Scenario Analysis for the San Pedro River, Analyzing Hydrological Consequences of a Future Environment

Studies of future management and policy options based on different assumptions provide a mechanism to examine possible outcomes and especially their likely benefits and consequences. The San Pedro River in Arizona and Sonora, Mexico is an area that has undergone rapid changes in land use and cover, and subsequently is facing keen environmental crises related to water resources. It is the location of a number of studies that have dealt with change analysis, watershed condition, and most recently, alternative futures analysis. The previous work has dealt primarily with resources of habitat, visual quality, and groundwater related to urban development patterns and preferences. In the present study, previously defined future scenarios, in the form of land-use/land-cover grids, were examined relative to their impact on surface-water conditions (e.g., surface runoff and sediment yield). These hydrological outputs were estimated for the baseline year of 2000 and predicted twenty years in the future as a demonstration of how new geographic information system-based hydrologic modeling tools can be used to evaluate the spatial impacts of urban growth patterns on surface-water hydrology.

[1]  D. A. Woolhiser,et al.  KINEROS - a kinematic runoff and erosion model , 1995 .

[2]  Darius J. Semmens,et al.  GIS-based Hydrologic Modeling: The Automated Geospatial Watershed Assessment Tool , 2002 .

[3]  Carl Steinitz,et al.  Alternative Futures for Changing Landscapes: The Upper San Pedro River Basin In Arizona And Sonora , 2003 .

[4]  Carl Steinitz,et al.  A Framework for Theory Applicable to the Education of Landscape Architects (and Other Environmental Design Professionals) , 1990, Landscape Journal.

[5]  Technology Transfer,et al.  Environmental Planning for Communities A Guide to the Environmental Visioning Process Utilizing a Geographic Information System ( GIS ) , 2022 .

[6]  Carl Steinitz,et al.  Biodiversity and Landscape Planning: Alternative Futures for the Region of Camp Pendleton, California , 1996 .

[7]  M. Di Luzio,et al.  BETTER ASSESSMENT SCIENCE INTEGRATING POINT AND NONPOINT SOURCES (BASINS 3.0) , 2002 .

[8]  D. Goodrich,et al.  Integrating a Landscape/Hydrologic Analysis for Watershed Assessment , 2003 .

[9]  L. Shoemaker,et al.  Better assessment science integrating point and nonpoint sources (BASINS), version 2.0. User`s manual , 1998 .

[10]  Peter Schwartz,et al.  The art of the long view : paths to strategic insight for yourself and your company , 1996 .

[11]  Stuart E. Marsh,et al.  A Landscape Approach for Detecting and Evaluating Change in a Semi-Arid Environment , 2000 .

[12]  G. Woodwell,et al.  Changes in the Carbon Content of Terrestrial Biota and Soils between 1860 and 1980: A Net Release of CO"2 to the Atmosphere , 1983 .

[13]  Mary G. Wallace,et al.  Arizona's Changing Rivers: How People Have Affected the Rivers , 1997 .

[14]  Steward T. A. Pickett,et al.  Humans as Components of Ecosystems , 1993, Springer New York.

[15]  A. Mannion.  The earth as transformed by human action , 1991 .