Santa Cruz Active Management Area (SCAMA)


Water Resources and Climate Assessment Tool
(WARCAT)

This web site is designed to provide water managers, stakeholders and other interested individuals with information that facilitates assessment of the current hydrologic conditions in the Santa Cruz Active Management Area (SCAMA).  SCAMA, located in the Sonora desert in Southern Arizona, relies on local groundwater reservoirs to meet the water demand of its residents.  In this arid region, the availability of the local water resources is tightly connected to the region’s variable climate.  Therefore, these resources must be carefully managed in order to reliably provide water for the residents and to sustain the health of the vibrant vegetation corridor along the Santa Cruz River. The goal of this web site is to serve as an information portal that assimilates real-time hydrological and meteorological data from different sources. The pertinent data are presented in an intuitive manner in order to promote understanding of the current hydrologic conditions.  

The datasets analyzed by this Water Resources and Climate Assessment Tool (WARCAT) include various observations and forecasts.  The observed datasets are retrieved and updated in real time and include streamflow from the U.S Geological Survey, precipitation from National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the SCAMA ALERT System, groundwater from Arizona Department of Water Resources (ADWR) and inflow-outflow of the Nogales International Wastewater Treatment Plant (NIWTP) from AZ Department of Environmental Quality.  The observation of the current condition is presented in comparison to various historical references such as recent years, El Nino and La Nina years, as well as historical quantiles.

The forecast data in WARCAT relies on the Climate Forecast System (CFS) from the National Centers of Environmental Prediction (NCEP-NOAA) for precipitation and on the Colorado Basin River Forecast Center (CBRFC) of the National Weather Service (NWS) for short-term streamflow forecasts.  The information from these two sources is analyzed and presented as monthly precipitation forecasts (up to 3 months) and short-term streamflow forecasts (out to 5 days). The monthly precipitation forecasts in conjunction with the historical record of streamflow are used to provide a streamflow projection for the Santa Cruz River near Nogales.

Users are cautioned in their use of WARCAT information.  The real-time datasets presented are freely available from their respective agencies with limited quality control. Please refer to the Disclaimers and Use page for additional information in this regard. Links to the data agencies can be found on the Links page.

| Real-Time Gauge Climatology | Streamflow 5-Day Forecast | Precip 20-Day Forecast | Precip 3-Month Forecast | Precip 3-Month Wetness | Streamflow 1-Month Projection |
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SCAMA WARCAT v1.0   Copyright © 2016  Hydrologic Research Center