Tucson Standard

The Arizona Board of Regents recently organized a showcase at the Arizona Experiment Station's Campus Agricultural Center in Tucson. The event highlighted award-winning research from the University of Arizona and Arizona State University on innovative smart tree watering techniques. This initiative is part of the Smart Tree Watering Regents' Research Grant.

During the event, media members were shown over 80 tree saplings and informed about the potential economic benefits, improved water conservation efforts, and increased cooling shade for Arizona residents that this research could bring. Discussions emphasized the need for new watering strategies to help desert plants adapt to increasingly hot conditions in urban desert ecosystems.

Arizona State University's research team is working on machine learning models to scale these irrigation techniques for use by municipalities, counties, and local communities. They plan to conduct workshops with state agencies, legislators, community organizations, housing developers, and municipal leaders to demonstrate how these methods can be applied locally.

The research team has been invited to present their findings at the AGU24 conference in Washington, D.C., which gathers scientists, educators, policymakers, and media worldwide. Additionally, they aim to collaborate with the Nature Conservancy in Arizona using their findings to address challenges related to heat resilience and water security caused by rapid urban growth and climate change.

This project is part of ABOR's Regents' Grants program aimed at fostering collaborations between Arizona's public universities and state agencies like the Department of Environmental Quality and the Department of Fire and Forestry Management. Since its inception in 2022, this program has funded 21 projects addressing various issues affecting Arizona.