In this tutorial, you’ll explore groundwater conditions in the Santa Cruz Active Management Area (AMA) using data available through the Arizona Water Observatory (AWO). We begin by retrieving the Santa Cruz AMA boundary, then identify groundwater wells within the AMA and retrieve depth-to-water observations for each well. Finally, we compare annual median groundwater levels with those…

In this tutorial, we demonstrate how the Arizona Water Observatory (AWO) can be used to follow the movement of water through a watershed in Arizona. We begin with snowpack observations from a SNOTEL station in the San Francisco Peaks, then identify the watershed that receives the snowmelt. Next, we retrieve watershed-averaged soil moisture data from NASAʼs Soil Moisture…

A new publication in the journal Atmosphere (Huang et al., 2026) used the Aurora AI weather forecasting model to provide reliable deterministic guidance within 7 days for a series of different types of extreme events. These findings are importance for numerical weather prediction at short-to-medium range. Congratulations to the authors associated with the Center for…

At ASU’s Center for Hydrologic Innovations, the city itself is the laboratory. The center’s work takes researchers into parks, neighborhoods and other urban spaces, where lawns, trees and the built environment become part of an experiment unfolding across one of the hottest metropolitan regions in the country. Congratulations to the researchers from the Center for Hydrologic…

With the Arizona Water Observatory (AWO), ASU’s Center for Hydrologic Innovations and the Center for Geospatial Solutions at the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy have teamed up to develop a new open-source clearinghouse, visualization and analysis platform for Arizona’s water data. Through a series of quick start blogs, you can also learn how to use…

A new report stems from the Arizona Tri-University Recharge and Water Reliability Project, includes contributions from Prof. Giuseppe Mascaro and Prof. Tianfang Xu from the Center for Hydrologic Innovations. The project goal was to analyze and identify mechanisms to capture water that would otherwise evaporate across the state and establish region-specific guidance about how and where water…

A new publication in the journal Scientific Reports (Wang et al., 2026) describes an updated version of the Variable Infiltration Capacity (VIC) model in the Colorado River basin. The revised model is compared to independent observations from GRACE and SMAP satellites. VIC supports short- and long-term streamflow forecasting and hydrologic investigations in the vital basin….

A new publication in the journal Environmental Modelling & Software (Srivastava et al., 2026) describes a new model, PSI-Cascade, to couple stormwater flooding and power outages for the analysis of cascading infrastructure failures, with an application to Phoenix, Arizona. Congratulations to the authors associated with the Center for Hydrologic Innovations! Abstract: Urban infrastructure is typically…

Congratulations to the team from the Center for Hydrologic Innovations that was recently featured by the Arizona Water Innovation Initiative! Center program manager Vivian Hobbins wrote ap update of the Arizona Water Observatory along with partners at the Center for Geospatial Solutions (CGS) at the Lincoln Institute for Land Policy.

Faculty, postdocs, and graduate students from the Center for Hydrologic Innovations were recognized as part of the winning team for the 2026 Crescordia Award from the Arizona Forward Environmental Excellence Awards. This award was in collaboration with the Arizona Water Innovation Initiative at ASU and recognized:“Ensuring Water For the Future”. Congratulations to all awardees!