Sense of Place
Tucson’s Waterways
Unit 2
Activity 5 Santa Cruz and Tucson timeline
Students use information that they have assembled in addition to information from a fact sheet to create a time line of Tucson and the Santa Cruz over the past century. The time line will include photographs, graphed data, facts about the development of Tucson, personal information about the memories and events in their family’s history (with respect to Tucson).
The fact sheet can include the following information (and more):
- Tucson population (total numbers, numbers by geography and ethnicity)
- Figures of amount of water that Tucson uses vs. the amount of water that is available.
- Modes of getting water in Tucson
- Who is using what kinds of water, for what and how much.
- Precipitation and Santa Cruz discharge data
- Flood record and damage (include facts and pictures)
- Morphology of the Santa Cruz (signs of incision etc), presence of lakes
- Engineering on the Santa Cruz: diversions for irrigation, soil crete installation
- Parks along the Santa Cruz
- Building of major roads (like I-10)
- Water conservation tactics and movements
- Events in the organization of Tucson water (ie. Formation of Tucson Water)
- Formation of groups for the Santa Cruz (ie. Friends of the Santa Cruz)
- Events in the area local to their high school
Some information resources:
SE Arizona flood events since 1887: http://www.wrh.noaa.gov/tucson/hydro/floodhis.htm#JULY1887
Climate extremes for Tucson
http://www.wrh.noaa.gov/Tucson/climate/all-time.html
Monthly annual precip data for Tucson
1894-1996 http://www.wrh.noaa.gov/tucson/climate/TUCSON/ovrallpc.htm
1867-1894 http://www.wrh.noaa.gov/tucson/climate/TUCSON/vryoldpc.htm
Monthly annual temp data for Tucson
1984-1996 http://www.wrh.noaa.gov/tucson/climate/TUCSON/ovrallat.htm
1867-1894 http://www.wrh.noaa.gov/tucson/climate/TUCSON/vryoldat.htm
Health of Santa Cruz River report (from Nogales, AZ and Nogales, Mexico)
http://www.scerp.org/scerp/docs/berr4.html
final report: http://www.scerp.org/scerp/projects/WQ93_12.html
Monthly USGS gage data for all Pima County sites
http://water.usgs.gov/az/nwis/monthly?county_cd=04019&sort_key=station_nm&group_key=NONE&sitefile_output_format=html_table&column_name=agency_cd&column_name=site_no&column_name=station_nm&column_name=lat_va&column_name=long_va&column_name=state_cd&column_name=county_cd&column_name=alt_va&column_name=huc_cd&format=html_table&date_format=YYYY-MM-DD&rdb_compression=&list_of_search_criteria=county_cd
Monthly USGS gage data for all Santa Cruz County sites
http://water.usgs.gov/az/nwis/monthly?county_cd=04023&sort_key=station_nm&group_key=NONE&sitefile_output_format=html_table&column_name=agency_cd&column_name=site_no&column_name=station_nm&column_name=lat_va&column_name=long_va&column_name=state_cd&column_name=county_cd&column_name=alt_va&column_name=huc_cd&format=html_table&date_format=YYYY-MM-DD&rdb_compression=&list_of_search_criteria=county_cd
Temperature and Precip request files for Pima County
http://cdo.ncdc.noaa.gov/prod/cdohtml/CDO507111231902.html
Normals and Extremes for Tucson
http://www.wrh.noaa.gov/Tucson/climate/tus.html
National Climatic Data Center
http://lwf.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/ncdc.html
Forecast, temp and precipitation maps of Arizona of current weather
http://www.intellicast.com
Tucson climate data
http://www.wrh.noaa.gov/tucson/climate/TUCSON/cover.htm#appendixB