Laying Out a Sociohydrologic Research Agenda in a Semi-Arid Landscape

Keywords: sociohydrology, water, irrigation, US West, climate change
Abstract Type: Paper Abstract

Abstract

The presentation will lay out the first stage of a project to study communication about water under conditions of intensifying urbanization and increasing climate destabilization.

The western Treasure Valley is a semi-arid landscape of volcanic soils made into productive farmland by a major federal reclamation project in the early twentieth century. As recently as five years ago, a rewarding effort was raising the awareness of local residents about the irrigation infrastructure that make possible the green irrigation footprint seen on satellite imagery. Now the intensifying trend is for urbanization to convert agricultural land to housing tracts or retail spaces: population is expected to continue growing in the coming years.

A site that helps focus analysis of awareness of the role of water is the Deer Flat Reservoir, popularly known as Lake Lowell, part of the early twentieth-century project which brought large-scale irrigation to Canyon and Ada counties in southwestern Idaho. With increasing urbanization, is there a remaining chance to make local residents aware of the dependence of their landscapes on the man-made water structures, or will that urbanization once again submerge sociohydrologic awareness, making the water system more vulnerable to the side effects of climate destabilization?

In order to discern productive lines of questioning and public education, the current study examines the discourse on water in local news articles, responses to six annual talks on the irrigation system to a local group of master naturalists, and reflections on water knowledge from two iterations of a college course titled “Knowing Water.”