INTRODUCTION

The “Southwest Drought Summit” held at Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff, Arizona on May 12-13, 2003 was designed to bring together scientists and decision makers with the common goal of providing a synthesis of current scientific and policy information on the issue of drought in the Southwest. Often, the scientific community views science as undervalued in policymaking, whereas policy makers find scientific information to be complex and inaccessible. The Summit sought to incorporate science into the decision-making process by giving participants the opportunity to provide input to the Arizona Governor’s Drought Task Force.

The resulting summit was the formulation of an integrative and proactive strategy to address emerging water and land management issues. The summit addressed a rising concern that the Southwest has emerged from an unusual “wet” period of several decades and entered a drought period that may be the long-term norm. The environmental consequences of a change in weather patterns to a period of sustained drought in the Southwest have far-reaching policy implications for municipal and regional land and water management decision makers. Therefore, the focus of the summit was to integrate and analyze knowledge about the causes and consequences of drought in the Southwest so as to more completely and effectively address the impacts it has on the environment and society.

This goal was achieved by assessing the drought from a long-term climatic perspective, synthesizing research on the ecology and hydrology of drought impacts, which included short- and long-term predictions for Southwest ecosystems, proposing long-term strategies that may involve modifying land management and water-use policies in order to achieve sustainability. This summit complemented other regional meetings in that it covered a range of major issues associated with our regional drought, which go beyond water availability. The topics covered reflected regional expertise and interest in climate, water availabity, increased human population growth, biodiversity, invasive species, emerging diseases, and the functioning of ecosystems.

The report includes the summit agenda, a synopsis of the first day presentations, followed by the summaries of the four working group. The summaries highlight the discussions on the second day of the summit by the working groups, and their subgroups. Specifically, each group identified key issues, proposed major predictions, and assessed specific needs for managers and researchers to more effectively deal with drought issues.

The working groups were divided into Climate, Water, Ecosystems, and Biodiversity, the latter three groups were further divided into subgroups. The Water group was divided into two subgroups that addressed issues of water use and human demographics, and regional hydrologic functions. The Biodiversity group comprised four sub-groups that focused on populations, communities, plants, and animals, including wildlife species, insect outbreaks, invasive species, and diseases. The ecosystem group was divided into groups that focused on issues of rangeland/agricultural sustainability, desertification and global carbon. Researchers, policy experts, and decision makers were represented in each of these groups.

We provide two appendices in the report including a list of summit attendees with their pertinent information, and participant responses evaluating the summit. Our website http://www.mpcer.nau.edu/megadrought/drought_summit_report/index.htm contains these appendices as well as this final report and the full PowerPoint presentations and abstracts of the lectures presented at the summit by Day 1 speakers. This same material is also available on CD-Rom from Neil.Cobb@nau.edu. The Summit was organized by the Merriam-Powell Center for Environmental Research, the Verde Watershed Research & Education Program, the Southwest Strategy, University of Arizona CLIMAS, The Center for Sustainable Environments, and the USGS Southwest Biological Science Center. Financial sponsors included Salt River Project, Central Arizona Project, USGS, National Park Service, Arizona Hydrological Society, Bureau of Land Management, the Bureau of Reclamation, US Forest Service, and Northern Arizona Council of Governments.