Lily House-Peters,Christopher A. Scott , University of Arizona, School of Geography and Development, lilleehp@gmail.com
Riparian corridors in arid regions provide vital ecosystem services but are under pressure due to growing competition for scarce water, increased aridity and hydrologic variability under climate change, and ecosystem fragmentation resulting from urban development. We employ a social-ecological systems (SES) framework to examine and assess land use and land cover change in the riparian corridor of two US-Mexico border region rivers: the Upper San Pedro River that crosses from Sonora state to Arizona, and the San Miguel River in Sonora. We utilize remote sensing of satellite imagery and climate information to examine inter-annual (May - October) and intra-annual (May - May; October - October) vegetation change over the 1990-2010 period at spatial scales from the watershed to riparian buffers of 1 km and 5km. Expanding on two potential system conditions at either end of a gradient from primarily natural to predominantly anthropogenic, we consider how the multi-scale vegetation change history can provide insights into the resilience of arid region riparian corridors. Land cover change analysis can directly contribute to resilience theory when linked to an examination of the changing capacity of an SES to provide diverse ecosystem services under shifting conditions, as thresholds are approached or crossed.
Keywords: riparian resilience; land use/land cover change; remote sensing