share an interest, enthusiasm, and curiosity for green infrastructure (GI) and low impact development (LID) as they pertain to arid areas. In the broadest sense, the terms GI and LID are used interchangeably to describe approaches that use living, natural systems to provide environmental services such as capturing, cleaning, and infiltrating stormwater; creating wildlife habitat; shading and cooling streets and buildings; and calming traffic. Most often, the term green infrastructure is used to refer to a class of stormwater control measures or practices that slow, capture, treat, infiltrate and/or store runoff at its source, and includes both structural (e.g. stormwater capture and treatment) and non-structural (e.g. preservation of open space) approaches. GI and LID practices can be applied at various scales ranging from individual sites to regional projects. In addition to a wide range of speakers, an interactive poster session, and field trips, the AridLID Conference also featured a workshop entitled “Co-creating an aridadapted, integrative green infrastructure research agenda.” The workshop centered around forming and prioritizing research questions that cannot be or have not been answered by studies conducted in wetter parts of the country. This report summarizes and synthesizes the outcomes of that workshop.
Keywords: green infrastructure; low-impact development; research; AridLID; GI/LID