Every June groups of volunteers walk the entire 170 mile length of the San Pedro River and record where it is wet and where it is dry during the hottest, driest time of the year. Twenty years’ worth of data on summertime surface flows in the San Pedro River within the San Pedro Riparian National Conservation Area (SPRNCA) are now available as an animation. Watch to see the changes in surface flow over time. These observations were recorded by citizen scientists through the Wet/Dry Mapping project- a collaboration between TNC and the Bureau of Land Management on this particular reach of the San Pedro River. Follow this link to see what they found from 1999 to 2024 on the approximately 50 miles of the San Pedro River that flows through the SPRNCA.

Notes about the data and animation:

1. Use the play, pause, and advance buttons at the bottom to view the animation.

2. Use the plus or minus keys to zoom in on portions of the river.

3. Survey dates varied from year to year, but have been standardized to June 29 for purposes of this animation.

4. Although the animation time scale at the bottom indicates a one year date range, the data shown is actually the annual standardized June 29th survey date. To make the scale date appear as that one point in time, click on and drag one of the time markers on top of the other.

Go to the animation

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Explore Our Science

Jun 2025

Papers

Arizona

Forest

Forest Restoration Benefits

USFS

Evan Hjerpe and Anne Mottek Lucas, Conservation Economics Institute

Regional Economic Contributions of the Four Forests Restoration Initiative (4FRI) in Northern Arizona in 2023

A regional economic contribution analysis of the Four Forest Restoration Initiative (4FRI) was conducted for Calendar Year 2023, illustrating regional employment and output from 4FRI in five northern Arizona counties. Forest restoration in communities with high wildfire risk is done primarily throug[…]

Dec 2024

Maps

BLM, NGO

Freshwater Assessment

Riparian-aquatic

San Pedro River

Dale Turner, Brooke Bushman, Lisa McCauley, Patrick Hellmann

San Pedro River Wet/Dry Map Animation

Dec 2024

Maps

BLM, NGO

Freshwater Assessment

Riparian-aquatic

San Pedro River

Turner, D., L. McCauley, P. Hellmann

San Pedro River Wet-Dry Maps

The San Pedro River wet/dry mapping dataset is a community effort to track the river’s health by monitoring the persistence of surface water during the driest time of each year. It is created by recording the end points of every wet section of the San Pedro River during June each year. Maps depict[…]