Project Title: Sustainable Model for Watershed Planning: Ecological Suitability and Growth Management Strategies

SCERP Project Number: NR97-3

Principal Investigator: Frederick Steiner

Task Manager's affiliation: Arizona State University

Goal: This project will develop and test a sustainable watershed planning model for managing the impacts of growth without adversely affecting biodiversity or hydrologic regimes.

The project focuses on the upper San Pedro watershed, a predominantly rural area located on the U.S./Mexico border. This region, which includes much of Cochise County, Arizona, and the Naco and Cananea municipalities in Sonora, is now facing significant growth and development. Rapid urbanization on the U.S. side and cattle ranching, copper mining, and population growth in Mexico have negative consequences for water quality and quantity, pose threats to wildlife habitats, and are degrading the region's scenic resources. Although these changes to land use have many economic benefits for the region, local and state governments are faced with siting various land uses in manners that are both cost effective and not deleterious to the environment. Currently, local officials have inadequate financial resources and planning acumen to undertake or implement comprehensive ecologically-based sustainable watershed planning studies.

The research will be conducted in four phases and has four primary objectives:

Phase One: to undertake a comprehensive ecological inventory of the upper San Pedro watershed and to identify areas under "environmental stress" as well as those in need of rehabilitation and protection;

Phase Two: with the help of local and state officials, to develop a sustainable land planning model for managing growth based on capacity thresholds of natural and human-made systems calculated in Phase One;

Phase Three: to disseminate the growth management model through two collaborative workshops in Arizona and Sonora; and

Phase Four: to abstract from the model key elements and management strategies that can be tested in other small communities along the U.S./Mexico border.

The researchers will work with Sonoran and Mexican federal officials in Hermosillo and state and Cochise County officials in Bisbee, Arizona.

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Last updated 11/14/00