Geography report

Geography report. Scenario

You are the City Manager for the City of Phoenix, Arizona and your educational background is in Geography, with an emphasis on human-environment interactions. You have been tasked by the Mayor’s Office to create an updated water management plan for the City of Phoenix that spans 2020-2040. The Mayor is specifically interested in how future projections of increased population will impact the water security of the city. You feel you are especially positioned to succeed in this task because you understand basics of how humans impact the hydrosphere, and you know who to collaborate with to get results.

You immediately contact your colleague, a paleoclimatologist at the local college, whose research focuses on hydroclimate variability through time. She informs you that currently the southwestern US is in an unprecedented drought for the past approximately 1200 years, which she states has come primarily from tree ring records. In fact, she says that tree ring records show streamflow from the Salt, Verde, and Colorado Rivers (the primary sources of water for Phoenix), has never been so low in the past approximately 500 years. However, the lake sediment records of the region indicate that hydroclimates of the past approximately 20K years show even deeper droughts. In other words, it’s bad now, but the proxy records indicate it can get even worse.

The City Manager’s Office, which you manage, hires a demographic consulting firm whose purpose is to provide your Office with projections of population growth and outward city expansion over the next twenty years (2020-2040). The firm provides you with data that suggest the population of Phoenix will be approximately 6M (a 1.5M increase from 2020). Additionally, they project that given current city planning for infrastructure does not prioritize sustainable development, urban sprawl will only worsen over the next two decades. In other words, more resources will be required to move over more area, thus lowering the overall sustainability of the city.

 Tasks/Prompts 

Be sure to answer or provide materials for each of the listed items below. Each of these listed items should have its own section in your report. Further details on submission guidelines are provide below. The tasks and prompts you must complete as follows:

1.   Background info on Phoenix, such as population and demographics, etc – feel free to use Wikipedia or some similar reference here.

2.   Provide an explanation paleoclimate activity of the area related to drought. Why should the Mayor care about droughts of the past? How does the current drought compare to those of the past? Why does this matter?

3.   Provide an explanation of how civilizations are intrinsically tethered to water, and how extreme drought in the past has led to civilization collapse.

 

4.   Tie the future population and city infrastructure of Phoenix with water security. Given the demographics of Phoenix and what you have learned about the disproportionate impacts of climate change, how might topics of environmental justice play out in times of water scarcity?

5.   Provide a plan for decreasing Phoenix’s future water demands. Think outside the box here, research plans that have been successful elsewhere, explore other case studies, etc. There’s no right answer, I’m looking for logic and creativity!

report should be 3 pages double spaced with 1” margins.   Use Times New Roman, size 12 font. Please include a reference list.

Includes your text with the map of Phoenix and reference list at the end of the document. If you wish to include the map as in-text, that is fine as well.

Geography report

 

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