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Drought in Arizona
Note: this will also apply to CA, perhaps NV & NM as well. Not sure about TX.
• By Tim Steller, AZ Daily Star
Drought in Arizona
Anyone who has owned or rented property around here has faced the question: Should I really plant something that needs so much water?
Natives who are used to desert landscaping may find “no” an easier answer than we transplants from wetter climates do. But no matter who you are, the answers are getting harder as drought looms.
It’s been hard for me lately as my wife and I consider replanting a smaller patch of grass than the large one that we inherited when we bought the house. We let the swath of grass dwindle from underwatering for years, until it died off last summer for lack of rain. Now we miss having the green space for the kids to play in.
After the passing of the Tropical Storms Norbert and Odile, the short-term drought has eased a bit over Southern Arizona, and my old grass is trying come back in clumps. But the long-term, it is still looking dangerously dry. And it makes you wonder about your own responsibility.
The questions arise, I find, in those occasional, mind-numbing household decisions — replacing toilets, buying washers and, especially, picking plants that you may find yourself endlessly watering.
The good news of the moment is that we in Southern Arizona are not in crisis, as California is, because we’ve had a decent rainy season and those recent hurricane remnants.
That’s what meteorologist David Simeral of the Western Region Climate Center in Reno, Nevada, told me when we spoke Friday. He’s one of a rotating cast who create weekly maps of America’s drought conditions called the U.S. Drought Monitor. They’ve shown our areas of extreme drought steadily shrinking.
“Although you’ve had some really beneficial rains over the past 90 days, basically you still have pretty large deficits in some areas. And your snowpack was well below normal for the year,” he said.
The better news: A wetter-than-average winter is also being projected. That could be the key to refilling Arizona’s reservoirs, several of which are about half-full due to the tiny snowpack last winter.
But these issues don’t just play out over individual seasons or years. They play out over longer periods, climatic episodes — and that’s where the news becomes downright scary.
As my colleague Tony Davis reported on Aug. 30, a recent study produced largely through University of Arizona research found that we are at a greater risk for a “megadrought” this century than we realized. The researchers — including a former UA doctoral student and three current faculty members — found that we have a risk of up to 50 percent of experiencing a drought that lasts 35 years or more.
One of the co-authors, UA professor Julia Cole, said a key revelation of the study was finding that megadroughts had occurred before and then “filtering” climate models to reflect that. This allowed researchers to consider more realistically the chance that they would happen again.
Of course, when such droughts occurred in periods like the 1150s, there were very few people in what’s now Arizona.
“The megadroughts of the last 2,000 years didn’t happen in an overpopulated Southwest with the water all allocated,” Cole told me Friday.
If the loss of water flow in the Colorado River that occurred during the 1150s were to happen again, it would eat up all of Arizona’s water allocation from the river, the study says. That’s water we’re drinking, washing with and using to water our plants here in Tucson.
Of course, those residential uses are only a fraction of Arizona’s overall water consumption. About 68 percent of the state’s water is used in irrigated agriculture, the Arizona Department of Water Resources says.
Warming temperatures and the prospect of drought are already changing what plants Jim Verrier recommends to customers at Desert Survivors nursery, 1020 W. Starr Pass Blvd., where he is the director.
“We’re phasing out the high-water-use trees,” Verrier said. “At this point, I’ve started to discontinue some of the true willows that grow in riparian areas, Arizona walnuts.”
They also try to talk people out of planting water-hogging cottonwoods.
And he doesn’t think much of Bermuda grass — not only does it take a lot of watering, but some people are allergic to it, and it’s invasive. Still, he’s not opposed to a small patch of grass, especially if you seed a native grass like blue grama.
Most importantly for individual homeowners like me, he said, the more you conserve and harvest water at your home, the better you can justify watering plants that otherwise don’t belong in the desert.
“A lot of people want to grow edible plants these days. If you save water, and if you use gray water, that definitely justifies using high-water-use plants,” he said.
So that’s what I’m thinking about now — how to conserve and harvest enough water that I can justify my patch of grass. Then we’ll watch the conditions, and over time, if drought worsens, we can always abandon it for something that fits the new situation.
If it’s a megadrought, the abandoned grass may be the least of our concerns.
• By Tim Steller, AZ Daily Star
Drought in Arizona
Anyone who has owned or rented property around here has faced the question: Should I really plant something that needs so much water?
Natives who are used to desert landscaping may find “no” an easier answer than we transplants from wetter climates do. But no matter who you are, the answers are getting harder as drought looms.
It’s been hard for me lately as my wife and I consider replanting a smaller patch of grass than the large one that we inherited when we bought the house. We let the swath of grass dwindle from underwatering for years, until it died off last summer for lack of rain. Now we miss having the green space for the kids to play in.
After the passing of the Tropical Storms Norbert and Odile, the short-term drought has eased a bit over Southern Arizona, and my old grass is trying come back in clumps. But the long-term, it is still looking dangerously dry. And it makes you wonder about your own responsibility.
The questions arise, I find, in those occasional, mind-numbing household decisions — replacing toilets, buying washers and, especially, picking plants that you may find yourself endlessly watering.
The good news of the moment is that we in Southern Arizona are not in crisis, as California is, because we’ve had a decent rainy season and those recent hurricane remnants.
That’s what meteorologist David Simeral of the Western Region Climate Center in Reno, Nevada, told me when we spoke Friday. He’s one of a rotating cast who create weekly maps of America’s drought conditions called the U.S. Drought Monitor. They’ve shown our areas of extreme drought steadily shrinking.
“Although you’ve had some really beneficial rains over the past 90 days, basically you still have pretty large deficits in some areas. And your snowpack was well below normal for the year,” he said.
The better news: A wetter-than-average winter is also being projected. That could be the key to refilling Arizona’s reservoirs, several of which are about half-full due to the tiny snowpack last winter.
But these issues don’t just play out over individual seasons or years. They play out over longer periods, climatic episodes — and that’s where the news becomes downright scary.
As my colleague Tony Davis reported on Aug. 30, a recent study produced largely through University of Arizona research found that we are at a greater risk for a “megadrought” this century than we realized. The researchers — including a former UA doctoral student and three current faculty members — found that we have a risk of up to 50 percent of experiencing a drought that lasts 35 years or more.
One of the co-authors, UA professor Julia Cole, said a key revelation of the study was finding that megadroughts had occurred before and then “filtering” climate models to reflect that. This allowed researchers to consider more realistically the chance that they would happen again.
Of course, when such droughts occurred in periods like the 1150s, there were very few people in what’s now Arizona.
“The megadroughts of the last 2,000 years didn’t happen in an overpopulated Southwest with the water all allocated,” Cole told me Friday.
If the loss of water flow in the Colorado River that occurred during the 1150s were to happen again, it would eat up all of Arizona’s water allocation from the river, the study says. That’s water we’re drinking, washing with and using to water our plants here in Tucson.
Of course, those residential uses are only a fraction of Arizona’s overall water consumption. About 68 percent of the state’s water is used in irrigated agriculture, the Arizona Department of Water Resources says.
Warming temperatures and the prospect of drought are already changing what plants Jim Verrier recommends to customers at Desert Survivors nursery, 1020 W. Starr Pass Blvd., where he is the director.
“We’re phasing out the high-water-use trees,” Verrier said. “At this point, I’ve started to discontinue some of the true willows that grow in riparian areas, Arizona walnuts.”
They also try to talk people out of planting water-hogging cottonwoods.
And he doesn’t think much of Bermuda grass — not only does it take a lot of watering, but some people are allergic to it, and it’s invasive. Still, he’s not opposed to a small patch of grass, especially if you seed a native grass like blue grama.
Most importantly for individual homeowners like me, he said, the more you conserve and harvest water at your home, the better you can justify watering plants that otherwise don’t belong in the desert.
“A lot of people want to grow edible plants these days. If you save water, and if you use gray water, that definitely justifies using high-water-use plants,” he said.
So that’s what I’m thinking about now — how to conserve and harvest enough water that I can justify my patch of grass. Then we’ll watch the conditions, and over time, if drought worsens, we can always abandon it for something that fits the new situation.
If it’s a megadrought, the abandoned grass may be the least of our concerns.
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