The Decision Center for a Desert City at Arizona State University was established in 2004 with funding from the National Science Foundation to advance the scientific understanding of environmental decision making under uncertainty. With additional funding awarded by NSF in 2010, "DCDC II" has expanded its already extensive research agenda, engaged the policy-making community, and built stronger ties between scientific knowledge and decision making enterprises. New DCDC research has developed fundamental knowledge about decision making under uncertainty from three interdisciplinary perspectives: climate impacts, urban dynamics, and adaptation decisions. Simulation modeling and boundary organization studies cut across these themes and are a core component of DCDC activities.

DCDC is focused on developing, implementing, and studying an interdisciplinary decision-support process for environmental decision making based on principles derived from social science research. Through an integrated approach to research, education, and community and institutional outreach, DCDC is training a new generation of scientists who can work successfully at the boundaries of science and policy. Broader impacts are realized as research informs innovative solutions to society’s pressing environmental challenges. To accomplish these goals, DCDC has built a dynamic bridge between ASU and local, regional, and national policy communities to foster local to-global solutions for water sustainability and urban climate adaptation.

The depiction of a historical-period property on an early map, whether a house, a ranch, a mining prospect, or an irrigation canal, is often the earliest (and sometimes the only) evidence that cultural features once existed in a particular place. Statistical Research used early maps as a regional preservation-planning tool by systematically examining a group of early maps of the county for depictions of cultural features. The typology will be used to plot the sites, distinguished by type, on a single map (or possibly on a series of maps) to be digitized by Pima County and incorporated into its GIS database.

This report is one of several from Statistical Research Inc. written to develop the Cultural and Historic Resources Element of the Sonoran Desert Conservation Plan. Divided into four parts, the report summarizes available information that reflects the experience of (1) ancient peoples of Southern Arizona; (2) indigenous peoples; (3) non-indigenous peoples of the historical period; and (4) Pima County today.

In 2011, Drachman Institute contracted with the Arizona Department of Housing to develop a public education project about sustainable communities and transit-oriented development along the Metro Light Rail in Phoenix, Tempe, and Mesa, Arizona. The resulting reports present neighborhood analyses and transit-oriented development issues for eight light rail stations selected by the Arizona Department of Housing and the Sustainable Communities Working Group, providing base information on the square half mile area surrounding these sites.

Pima County, in partnership with the National Park Service, has been an active participant in the development of a 70 mile segment of the trail. With the preparation of this Master Plan, Pima County has embarked on an active program to acquire the necessary rights-of-way and easements and to construct the Pima County segment of the national historic trail.

This study covers the time period after 1200 A.D. in terms of the domestic landscape, the agricultural landscape, and the social landscape as the residents of southern Arizona adjust to upheaval and change in environmental and social conditions. This memorandum summarizes the study about the Classic Period and provides a comparison of findings and theories about area residents from both before and after 1200 A.D., which is the approximate time frame of the collapse and restructuring of cultural landscapes.

In February of 1998, the Pima County Board of Supervisors launched what has evolved into the Sonoran Desert Conservation Plan (SDCP) -- a comprehensive effort to protect the Sonoran Desert, guide growth and rationalize land development in the metropolitan Tucson region. Proponents of this planning process maintained that the project would reconcile conflicts between human activities and conservation, providing benefits for both wildlife and economic development. Critics, however, have increasingly alleged that implementing such an initiative will adversely affect land and housing markets, increase taxes and create problems of housing affordability. Over time a pressing need has consequently grown for objective information about the possible fiscal and economic impacts of the conservation programs being assembled by Pima County. This report addresses that need. It is a tool in the form of an impartial framework for assessment that government officials, environmentalists, business people and the general public can use for debate and decision-making.