The Alabama Water Institute’s Community-Oriented Nature-based Science for Ecosystem Restoration and Versatile Engineering, or CONSERVE, research group was recently awarded a $250,000 grant from the United States Army Corps of Engineers Engineering with Nature Program for its Acequia Science and Tribal Engagement Support project. The multi-year project will take place in Arizona and New Mexico, and the first-year activities will focus on engaging with tribes in the American Southwest on the history and use of the acequia irrigation system in the region.
“The colonial system of acequia irrigation as represented in the American Southwest offers a unique opportunity to examine a hybrid water resource infrastructure historically managed and maintained by Indigenous communities,” said Mike Fedoroff, AWI’s director of cultural and water resources preservation. “Our hope is to learn how these communities improved the overall system and translate these lessons elsewhere.”
The project’s objective is to better understand the involvement of local communities in the maintenance of their water resource infrastructure, known as Acequias, to enhance the advantages of such community-oriented approaches to irrigation in the arid Southwest. Through its involvement, the USACE Engineering with Nature program can better understand the community’s role in water infrastructure resilience and export these lessons to other places – resulting in increased economic, ecological and social benefits.
The unique collaboration between those responsible for maintaining infrastructure, Acequia Associations, and the end users, tribal communities and local governments, is central to the insights USACE seeks to gain from CONSERVE’s analysis of this relationship between infrastructure and communities.
“CONSERVE has assembled a top-notch team of researchers to explore the intersection of water, people and community in the Southwest to better inform what future water management could look like on the community and regional scales,” Fedoroff said.
The CONSERVE research group on The University of Alabama campus, along with its partners at AWI, work to deliver nature-based watershed conservation practices that enhance communities that depend on healthy watersheds.