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The study identifies drought, floods, and frosts as the primary climatic risks for producers in Pima and Cochise Counties, Arizona. While groundwater use remains a critical adaptation strategy despite rising costs, the utility of seasonal climate forecasts (SCFs) is limited by low risk tolerance and economic uncertainty. Producers instead rely on past experience and short-range forecasts to hedge against risks, suggesting that access to information is not the primary barrier to improved decision-making.

Margaret Bowman of the Walton Family Foundation outlines a vision for water resilience in the Colorado River basin to address a projected gap of 3.2 million acre feet between water supply and demand by 2060. The proposed strategy relies on three primary pillars: upgrading agricultural irrigation to save an estimated one million acre feet, implementing urban water efficiency programs to save another one million acre feet, and utilizing wastewater and stormwater recycling to gain 1.2 million acre feet. Bowman advocates for market-based water banking and targeted augmentation over large-scale water import schemes. She emphasizes the interdependence of urban and agricultural sectors and highlights the 2012 international agreement between the United States and Mexico as a model for cooperation, citing a recent pulse flow experiment in the Colorado River delta as an example of ecological and social co-benefits.