Environment Change
Since we're on this discussion lemme tell ya'll something. Me and my team down at the U of A have been extremely ALARMED by the changes in southern AZ for the past 8 years. There's a reason the government pays us to find out what would happen in a "life after people". While that show is accurate, it shows Phoenix, not Tucson. It says after people abandon their homes the dust will rise from empty lots, backyards and dried up lakes. What happened in 2008, was the exact thing, just in smaller amounts. The haboobs started coming like never before. The show did exaggerate their power, and the monsoon rains that turn them into mud (my poor uncle with a pool in Tempe). Those storms are rapidly reshaping the environment (between PHX and TUC). Last year we were very surprised that when testing soil in Eloy that dry sand particles (sand dunes style) were growing and were already two inches high. This sand was killing local plants and animals. It dried up many of the few oasis there was. Our estimates from 06 did not include a failed economy. We were in a panic to find out new future estimates. It was scary. Most of the very little vegetation along the interstate will die, exposing sand. That sand will act much like cement in the summer. Urban heat island will be a MAJOR problem between the cities with an average temps rising anywhere from 6-15 degrees.
The weirdest has yet to come. Tucson has the complete opposite coming. We have paved hundreds of square miles in the city. All that cement prevents water from going to the underwater aquifers, it will make more runoff. The architecture of the homes today also play a huge role in this overabundance of water coming our way. Houses today usually have a pitched roof, the water will runoff to the side of the house which has rolls in the soil so that it can flow into the road. The roads are designed so that they can flow into the washes. The washes are small trenches along the desert that are usually 6-10 inches wide and 6 inches deep that run towards the Santa Cruz. Those washes are not prepared for the new runoff. They erode a lot during each storm. More natural dams are created by the dirt and rocks pushed off. More oasis are made. Those oasis are soon surrounded by plants that are used to 1000 times less water. They plants only use some of the water but provide a canopy from the sun over the water and can help the oasis stay all year. These start adding up all over the place and soon the humidity rises just enough for one more storm to drop rain. More rain. The dams grow and so do the oasis and the humidity. The temperature can even drop 1 or 2 degrees because of this. More oasis, more mosquitoes and flies. Eventually the climate has changed just enough that we're not a desert. But the wildlife will say otherwise. All the plants we have now won't go away. In fact they'll be stronger than ever. Other plants will be unable to come in and reshape the landscape for about 150 years (if the changes are enough) because of our friend the Creosote Bush. The Creosote bush grows anywhere from death valley (they are the species with the oldest plant alive, 11,000 years old in an area that gets 3 inches of rain annually) to the farthest edge of New Mexico and Nevada. Why does this plant live in places where it gets 4times the water it needs? Because it has almost no competition. The plants roots send small toxins in the ground that make it very difficult for other plants to grow, including it's own species. It has dominated the landscape because of this, and it's range of adaptability. It can survive temperatures below zero and above 170. In places with more rain, it just grows better. Not until now does it have competition. It's competition comes from Lowes and the Home Depot. Those stores send thousands of plants that come from deserts that get almost NO rain. These plants also poison the ground. They love it here. (by the way more rain= more leaves which = more compost which = better soil) They are planted everywhere. Some species include the Argentine Mesquite and a species of Palo Verde and gum trees and ..... These trees are in heaven here. They are starting to get into the wild and are taller than the Velvet mesquite trees we have here. They make more leaves than the native velvet mesquites with less water. This will also help the oasis growing here. They are almost perfect for this environment, except for the wind. These trees come from a windless desert, when a strong monsoon storm comes they fall ( notice how velvet mesquites dont fall and argentine mesquites do) even if it's a well situated 60 year old tree. But natural selection will keep the strong ones alive. They will, like all desert plants, adapt very quickly and by 2100 will be the forest of Tucson. In 100 years we predict that a forest made up of Gum, Argentine Mesquites, Desert Cassia bushes and eucalyptus trees (sorry no Koalas) will be our desert forest. It's a hard idea to take in but it's very real. The only thing that will keep our temperatures up is cement and urban heat island. But even cement (the runoff and oasis maker) usually has a canopy of plants over it here in Tucson so it's hard to predict what our temperatures will be by 2100.
The downside of paving the desert is also the runoff. When the runoff goes through a wash that is completely surrounded by urban development, there's a problem. A lot of times our washes have been paved and are hard to erode, that will cause flooding. Another problem is erosion. The washes that can erode will and what ever sits on its banks will fall in. We are now taking that into consideration but were not in the 80s and earlier. The washes we build now have a lot of space for flooding and erosion. They don't have that much space on the Santa Cruze and other washes that go throughout midtown. It is nerve wrecking to watch the Santa Cruze be filled to the top after only a few inches of rain. Flooding will become more common in the future unless we start digging the preexisting washes deeper. (forgot to mention that more oasis= more ground water). We will get more problems to deal with. Its hard to tell if there has been more rain right now due to the minimal amounts of an increase it will have and the fact that droughts and rainy seasons exist. We need about fifteen years of data to figure that out.
Sorry if your confused. Yes I said that cement prevents water from turning into groundwater but then I said that it makes oasis that make more ground water. Yea it does. It's a really complex cycle of things contradicting itself and adding more steps along the process. The runoff will erode washes, create dams and oasis and forest before turning into groundwater rather than raining and going to the ground.
My wife and I share this account and have been for some time now, if younwere wondering
. If you have any questions just ask, or if I made an error (not grammar) or a really confusing statement just tell me and I will clear it up and fix the mistake.