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The situation seems bleak, but it's far from hopeless. Tools like WaterSim, a regional hydrology simulation developed by Arizona State University sustainability researchers Patricia Gober and Craig Kirkwood, can guide the design of water use policies and translate science into adaptation.

In PNAS, they run WaterSim for Phoenix, Arizona, where planting native rather than temperate foliage, giving up on private outdoor swimming pools and reducing urban sprawl could attain water balance under all but the worst-case scenarios.

Such changes are "challenging but feasible," wrote Gober and Kirkwood. As University of California, Los Angeles geoscientist Glen MacDonald noted, residents of Tucson use half as much water as residents of Phoenix. "Decreasing per-capita demand does not have to mean fundamental hardships in terms of drinking water and cleanliness," he wrote.

Image: A WaterSim graph of water availability./PNAS

Citation: "Vulnerability assessment of climate-induced water shortage in Phoenix." By Patricia Gober, Craig W. KirkwoodProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Vol. 107 No. 50, December 14, 2010.

Citation: "Water, climate change, and sustainability in the southwest." By Glen M. MacDonald. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Vol. 107 No. 50, December 14, 2010.

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