THINK GLOBALLY, ACT LOCALLY: COMMUNITY PARTICIPATION
IN “SALSA” GLOBAL CHANGE RESEARCH

Bruce F. Goff and David C. Goodrich
USDA Agricultural Research Service, 2000 E. Allen Road
Tucson, Arizona, 85719, USA
email: salsa@tucson.ars.ag.gov

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INTRODUCTION

It can be said that all environmental change, like all politics, is local. Like politicians, global change scientists are wise to address local needs while pursuing their larger research agenda. This approach to global change research has three advantages: society gets a higher return on its investment in research, the local community has a stake in the outcome of the research and therefore a willingness to support it financially and politically, and local participants learn about global change issues and share this knowledge with the community.

The Semi-Arid Land-Surface-Atmosphere ("SALSA") Program is a multidisciplinary, multi-agency, multi-national global change research program designed to examine the consequences of natural and human-induced change on the water balance and ecological stability of semi-arid river basins. SALSA research is focused on the upper basin of the San Pedro River in southeastern Arizona, USA and northeastern Sonora, Mexico.

The purpose of this poster is to outline our experience in working with a community to help resolve a local environmental problem while at the same time achieving scientific objectives of a global change research program.

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ENVIRONMENTAL SETTING

From a local community perspective, the Upper San Pedro Basin is a broad, high-desert valley bordered by scenic mountains and cut by a green ribbon of riparian vegetation sustained by a small stream. The San Pedro has been proclaimed one of America's most threatened rivers by American Rivers, one of the world's Eight Last Great Places by the Nature Conservancy, one of the world's Birding Hot Spots by Birding Magazine, and a Globally Important Bird Area by the American Bird Conservancy. Most residents of the community appreciate the unique quality of their local environment but differ on how, and to what extent, it should be preserved.

From the global change research perspective of SALSA, the Upper San Pedro Basin represents an ideal outdoor laboratory, containing diverse topographic, climatic, vegetative, and landuse features within a well-defined drainage system about 40 km across and 150 km long. These characteristics will be useful in developing and testing land-surface- atmosphere process models, and calibrating and validating satellite-based Earth observation systems.

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LOCAL PROBLEMS, GLOBAL SIGNIFICANCE

In 1988, the United States Congress established the San Pedro Riparian National Conservation Area (SPRNCA), the first of its kind in the nation, to protect riparian resources along 60 km of river north of the US-Mexico border. Several factors, most notably excessive groundwater pumping by nearby Fort Huachuca and the City of Sierra Vista, threaten to diminish base flows to the river which could kill riparian phreatophytes and destroy protected habitat within the SPRNCA. This possibility has alarmed environmentalists, provoking calls for government to correct or mitigate the situation. Although groundwater models had been developed to address some of the water management issues in the basin, too little is known about the riparian transpiration component of these models to assure accurate results.

THE RIPARIAN CAMPAIGN

In response to this need, SALSA researchers initiated the "Riparian Campaign," in 1997 to quantify and characterize evapotranspiration and stream-aquifer interactions along the riparian corridor in the Upper San Pedro Basin.

The results of this experiment will contribute to a better overall understanding of the riparian system within the SPRNCA and generate information needed to improve the basin models. The results will also provide SALSA scientists with data needed in developing larger scale models of the land-surface-atmosphere system. A study site was established on the San Pedro River near Lewis Springs and instrumented for taking intensive measurements of several hydrologic variables.

COMMUNITY SUPPORT

SALSA relied heavily on student and citizen volunteers to help with the intensive measurements made at the study site. Some volunteers were affiliated with local organizations, including Cochise County, City of Sierra Vista, Huachuca Audubon Society, and Friends of the San Pedro; others participated as individuals.

They included technical and clerical professionals, a county attorney, a city councilman, an accountant, an electrician, homemakers, and retirees, who brought with them a wide range of knowledge and experience. UA staff and students from disciplines as diverse as entomology and planetary science also volunteered to help. Between measurement circuits and work shifts, groups of volunteers had time to interact with each other and SALSA researchers, exchange ideas and establish useful contacts. Local officials, the media, and members of an international environmental review panel also visited the site to learn how this research could help resolve basin water problems.

DISCUSSION

Community participation played a crucial role in SALSA's success during 1997. Funding and logistical support from local agencies, as well as volunteer labor, contributed significantly to the research effort. SALSA provided a high return on investment to researchers and supporters alike. The cooperative nature of the program allowed participants to leverage their funds to the maximum extent, achieving multiple research objectives at no extra cost.

CONCLUSION

Both the SALSA global change research program and the local community have benefited by "thinking globally" while "acting locally" to address a common research objective. Although the results of the 1997 Riparian Campaign will answer only a few of the questions concerning water and habitat management in the Upper San Pedro Basin, the experience sets the path for future research campaigns. Subsequent SALSA research will likely focus on topics such as natural recharge processes, mountain hydrology, integration of US and Mexican basin studies, and landscape-level habitat change.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Financial support from the USDA-ARS Global Change Research Program, NASA grant W-18,997, Arizona Department of Water Resources, and US Bureau of Land Management is gratefully acknowledged. Assistance was also provided in part by the NASA/EOS grant NAGW2425, US Geological Survey, Cochise County Highway and Flood Control Department, and US-Army Fort Huachuca; this support is also gratefully acknowledged. We also wish to extend our sincere thanks to the many ARS and University of Arizona staff and students, and local volunteers who generously donated their time and expertise to make this project a success.

SALSA Collaborators Include: USDA-ARS, University of Arizona (Department of Hydrology and Water Resources; and School of Renewable Natural Resources), ORSTOM, IMADES, USEPA, USGS, Los Alamos National Laboratory, Jet Propulsion Laboratory, CESBIO, Utah State University, University of Iowa, EOS, NASA, CIRAD, and the Wageningen Agricultural University.