Overview

Goals

Develop a Statewide map of Enhanced Recharge potential on Hillslopes and along Roads in the State of Arizona

Study Areas

Statewide - AZHUC8

Coconino National Forest

• Lake Mary Watersheds
• San Francisco Peaks (inner basin)

San Pedro Watershed HU8

Research Questions

• Where can hillslope recharge be meaningfully enhanced across the State of Arizona?

What areas are suitable for Road or Hillslope MAR

SUPPLY

• Slope
• slope length
• drainage area
• precipitation

SINK

• Proximity to roads
• Location within the mountain front
• Slope
• ownership
• lineament density
• underlying hydraulic conductivity

• Roads (local + 4WD) from the National Map ----> within 100m of existing roads • Faults, fractures, joints - from local geologic maps and SGMC database ---> distance to faults • NATSGO either Soil Types A-D or Hydraulic Conductivity ---> Soil Infiltration Capacity • Subsurface Permeability + Porosity from GLHYMPS • Presence of Karst features ---> Karst feature density • Slope ---> range of slopes • Flow Accumulation Raster ---> choose areas where streamlines intersect roads

Scale

• What scale should we be conducting suitability mapping? Is statewide too broad?

Questions for Forest Service

• How does planning happen for Road work, is it primarily responding to disturbances? Is there a systematic updating of Road infrastructure?
• In your opinion, would a map showing that an area is suitable for a Road-MAR project inform how the project is done?
• where is recharge in your kind of conceptual list of forest service priorties
• how does the multiple use planning work, are some areas designated for specific uses and others

Correspondence Menberu Meles

Menberu Meles Hi Ryan,

I'm sorry for the delay in responding - I was in Minneapolis last week. Please see my responses below.

Thank you for your reply and the valuable advice. I’ll be testing factors like slope, slope length, and drainage area, and I plan to conduct a more thorough literature review. Once I’ve outlined everything, I’ll send it your way for feedback.

Great! I would be happy to work with you in any capacity where I can contribute or to look over for you.

What occurs to me is that much of the MAR literature focuses on smaller-scale processes, often within a single watershed, or on suitability for a specific type of MAR, such as dry wells, ASR, or Flood MAR. These projects typically start with the primary goal of enhancing recharge. However, it’s still a bit unclear to me how these projects evolve—are they driven by top-down initiatives or bottom-up efforts?

I believe it's a bit of both. In California, for example, there is an army of people (local governments, state, federal government, NGOs, researchers, and farmers) working on this issue. My understanding is that everyone is trying to figure out what solutions are scalable, but there are still many unanswered questions.

My aim is to develop a framework or process that allows land managers, with diverse priorities, to broadly consider how various landscape management techniques could incorporate opportunities for groundwater recharge as an added benefit. This could apply to activities such as forest restoration, thinning, post-fire slope stabilization, or mitigating post-fire flooding.

These sounds a good idea – we are working on similar ideas which requires serious feature importance analysis. Currently, I am working on landscape characterization project which can be tailored to these kinds of project.

For example, Kate Day, who works with the Coconino National Forest, mentioned in our meeting that their work often occurs at the catchment scale. Much of their budget is allocated to maintaining, building, or mitigating the impacts of roads in the forest. This conversation sparked the idea to explore where, across the State of Arizona, road or hillslope MAR could provide opportunities to enhance recharge—even if it’s not the primary objective for state and federal land managers.

This is great opportunity – I would like to hear more about this project.

Before my current role as a post-doc at NAU, I worked with the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy and observed a significant disconnect between regional land managers and on-the-ground science and project work. Land and water management disciplines often operate in silos. For instance, stormwater managers primarily focus on water quality and flood management. However, with greater collaboration or tools that assess recharge opportunities, they might site stormwater retention basins in areas where soil and bedrock conditions are conducive to recharge, thus enhancing recharge without the red tape often associated with MAR projects.

Right - without a red tape 🙂

I’m still grappling with how a state government’s decision to prioritize increasing recharge can be effectively communicated and implemented by various land management agencies at multiple scales. My goal is to create a process or framework that allows for an initial assessment of recharge suitability. If an area is deemed potentially suitable for a specific type of recharge project, the responsible management agency would then be encouraged to conduct a more in-depth MAR suitability analysis and explore opportunities to enhance recharge.

Good thinking.

Thanks again for your guidance, and I look forward to sharing my progress with you soon. I have copied my colleague at the University of Arizona who is working with me on a paper about what we are calling Opportunistic Recharge Enhancement.

Looking forward to learning more.

Meeting with Kate Day

Recharge not high on their priority list

Management areas (watersheds?) are designated for specific uses

Forest plans should be updated every 15 years, but more practically 30

Flagstaff-neighbor woods

BMP - best management practices -

National Best Management Practices guide

test areas:

Lake Mary Watersheds

Inner Basin