This project will explore the impacts of changes in land cover/land use in northwestern Mexico on moisture recycling and transport to both the United States and other areas of Mexico, using a coupled land-atmosphere model. The feasibility of employing land use decisions to influence the North American monsoon and thereby reduce regional vulnerability to climate variability and change will be assessed. The study will be embedded within an integrated assessment framework, in which scientists and stakeholders from both sides of the border interact and co-develop both the model experiments and a decision-support tool. Stakeholders will be involved in guiding the form of the experiments and the form of the tool, and in evaluating the tool?s performance as an aid to decisions in the context of sustainable resource management.
A substantial portion of summer precipitation in the southwestern United States originates from land in northwestern Mexico and is transported across the border via the phenomenon of moisture recycling during the monsoon. Research also indicates that land use decisions in northwestern Mexico may have a large influence over the timing and magnitude of this moisture recycling, and on the behavior of the monsoon itself. The potential link between land use and downwind precipitation could represent a major paradigm shift, affecting our concepts of water rights and international treaties and making bi-national cooperation in land use crucial to sustainable water resources management. The scientific results and adaptive strategies investigated in this project will be applicable to the U.S.-Mexico border region, as well as to other arid regions and monsoon systems, and to the international coordination of shared resources around the world.
This project is supported under the NSF Science, Engineering and Education for Sustainability Fellows (SEES Fellows) program, with the goal of helping to enable discoveries needed to inform actions that lead to environmental, energy and societal sustainability while creating the necessary workforce to address these challenges. With SEES Fellows support, this project will enable a promising early career researcher to establish themselves in an independent research career related to sustainability.
