https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1978-0970
Figures
Abstract
As climate change, population demands, and economic growth put increasing pressure on finite water resources in the southwestern United States, there is a critical need for adaptation to increasing water scarcity in the region. The Water Adaptation Techniques Atlas (WATA) is a new web-based compendium of geospatially-referenced solutions to problems posed by water scarcity. Developed by the USDA Southwest and California Climate Hubs, WATA arranges these solutions as case studies pinpointed on an interactive, user-friendly map viewer. Cases include research outcomes and practices that impact water use and availability to alleviate the mismatch between supply and demand. Organization of case studies by type of practice, specific crops, types of water user and water use allows a broad base of users to locate adaptations of particular interest. An example use case presented in this article shows how WATA can be used to investigate alternatives to alfalfa, one of the biggest water-consuming crops in the region. The development of WATA is an ongoing, iterative process, informed by new research and by feedback from agricultural professionals and others concerned with water scarcity in the Southwest.
Citation: Silber-Coats N, Elias E, Steele C, Fernald K, Gagliardi M, Hrozencik A, et al. (2024) The water adaptation techniques atlas: A new geospatial library of solutions to water scarcity in the U.S. Southwest. PLOS Water 3(6): e0000246. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pwat.0000246
Editor: Jean-Marc Mwenge Kahinda, University of the Witwatersrand Johannesburg Faculty of Engineering and the Built Environment, SOUTH AFRICA
Received: December 13, 2023; Accepted: May 14, 2024; Published: June 26, 2024
This is an open access article, free of all copyright, and may be freely reproduced, distributed, transmitted, modified, built upon, or otherwise used by anyone for any lawful purpose. The work is made available under the Creative Commons CC0 public domain dedication.
Data Availability: All data are available in the manuscript and on the WATA website (embed link: https://webapps.jornada.nmsu.edu/wata/).
Funding: This work is a contribution of the USDA Southwest Climate Hub. Manuscript development was supported by the USDA, Agricultural Research Service, Rangeland Management Research Unit based at the Jornada Experimental Range with funding by the USDA Agricultural Research Service (CRIS Project # 3050-12610-001-00D to EE), USDA Economic Research Service (agreement # 60-3050-1-006 to EE) and USDA Office of the Chief Economist (agreement # 60-3050-1-002 to EE). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.
Competing interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.
Introduction
Contemporary water scarcity in the Southwest: The need for adaptation
Despite prevailing dry climatic conditions, the southwestern United States (Southwest) contains some of the most productive agricultural regions in the world and many of the fastest-growing cities in the country. The dramatic expansion of both agriculture and urban areas in the Southwest over the past century has relied on monumental infrastructure for capture, storage, and distribution of surface water as well as intensified extraction of groundwater [1, 2]. As a result of global climate change driven by anthropogenically mediated heat-trapping gas emissions, the Southwest experienced its driest period in over a thousand years from 2000 to 2021 [3], and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) projects that the region will face more severe, more frequent, longer-lasting droughts as global temperatures continue to rise [4]. As the severity of drought has intensified, with periods of extreme heat and prolonged dry spells leading to declining river flows and drier soils, some scientists now suggest that this trend be labeled aridification rather than drought, indicating an effectively permanent change to drier conditions in the region [5].
Given the increased demand for, and reduced availability of, water resources in the Southwest, adaptations to water scarcity will be required to offset major harmful impacts on society [6]. Dissemination of information about adaptation options is also critical. The Water Adaptation Techniques Atlas (WATA) responds to this need, providing a new compilation of information on techniques for addressing water scarcity, specifically in the six states covered by the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) Southwest and California Climate Hubs (Fig 1).
Aridity (annual average 1970–2000) data are from the Global Aridity Index and Potential Evapotranspiration Climate Database v3. Irrigated land data are from US Geological Survey MODIS Irrigated Agriculture Datasets for the Conterminous United States. Rivers of the U.S. from National Weather Service. National borders from ESRI World Countries, state boundaries from ESRI USA States Generalized Boundaries.
This article establishes the context of and need for WATA. It describes WATA’s purpose and the process of developing it, gives an overview of the database and how to use and contribute to it, and provides examples of how it can be used to synthesize information on a given topic. Finally, a summary of findings to date and opportunities to expand and improve WATA are presented.
Adaptation to water scarcity in the Southwest: Historical context
The necessity of adapting to water scarcity is a fundamental feature of human-environment relations in arid environments. The histories of indigenous peoples in the Southwest show reliance on a variety of strategies to manage scarce water resources, including flood-recession agriculture, capturing water from seasonal storms, channeling runoff to favored plants, and seasonal migration [7]. WATA includes examples of such adaptations, categorized as “indigenous or ancestral techniques”, as they may be instructional and relevant for the 21st century. Beginning in the 16th century indigenous water resources management was supplanted due to Euro-American colonization, and since the mid-19th century, the predominant adaptations to water scarcity in the western U.S. have been the dams, reservoirs, canals, pipelines, pumps, and wells that make up the region’s contemporary water infrastructure. WATA also includes examples of this type of adaptation.
In more recent decades, there is some evidence of a shift in the approach of water management towards reducing demand through conservation efforts, many examples of which are included in WATA. Since 1965, even as irrigated agriculture has expanded in the Southwest, the amount of water applied per acre has generally declined [8]. Even in Arizona, which uses the most irrigation water per irrigated land area of all U.S. states, water applied declined by roughly 20% between the years 2000 and 2018 [8, 9], and total agricultural water use in the Southwest declined by nearly one third between its peak in 1980 and 2010 [10]. Many cities in the region have also successfully decoupled population growth from increased water use, registering declines in both per capita and total water use from 2000–2015 [11]. Despite apparent successes like these, information about water scarcity adaptation efforts across the Southwest tends to be fragmented by academic discipline and geographic divides.
The genesis of WATA
Recognizing the increasing pressures on water resources in the Southwest, the USDA California and Southwest Climate Hubs began a project in 2020 to develop and share geospatially referenced examples of water scarcity solutions to support water adaptation techniques across this region. The resulting product, WATA, meets the project’s goals of documenting solutions to water scarcity that are being implemented, providing a platform for disseminating this information broadly, and facilitating knowledge transfer to foster future resilience.
Part of the impetus for creating WATA was the experience of several co-authors with responses to exceptional drought in the Four Corners region of Arizona, Utah, Colorado, and New Mexico in 2018 and to severe droughts in California from 2012–2016 and 2020–2022. Through communication with local resource managers during a period of exceptional drought on the Colorado Plateau in 2018, Southwest Climate Hub staff learned of a variety of efforts being undertaken by communities and individuals in that area, including establishing shortage-sharing agreements for rotating limited water supplies among irrigators, water hauling for livestock and wildlife, hand-watering of high-value crops, and fallowing of lower-value ones [12]. This experience helped shape the idea for documenting adaptations to water scarcity in the Southwest and creating a tool for documenting these kinds of practices.
The vision for WATA
WATA is meant to be a dynamic platform that will allow resource managers, researchers, and educators to identify practices that can be used to mitigate the effects of both temporary water shortage and expected longer-term water scarcity. The results are presented in a geospatial platform, with location-specific case studies.
With over 200 entries completed, and more being added regularly, the atlas provides a wide range of information that may be relevant to many kinds of users. Corresponding to the high share of water used by agriculture in the region, the bulk of case studies concern cropping and irrigation practices, with often highly technical information summarized in a way that is both accurate and accessible to non-specialists. The design of the tool allows users to curate a set of case studies that best suits their purpose and interests.
What WATA is not
WATA is not a prescriptive simulation model that accepts inputs and calculates outputs. Rather, it is a browsable map-based tool–an atlas–for obtaining information about, and visualizing the spatial context of, many types of adaptive responses to water scarcity in the Southwest. Case studies are presented in appropriate scientific detail without being overly reliant on discipline-specific technical jargon. Each case study is rigorously documented, with links to sources from both peer-reviewed and gray literature, providing a point of entry for users to delve more deeply into a given intervention.
Despite its broad scope WATA does not purport to be a completed inventory of all projects, practices, and policies for addressing water scarcity in the region. Instead, it is meant to grow in topical and geographic focus through the steady addition of additional case studies. WATA may assist users interested in gauging parameters such as prevalence or effectiveness of various strategies, but it does not explicitly perform that function itself. The apparent geographic bias towards Arizona and New Mexico, for example, reflects the process of building the tool by initially focusing on those states and then gradually scaling up across the region, rather than a greater prevalence of certain practices in that part of the region. Finally, case studies are intended to provide objective analysis of adaptations, not advocacy for any specific practice.
Methods
Tool design: Concept
WATA is designed to share information on adaptations to an increasingly arid climate in a region that has been characterized by arid and semi-arid conditions for the last 11,000 years [13]. Arid lands are defined by the scarcity of water (or evapotranspiration exceeding precipitation), so adaptation to this condition is necessary for all life in such environments. While climate models generally predict hotter, drier conditions in the Southwest [14], adaptation to aridity is necessary in this region even absent these trends. Given these conditions, WATA does not distinguish between adaptations to aridity in general and those undertaken in response to climate change.
The case studies collected in WATA include a broad range of practices, projects, and policies for addressing water scarcity, or the imbalance between demand for water use and its availability. However, rather than collecting only examples of apparently successful adaptation, this effort recognizes that adaptation and maladaptation exist on a continuum [15], and any ostensibly adaptive action may also come with negative tradeoffs. WATA includes a broad range of interventions in the water cycle that affect water use and availability within the study region–even if these actions may reduce water scarcity at one scale while exacerbating it at another.
The text of each case study is original writing by WATA developers, drawing on published source material that is cited within the tool. Any images re-produced in the tool are open source with attribution or with permission of the copyright owner.
Development process for WATA
WATA was developed through a non-systematic literature review aimed at identifying case studies of practices, projects, and policies for addressing water scarcity in the Southwest. This process follows the approach of a “realist review,” which seeks to gather the “vast experience of the options and possibilities” [16] for intervening in a system, to answer the question, “what works for whom, in what circumstances, in what respects and how?” [17].
Following Cooper’s (1988) categorization of literature reviews by focus, goal, perspective, coverage, organization, and audience [18], this process can be characterized by a focus on research outcomes and practical applications of interventions to address water scarcity. In addition to taking place within the Southwest region as defined above, the focus is further limited to research or practice with a tangible intervention (i.e., not purely modeled outcomes), where evidence of the effect of this intervention on water use or availability is provided. The goal is to create a common framework for analyzing these case studies, which are drawn from a wide range of literature types and disciplines. The perspective is a neutral position, presenting information as given in original sources and representing all sides when disagreement is evident. Coverage of the review aims to be exhaustive, while recognizing that this ideal is not practically attainable.
Drawing on the practice of the “Critical Interpretive Review” [19], the research process is iterative, allowing for search results to suggest new practices, spurring further searches to identify new case studies. To date, this process has identified over six hundred sources. The organization of the review, rather than being presented in a single narrative, is contained within WATA, where users can search and sort for case studies using multiple criteria. The intended audience is water management professionals in a broad sense–this may include researchers from multiple disciplines, practitioners, and policymakers with diverse perspectives. To reach these diverse audiences, case studies are written to be accessible to the general public while containing a level of detail relevant to specialists.
A key part of the iterative process followed here was the development of a typology of the types of practices, projects, and policies for addressing water scarcity. Existing typologies such as those of Richter et al. [20], provided initial search terms, which were paired with geographic terms (e.g., names of states, watersheds) which were used in querying Google Scholar, the National Agricultural Library, and government agency and NGO websites (e.g., Bureau of Reclamation, USDA Natural Resource Conservation Service, The Nature Conservancy, Sonoran Institute). As results are identified, the typology of categories is continually refined. This typology, discussed below, is one of the principal ways case studies are organized in WATA, allowing users to identify relevant information. A decision tree outlining the procedure for conducting this review and building the database appears in Fig 2.
Tool architecture
WATA is designed to be stable and easy to update. New entries are created on an Excel spreadsheet which includes geographic location coordinates. This spreadsheet is converted to a feature layer using ArcGIS Online, which serves the data to the website hosted by the Jornada Experimental Range (the host of the USDA Southwest Climate Hub at New Mexico State University). Updates to the data are reflected in the tool with no changes needed on the back end—for example, if a new category or crop is listed on the spreadsheet it will appear as an option in the filter.
Distinctiveness: WATA’s relationship to other tools
While the scope of WATA is unique, it fits into a category of tool in which information is organized into a collection of geospatially-referenced case studies. The design of WATA pulls from tools including the Environmental Justice Atlas (EJA) [21–23] and the Conservation and Adaptation Resources Toolbox (CART) [24]. The EJA documents cases of conflict over and resistance to ecologically damaging extraction and development projects around the world. The design of the EJA, with case studies containing descriptive information represented as points on a map, along with capabilities for searching and filtering, provided the general model for WATA. The EJA is crowd-sourced, allowing anyone to submit a case study. WATA contains a similar capability through a comment form that allows anyone to submit suggestions which are reviewed by the editors before being posted.
CART, a project led by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, also informed the design of WATA. CART presents case studies of resource management pinned to geographic locations, covering a broad range of topics with a focus on methods and lessons learned. Several cases posted there are relevant to water scarcity in the Southwest, and these are included in WATA adapted to its format, along with several case studies co-developed between the two platforms. However, CART has a broader topical and geographic focus, while WATA provides more comprehensive coverage of water scarcity solutions in the Southwest.
Other existing tools present descriptive information about water management in the western U.S., such as the Bureau of Reclamation’s WaterSMART Data Visualization Tool [25], the California Groundwater Projects Tool [26] and the Water for Colorado Projects Map [27]. While some of the projects documented in these tools may be eligible for inclusion in WATA, their main focus is on tracking expenditures for state and federal grant funds related to water sustainability. WATA includes a broader suite of practices, policies, and projects than these tools, and rather than a tendency to present successful outcomes of public expenditures, includes information about limitations and tradeoffs of these options.
Results
Organizational structure of the WATA database
The basic unit of information in WATA is the case study. The database currently contains just over 200 entries, with a similar number identified as candidates for inclusion (Figs 3–5). While the geospatial arrangement of these case studies on an interactive map is central to WATA’s functionality, the spatial data contained in the atlas is simple and limited—each case study is pinned to a single point on the map (although some cases that span multiple locations have several inter-linked pins). This approach is intentional, to avoid cluttering the map with different types of data. Essentially, WATA is a library of case studies with their location on the map as one option the user can employ to find relevant information. Options for searching and filtering, discussed below, provide another alternative. A forthcoming video tutorial will aid users in navigating the site.
Basemap from ESRI Streets (with Relief).
Basemap from ESRI Imagery Hybrid.
Case study descriptions contain information on the background of the problem and solution being discussed, the adaptation actions being implemented or proposed, the evidence for their impact, and the potential tradeoffs that they may entail. This description is accessed by clicking on an individual case study. A succinct description will also appear when a user hovers over a case study point on the map. Each case is tagged according to the type of intervention, the crop or ecosystem type involved, and the type of water use and water users involved.
Cases can be found in multiple ways. Because they are arranged on a map, users may begin by looking for items in a geographic area of interest. The search bar at the top of the case-viewer window combs text of all titles and descriptions to provide exact matches. This could be useful for finding cases involving a specific organization, which are listed in an “Actors” field for each entry. For example, typing “Salt River Project”—the name of a major water provider in central Arizona—returns fifteen results.
The filter tool, accessed by clicking on the funnel icon in the top bar of the case study viewer, provides an additional way to find case studies by subject area. Here, cases falling within certain categories can be selected. Results will appear both on the map and in the “View Case List” button (three horizontal lines) at the top of the viewer.
Categories of adaptation techniques
Categories are not mutually exclusive, and a given entry may be tagged with as many as five categories. Table 1 shows the structure of the categories designed to reduce water demand, providing an example case for each category or subcategory. Numbers in parentheses indicate the number of cases tagged in that category in February 2024. As cases are continually added, these numbers will increase over time. These values provide an indication of areas with relatively robust information (e.g., “Crop Choice and Rotation” and “Irrigation Technology and Timing”), as well as areas that are ripe for future expansion (e.g., “Shortage Sharing Agreement” and “Drought Plan”). While some categories currently have few entries, the inclusion of at least one representative case for each provides a marker for types of adaptation practices to be identified as the project expands.
Wastewater reuse and water harvesting feature the most cases in strategies intended to increase supply (Table 2), whereas use of brackish groundwater and desalination are emerging as possible solutions with fewer examples. Nearly half of the cases within the Law, Policy, Planning, and Markets meta-category feature market-based solutions (Table 3). Ecosystem focused solutions include desert and grasslands restoration (5 cases), in-stream flow (20 cases), and riparian and wetland restoration (27 cases) (Table 4). A set of secondary themes, which do not describe the type of management intervention but rather areas that may be impacted by the practices encompassed in the categories above, includes water security and water quality.
Additional options for filtering cases include water use categories (e.g., agriculture, urban, environment), water user types (e.g., agricultural producer, irrigation organization, water supply system operator). Some cases have associated images or videos which will also appear in the case study viewer. References are provided at the bottom of each case study with links to original sources.
Discussion
Applications of WATA
WATA has many potential applications, especially for agricultural professionals wishing to learn about water conservation practices. Formal and informal educators will find information on a variety of topics that could enhance curriculum and outreach activities related to water and agriculture, for example, cases on indigenous water management practices and heritage crops for arid lands. WATA cases dealing with multi-stakeholder partnerships to solve water challenges to the benefit of different users, such as cases addressing water for the environment, may be of greatest interest to practitioners in this area from government agencies, NGOs, and community groups. Cases dealing with uses for treated wastewater may inform urban planners and municipal officials. Policymakers may find useful information in WATA about water-sharing agreements. Engineers and inventors can find information about technologies for capturing atmospheric moisture, or recirculating water in closed agricultural systems. A detailed example of one use for WATA is developed below.
An example: Using WATA to investigate alternatives to alfalfa
To provide an example of how WATA might be used, this section considers entries containing information on alternatives to alfalfa, a cattle feed crop that is one of the most economically important and highest water-demanding crops across the western U.S. In the Colorado River Basin, irrigation of cattle-feed crops accounts for 55% of water use, while alfalfa alone accounts for 37% of all consumptive water use [82]. In the states covered by WATA, water use for alfalfa ranges from 2.1 acre-feet per acre (6,400 cubic meters per hectare) in Utah to 5.8 acre-feet per acre (18,000 cubic meters per hectare) in Arizona where the year-round growing season results in the highest productivity and is reflected in the higher water demand [9, 83].
Given the central role that alfalfa and other cattle-feed crops play in water use in the Southwest, solutions that can curb this consumption are central to addressing water scarcity in the region. While some have argued for fallowing of irrigated agriculture as the most cost-effective solution [82], such efforts are not typically well received by farmers. And, because of the important place of dairy and beef cattle in rural economies across the West, disruptions in feed supply could have consequences across the agricultural sector. Although exports of alfalfa have increased dramatically since 2013 and account for roughly 20% of production, most alfalfa is still consumed domestically [82–84]. Setting aside broader questions about the sustainability of cattle-based industries (which also account for roughly 3% of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions [85]), adaptations that reduce water use for cattle feed while meeting the demand for high-quality forage would fill an immediate need.
WATA can be used to identify alternative forage crops and cropping systems, providing information on production practices, water management, and potential yields and nutritional value. Producers and other agricultural professionals such as crop advisors or extension personnel could use this information to guide decisions on transitioning from alfalfa to alternative crops. To identify relevant cases for this application, the user can navigate to the filter tab (funnel icon), expand the “Crop or Ecosystem” field, expand the “Grains and Forage” crop category, and select “Forage (excl. alfalfa)” (Fig 6). Given the important role of alfalfa as a forage crop in the Southwest, it has been given its own tag while all other forage crops are grouped together. After making this selection, the user can select “View case list” (three horizontal bars), which gives a summary of the results. These results are presented in Table 5, with numbers assigned to the results for purposes of the ensuing discussion. The results can be further filtered to identify crops with a particular seasonality using the “Crop Duration and Photosynthetic Pathway” filter, which identifies crops as warm- or cool-season annuals or perennials, and according to their use of C3, C4, or CAM pathways.
Five of the results–cases 2, 8, 9, 10, and 14 –address salinity tolerance and suitability of crops for irrigation with relatively saline water. In these cases, the volume of water required for irrigation may not be less than that for alfalfa, but the salt tolerance of the plant creates the possibility of using water sources that are not suitable for other crops, including brackish groundwater and brine produced in a desalination process. These cases provide possible solutions for situations where abundant water is available but not of suitable quality for irrigation of alfalfa or other crops. These include experiments with Southwest native plants quailbush (Atriplex lentiformis, case 2 [86]), nipa (Distichlis palmeri, case 8 [87]), and saltgrass (Distichlis spicata, case 10 [88]), and with more familiar crops irrigated with water of varying salinity, including corn (case 9 [89]) and triticale (case 14 [90]).
Two of the results–cases 3 and 4 –address practices that can affect soil moisture conservation, with specific attention to their impact on subsequent growth of forage crops. Case 3 draws on a pair of studies looking at conservation tillage–either no-till or strip-till–practices in corn grown for silage (fermented forage) [91]. Results show higher moisture in soil under no-till treatment, with similar yields to conventional tillage. In case 4, researchers planted winter cover crops ahead of summer forage sorghum and corn [30, 31]. Cover crop adoption has been limited in semi-arid regions in part because of concern about reducing soil moisture availability for subsequent crops. However, this research found that cutting the cover crop and leaving the residue on the soil surface as mulch reduces evaporation and improves plant growth. Cover crops were found to deplete soil moisture in the spring when their growth takes off, meaning that establishment irrigation is essential for the subsequent crop. But as evaporative demand picks up in the summer, the fields mulched with cover crop residue showed a clear advantage.
The remaining seven cases consider crops that can be grown as alternatives to alfalfa using less water for irrigation. Case 1 draws on a study of an heirloom variety of corn called ‘Mexican June’ (MJ) which was widely planted in the Southwest in the early 20th century [92]. Growing both MJ and hybrids with equal irrigation in the hot and dry conditions of Las Cruces, New Mexico, researchers found grain yields from MJ were comparable to hybrids. Forage yields were not measured, but historic use of MJ as a forage crop is discussed.
Forage yields for corn and sorghum under limited irrigation conditions are compared in case 11, which is based on a study finding that sorghum (Sorghum bicolor) produced superior yields to corn under restricted irrigation [93]. Other possible forage crops included in these results include kenaf (Hibiscus cannabinus, case 6 [94]), pearl millet and finger millet (Cenchrus americanus and Eleusine coracana, case 7 [95–98]), and teff (Eragrostis tef, cases 12 and 13 [99]).
Case 5 documents a unique solution among those found here–substituting cool-season crops for water-intensive summer forage [100]. These crops included mixes of different grains and legumes irrigated either only once before planting or provided with one subsequent irrigation. Results show little benefit from the second irrigation. With only one irrigation, these crop mixes received 20 centimeters of water, compared with 60–100 centimeters typically applied to an alfalfa crop in the area. The highest performing mixes, wheat-pea and triticale-pea yielded approximately 4.5–5 metric tons per hectare, with 17% protein content. This is a similar protein content to high-quality alfalfa [101], and just under half the average biomass yield for New Mexico alfalfa growers [102]. However, if these yields can be achieved with less than half the water required for alfalfa as suggested by this study, cool season forage mixes may result in a greater water use efficiency.
While these cases provide detailed information about more than a dozen alternative crops and crop management practices, it will be up to the individual user to determine the applicability of this information to a specific context. Each case provides as much information as possible about suitable conditions for raising each crop, but the results are not tailored to the present or future climate or other environmental conditions of a specific location. For instance, the cases on teff discuss the temperature parameters for this crop, with extended periods above 90F (32C) known to be detrimental. In this case, consulting additional resources such as the National Integrated Heat Health Information System’s map of current and projected days above 90 degrees Fahrenheit [103] could help in determining the suitability of teff for a given location. For all cases, users must rely on their own knowledge of local conditions and context in evaluating the suitability of a given solution.
Conclusions and future directions
The atlas tool described in this article provides a powerful platform for documenting adaptations to increasingly scarce and over-allocated water resources in an arid environment trending towards greater aridity. Reflecting the high proportion of consumptive water use attributable to agriculture in this region, the bulk of the case studies collected thus far address water conservation solutions for crop production. However, WATA also includes and holds space for further inclusion of a wide range of practices and policies for addressing the imbalance between water supply and demand in the Southwest. This includes urban and industrial water conservation efforts, and infrastructure projects to bring safe and secure water supplies to underserved rural communities. It also explicitly includes practices that address water scarcity issues for water users and uses that have been marginalized by historic water allocation in the region, namely Native American tribes, and water for the benefit of ecosystem health. The atlas has a wide range of possible applications for different purposes and audiences. As in the example of alternative forage crops outlined above, it contains a wealth of information about cropping and irrigation systems that can be applied to challenges faced by producers and conservation professionals who serve them in various capacities. Making different selections using the search or filter functions can quickly curate a set of case studies relevant to the specific interests of a broad range of water and agricultural professionals.
The development of WATA is ongoing, and readers are invited to contribute case study suggestions. The geographic scope is currently expanding from the initial focus on Arizona and New Mexico to include cases in Nevada, Utah, California, and will eventually include case studies in Hawaii and the U.S.-affiliated Pacific Islands which are also served by the Southwest Climate Hub. Of course, state and international boundaries do not necessarily correspond to hydrological, ecological, and socio-cultural regions, and WATA will be enriched by including cases from across a broader landscape. WATA’s development team has had preliminary discussions with partners in West Texas and Colorado and welcomes additional collaborators to help build out the atlas in other regions. This need not be limited to the western U.S.—responses to short- or long-term water scarcity anywhere could be included on the map. During the summer of 2023, parts of the Midwest and South from Minnesota to Louisiana experienced severe drought [104], responses to which could become part of WATA in collaboration with local partners. Another short-term goal for WATA is to include case studies from primary sources such as interviews with agricultural producers who have adopted water conservation techniques, and collaboration in collecting and curating these case studies is welcome.
An important future direction for WATA will be moving from a constellation of individual case studies to syntheses that evaluate the effectiveness of different adaptations. The IPCC Working Group II 6th Assessment Report [105] provides an entry point for conceptualizing such an assessment. In the approach there, climate change adaptations involving water are assessed along a continuum of positive and negative outcome in five dimensions: economic and financial indicators, impacts on vulnerable people, water-related impacts, ecological and environmental impacts, and institutional and sociocultural impacts. A similar approach could be applied to the case studies included in WATA to assess their effectiveness in general terms; however, the challenge identified by the IPCC that “the context-specific nature of adaptation…make[s] long-term projections of adaptation effectiveness of limited use for decision-making on the ground” remains. Recognition of this challenge is built into WATA, as detailed context-specific information is provided for each case study. The challenge going forward will be to develop ways of condensing this information to address the needs of resource managers “on the ground”: which cultivars, crops, cropping systems, soil moisture conservation practices, or irrigation technologies are appropriate for a given context, limit the risk of maladaptation, and provide multiple benefits? Future work will focus on creating these sorts of assessments of context-specific solutions.
Acknowledgments
The authors would like to thank Maude Dinan, David Donaldson, Susanna Eden, Sam Fernald, Cody Knutson, Amy Kremen, Jonathan Long, Charlie Luce, Jamie McEvoy, Sharon Megdal, Gabriela Perez Quesada, Kelly Smith, Spiro Stefanou, and Kelly Thorp for their helpful comments and insightful questions. Sophia Tanner played an important role in conceptualizing the project and securing the cooperative agreement with the USDA-ERS, as well as comments on manuscript drafts.
The findings and conclusions in this manuscript are those of the authors and should not be construed to represent any official USDA or U.S. government determination or policy.
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