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Water planning and governance strategies must adapt to challenges associated with population growth, climate change, and projected water shortages. In the Western United States, agriculture is the dominant water use, and agricultural water users are being asked to conserve or share their water with other uses. Managing scarce water supplies at the local level often involves creative solutions, many of which are not well documented, especially in the agricultural sector. It is therefore critical to understand ideas to manage scarce water resources from the perspective of agricultural water users and those who work with them. In our research, we used interviews to explore how agricultural water users are managing increasing water scarcity in the Middle Rio Grande basin of central New Mexico and what enables or prevents them from taking innovative action to manage water scarcity. We hypothesized that we would find undocumented water use innovations born out of water users’ responses to lower and more variable water availability in recent years. We primarily recruited interviewees through snowball sampling, with a total of 42 (47%) agricultural water users, decision makers, and non-profit leaders influencing agricultural water governance in the basin accepting our invitation to participate. Our approximately one-hour, semi-structured and open-ended interviews explored agricultural water users’ lived experiences with water governance and opportunities to manage water scarcity. The interviews were recorded, transcribed, coded, and analyzed using HyperRESEARCH software (version 4.5.4). Our results did not support our hypothesis. Instead, we found that agricultural water users struggled to implement well-known innovations amid the pressures of water scarcity, supply uncertainty, administrative complexity, and constraints on their time, labor, and money. Water users and decision makers were mutually interested in implementing innovations in crop choice, flexibility in water storage, use, and management, stricter enforcement of water use efficiency, and access to more efficient irrigation equipment. However, high costs, a lack of knowledge, education, and training, and challenges related to water distribution and scheduling prevented agricultural water users from accessing these and other innovations. Recommendations include incentive-based policies to promote agricultural water use innovations that require high initial costs, improved water accounting at the basin and regional levels to promote flexible and reliable access to agricultural water, targeted education and outreach programming on alternative irrigation methods and cropping patterns, and improved access to irrigation scheduling information to support agricultural water users in planning for water scarcity. 

Abstract Wildfires have increased in size, frequency, and intensity in arid regions of the western United States because of human activity, changing land use, and rising temperature. Fire can degrade water quality, reshape aquatic habitat, and increase the risk of high discharge and erosion. Drawing from patterns in montane dry forest, chaparral, and desert ecosystems, we developed a conceptual framework describing how interactions and feedbacks among material accumulation, combustion of fuels, and hydrologic transport influence the effects of fire on streams. Accumulation and flammability of fuels shift in opposition along gradients of aridity, influencing the materials available for transport. Hydrologic transport of combustion products and materials accumulated after fire can propagate the effects of fire to unburned stream–riparian corridors, and episodic precipitation characteristic of arid lands can cause lags, spatial heterogeneity, and feedbacks in response. Resolving uncertainty in fire effects on arid catchments will require monitoring across hydroclimatic gradients and episodic precipitation. 

Abstract Increased occurrence, size, and intensity of fire result in significant but variable changes to hydrology and material retention in watersheds with concomitant effects on stream biogeochemistry. In arid regions, seasonal and episodic precipitation results in intermittency in flows connecting watersheds to recipient streams that can delay the effects of fire on stream chemistry. We investigated how the spatial extent of fire within watersheds interacts with variability in amount and timing of precipitation to influence stream chemistry of three forested, montane watersheds in a monsoonal climate and four coastal, chaparral watersheds in a Mediterranean climate. We applied state-space models to estimate effects of precipitation, fire, and their interaction on stream chemistry up to five years following fire using 15 + years of monthly observations. Precipitation alone diluted specific conductance and flushed nitrate and phosphate to Mediterranean streams. Fire had positive and negative effects on specific conductance in both climates, whereas ammonium and nitrate concentrations increased following fire in Mediterranean streams. Fire and precipitation had positive interactive effects on specific conductance in monsoonal streams and on ammonium in Mediterranean streams. In most cases, the effects of fire and its interaction with precipitation persisted or were lagged 2–5 years. These results suggest that precipitation influences the timing and intensity of the effects of fire on stream solute dynamics in aridland watersheds, but these responses vary by climate, solute, and watershed characteristics. Time series models were applied to data from long-term monitoring that included observations before and after fire, yielding estimated effects of fire on aridland stream chemistry. This statistical approach captured effects of local-scale temporal variation, including delayed responses to fire, and may be used to reduce uncertainty in predicted responses of water quality under changing fire and precipitation regimes of arid lands. 

Early engagement in undergraduate research opportunities promotes improved critical thinking and scientific reasoning, increased academic performance, enhanced retention both within STEM majors and in college overall, and improved satisfaction with college. It is therefore critical to create pathways for early-stage college students to engage in undergraduate research. Transdisciplinary Grand Challenges programs at large public universities provide an opportunity to engage undergraduates in research that is directly tied to their community’s needs. The objective of this paper is to present the development and implementation of a science communication fellowship to engage early-stage undergraduate students in research. We created the Grand Challenge Water Science Communication Fellowship, in which students work with mentors (faculty, research scientists, graduate students) to create a communication project to educate the public on a water resources related issue that is currently being researched. The research used to produce the communication project can either be the student’s own or the research of their mentor. Students select their own communications venues (e.g., paintings, podcasts, videos, infographics) and work individually with their mentor and together as a cohort to develop and refine their individual projects. The projects are presented at the end of the semester-long fellowship program at the University’s Undergraduate Research Conference, which is open to the public. Participating students and mentors represent a wide variety of backgrounds, including biology, physics, environmental engineering, mechanical engineering, economics, environmental science, and geography. Several tangible benefits were seen for both students and mentors in the program’s first year. Students formed an active multidisciplinary cohort that created a sense of belonging to the university; most of the students are now working in the research lab of their mentor; and students from the prior year’s cohort and organizing and mentoring the next year’s cohort. Research mentors have obtained broader visibility of their research by using the produced communications pieces in grant proposals, research papers, presentations, websites, and other public avenues for knowledge sharing. In the second year of the program, we now aim to use qualitative and quantitative surveys to understand if participation in the program increases students’ self-efficacy and research identity. Survey questions ask students to evaluate aspects such as, how active their role was in planning the project, sense of responsibility for project progress, sense of belonging to a community of researchers, and intention to persist in a research experience. Results will be used to scale this opportunity and create similar communication fellowships for other Grand Challenges and disciplinary programs at the university. 

Global climate models project that New Mexico's Upper Rio Grande watershed is expected to become more arid and experience greater climatic and hydrological extremes in the next 50 years. The resulting transitions will have dramatic implications for downstream water users. The Upper Rio Grande and its tributaries provide water to about half of New Mexico's population, including the downstream communities of Albuquerque and Santa Fe, and surrounding agricultural areas. In the absence of formal climate adaptation strategies, informal governance arrangements are emerging to facilitate watershed climate adaptation strategies, including fuel treatments and stream remediation. One example is the Rio Grande Water Fund (RGWF), a collaborative effort coordinating work to protect storage, delivery, and quality of Rio Grande water through landscape-scale forest restoration treatments in tributary forested watersheds. This article examines the RGWF as one example of an emerging adaptation strategy that is working within—and beyond—existing legal and policy frameworks to accomplish more collaborative efforts across jurisdictional lines and administrative barriers. We identified ten (10) key characteristics of adaptive governance from the relevant literature and then applied them to the RGWF's experience in the watershed to date. Key findings include: (1) the RGWF's approach as a collaborative network created the right level of formality while also keeping flexibility in its design, (2) a scalar fit to the environmental challenge built social capital and investment in its work, (3) leadership from key stakeholders leveraged opportunities in the watershed to create and maintain stability, and (4) use of adaptive management and peer review processes built capacity by creating the feedback loops necessary to inform future work. 

Abstract Processes that drive variability in catchment solute sourcing, transformation, and transport can be investigated using concentration–discharge (C–Q) relationships. These relationships reflect catchment and in‐stream processes operating across nested temporal scales, incorporating both short and long‐term patterns. Scientists can therefore leverage catchment‐scale C–Q datasets to identify and distinguish among the underlying meteorological, biological, and geological processes that drive solute export patterns from catchments and influence the shape of their respective C–Q relationships. We have synthesized current knowledge regarding the influence of biological, geological, and meteorological processes on C–Q patterns for various solute types across diel to decadal time scales. We identify cross‐scale linkages and tools researchers can use to explore these interactions across time scales. Finally, we identify knowledge gaps in our understanding of C–Q temporal dynamics as reflections of catchment and in‐stream processes. We also lay the foundation for developing an integrated approach to investigate cross‐scale linkages in the temporal dynamics of C–Q relationships, reflecting catchment biogeochemical processes and the effects of environmental change on water quality. This article is categorized under:Science of Water > Hydrological ProcessesScience of Water > Water QualityScience of Water > Water and Environmental Change