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 2022 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

(ALL RIGHTS GRANTED TNC) View of Escudilla Mountain. Fall colors heighten the natural beauty of forest and meadow in the White Mountains, one of Arizona’s last wide-open spaces and where TNC works to protect the headwaters of three major Arizona rivers: the Salt, Gila, and Little Colorado and their greenbelts – riparian habitats critical for wildlife and water quality – as well as restore healthy forests within the largest ponderosa pine community in the world, save rare and unique wildlife and plant species, and control non-native, invasive species, such as crayfish, Arizona. © Betsy D. Warner/TNC

Aerial view of the Parks West restoration site overseen by TNC. Taken March 16, 2020.

Conservancy staffers, Dale Turner and Amanda Rebore, helping to map the Sabn Pedro River in Arizona. They use a GPS unit to denote the end of the water flow on the LowerSan Pedro River. They hiked through the Conservancy’s San Pedro Preserve.

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Nov 2022

Maps

BLM, NGO

Freshwater Assessment

Riparian-aquatic

San Pedro River

Dale Turner, Brooke Bushman, Lisa McCauley

San Pedro River Wet/Dry Map Animation

Nov 2022

Maps

BLM, NGO

Freshwater Assessment

Riparian-aquatic

San Pedro River

Turner, D., L. McCauley

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[…]

Mar 2022

Papers

Arizona

Climate Change, Fire, Forest Restoration Benefits

Forest

USGS

Lisa A. McCauley, John. B. Bradford, Marcos D. Robles, Robert K. Shriver, Travis J. Woolley, Caitlin A. Andrews

Landscape-scale forest restoration decreases vulnerability to drought mortality under climate change in southwest USA ponderosa forest

Drought is projected to increase tree mortality in many western US forests due to climate change and could result in large-scale tree die-offs, altering forest composition and ecosystem services. Tree mortality has also been found to be higher in forests with greater tree density. Southwestern US fo[…]