Advancing Sustainability of U.S.-Mexico Transboundary Drylands Proceedings of a Workshop (2018) / Chapter Skim
Currently Skimming:
2 Understanding the Transboundary Drylands Region
2 Understanding the Transboundary Drylands Region
Pages 9-18
The Chapter Skim interface presents what we've algorithmically identified as the most significant single chunk of text within every page in the chapter.
Select key terms on the right to highlight them within pages of the chapter.
From page 9... ...
International commerce extends the region even further. Culturally, the region is composed of several metropolitan centers, as well as rural and tribal areas, such as the Tohono O'odham lands that cross the U.S.-Mexico border and include federally recognized tribal land in Arizona.2 To put the topic in context for the workshop, this session covered a definition of the term "transboundary region," key sustainability challenges and vulnerabilities with a particular focus on binational water management, and current binational and regional research approaches in the region.
|
From page 10... ...
Convention to Combat Desertification, which developed a widely used aridity index to define drylands.6 The U.N. index determines aridity by dividing the mean annual precipitation by the mean potential evapotranspiration.
|
From page 11... ...
The shared ecosystems in the border region have an enormous natural value and include several conservation core areas -- terrestrial, hydrological, and avian. He listed the Sonoran and Chihuahuan deserts, the Rio Grande and Rio Bravo rivers, the Colorado River delta, and the Laguna Madre as primary examples of the ecological richness and diversity in the binational region.
|
From page 12... ...
Scott noted that both multisector collaboration and a need to clearly define the area of research interest and work on a shared solution are both important. KEY SUSTAINABILITY CHALLENGES Christopher Scott (Steering Committee Chair)
|
From page 13... ...
and Minute 323 (which extended Minute 319 through 2026 and added a Binational Water Scarcity Contingency Plan) as examples of successful transboundary collaborations.12 Scott addressed future water governance challenges, including con 11 See https://www.usbr.gov/lc/region/programs/crbstudy/finalreport/index.html [July 2018]
|
From page 14... ...
He also differentiated between water demand management and water shortage management: if policy makers emphasize dealing with the shortage alone, they are allocating water that no longer exists. Then, in the future, when water demand exceeds water availability, to whom does the shortage apply?
|
From page 15... ...
Scott mentioned some of the binational water management collaborations that have been implemented to date, including the Center of Excellence for Water Security16 and the Transboundary Aquifer Assessment Program.17 Institutions that are part of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) , including the Border Environmental Cooperation Commission and the North American Development Bank, have also been working towards a binational solution in this region.
|
From page 16... ...
He said he feels there are tremendous opportunities to expand the knowledge around and management of sustainability. Scott added that surface water storage, flow engineering, and infrastructure must increasingly be developed to augment underground storage and recovery for aquifers, which require particular recharge and pumping mechanisms.
|
From page 17... ...
Alvarez told the workshop participants about a water reuse case study conducted in Tijuana, Mexico, and a study being conducted in Los Alisos, a small Sonoran municipality, to recharge an aquifer with excess water from their water treatment plants. El Paso, Texas, is doing something similar, putting together an executive project to inject treated wastewater directly into its water network.
|
Key Terms
This material may be derived from roughly machine-read images, and so is provided only to facilitate research.
More
information on Chapter Skim is available.