Drought Resilience
Groundwater-dependent ecosystems, recharge areas, riparian corridors, and persistent water sources contribute to higher drought resilience.
Open Drought MapFort Huachuca Sentinel Landscape
Parcel-scale resilience across arid watersheds, recharge zones, and working lands.
Case Study Overview
Executive Summary
The Fort Huachuca Sentinel Landscape occupies one of North America's most ecologically diverse desert regions, where military readiness depends on the resilience of interconnected watersheds, grasslands, woodlands, and mountain ecosystems.
Unlike landscapes where resilience is driven by abundant water resources, resilience in southeastern Arizona is defined by how effectively the landscape captures, stores, and conserves water.
This assessment applies the Resilience Scorecard framework to evaluate parcel-scale resilience across the Fort Huachuca Sentinel Landscape. By integrating indicators of drought, extreme heat, and wildfire, the framework identifies areas that consistently maintain ecological function under environmental stress. The resulting maps help partners identify resilience anchors, restoration opportunities, and strategic conservation investments that support both military readiness and long-term landscape health.
3 Hazards Assessed
Drought · Extreme Heat · Wildfire
Water Shapes Everything
Capture · Storage · Conservation
Resilience Anchors
San Pedro · Las Cienegas · Babocomari River
Fort Huachuca Sentinel Landscape in southeastern Arizona, where mountain
watersheds, grasslands, and desert ecosystems are connected by the movement
and availability of water.
Water Shapes Everything
Water is the defining resource of the Fort Huachuca Sentinel Landscape.
Across southeastern Arizona, ecosystems, communities, agriculture, and military operations depend on groundwater, mountain-front recharge, springs, cienegas, and the San Pedro River. In this water-limited landscape, resilience depends not simply on where hazards occur, but on whether the landscape can continue functioning through periods of both water scarcity and intense rainfall.
Water limitation is only part of the challenge. During monsoon storms, intense rainfall can fall faster than dry soils can absorb it, generating rapid surface runoff that contributes to erosion, topsoil loss, and sediment delivery to waterways. This creates an important connection between drought, flooding, and land degradation: prolonged dry conditions can reduce the landscape's ability to absorb water when it arrives.
Which parts of the landscape are best able to capture, store, and safely move
water through periods of both scarcity and intense rainfall?
Across all three hazards, water repeatedly emerged as a strong driver of resilience. Groundwater-dependent ecosystems, recharge landscapes, riparian corridors, and persistent water sources consistently supported higher resilience than surrounding areas, particularly under drought and extreme heat. See drought map
What the Landscape Reveals
Four spatial patterns reveal how water, topography, fire, and overlapping landscape pressures shape resilience across the Fort Huachuca Sentinel Landscape.
01
Resilience Concentrates Around Water
Higher resilience clusters around the San Pedro River, Las Cienegas, spring complexes, mountain-front recharge zones, and groundwater-dependent ecosystems. These areas help maintain water availability and ecological function during prolonged drought.
See drought map02
Mountains Provide Thermal Refugia
Higher elevations, greater vegetation cover, and persistent waterways create cooler refuges from extreme heat. These features contrast with the generally lower thermal resilience of the basin floor.
See extreme heat map03
Fire Is Part of a Resilient Landscape
Grasslands, shrublands, and woodlands adapted to periodic burning can retain resilience. Vulnerability increases where repeated fire, development, infrastructure, and other stressors overlap.
See wildfire map04
Different Resilience Patterns Point to Different Opportunities
Areas of lower resilience highlight where groundwater decline, increasing well density, development pressure, altered hydrology, erosion, and habitat fragmentation may create opportunities for restoration or targeted management. At the same time, areas of high resilience can represent important conservation priorities where existing landscape function should be protected before it is lost.
East Mesa
Arid uplands and basin landscapes
Huachuca Mountains
Higher-elevation refugia and watershed systems
Grassland Habitat
Fire-adapted grasslands supporting wildlife and connectivity
Together, these patterns reveal both resilience anchors worth protecting
and areas where restoration or management could strengthen resilience.
Which opportunities rise to the top depends on partner priorities, mission needs,
feasibility, and local knowledge.
Turning Resilience Into Action
The Scorecard moves beyond showing where resilience is high or low. It helps partners understand why resilience varies across the landscape and where different conservation and management strategies may provide the greatest benefit.
At Fort Huachuca, the three hazard assessments point toward complementary priorities. Drought and extreme heat emphasize the importance of water availability, recharge, riparian systems, and thermal refugia, while wildfire reveals where fire-adapted landscapes remain resilient and where repeated disturbance and development increase vulnerability. Explore the maps below
Strengthen Watershed Function
Protect groundwater recharge areas, springs, riparian corridors, cienegas, and other water-dependent systems while supporting infiltration, soil retention, and watershed function during both drought and intense rainfall.
Strengthen Landscape Function
Focus conservation and restoration where connected watersheds, vegetation, and natural infrastructure can maintain ecological function across multiple stressors.
Manage Wildfire Risk
Distinguish resilient fire-adapted systems from areas where repeated wildfire, development, infrastructure, and other pressures compound vulnerability.
Support Mission Resilience
Use parcel-scale resilience alongside easement priorities, compatible land-use planning, and other conservation information to support long-term military readiness.
No single map defines a conservation priority.
The Scorecard provides another layer of evidence that partners can combine
with mission needs, ecological priorities, landowner opportunities, and
local knowledge to determine where action makes the most sense.
Resilience Supports Readiness
Military readiness at Fort Huachuca depends on landscapes beyond the installation boundary. Groundwater, recharge areas, riparian corridors, and fire-adapted ecosystems function as natural infrastructure, supporting water availability, moderating extreme conditions, and maintaining compatible land uses across the Sentinel Landscape.
Protecting and strengthening these systems supports both long-term military readiness and landscape resilience.
Explore the Resilience Assessment
Compare parcel-level resilience to drought, extreme heat, and wildfire. Scores range from Very Low to Very High and reveal how different landscape characteristics influence resilience to each environmental stressor.
Extreme Heat Resilience
Higher elevations, vegetation, topographic complexity, and persistent waterways create thermal refugia against extreme heat.
Open Extreme Heat MapWildfire Resilience
Fire-adapted ecosystems can retain resilience, while repeated wildfire exposure and overlapping development pressures increase vulnerability.
Open Wildfire MapLandscape Profile
Explore the military mission, water resources, desert ecosystems, conservation priorities, and partnerships that define the Fort Huachuca Sentinel Landscape.
Key Facts
- Objective: Evaluate parcel-scale resilience to support military readiness and long-term landscape health.
- Geography: Fort Huachuca Sentinel Landscape in southeastern Arizona, including interconnected watersheds, grasslands, woodlands, and mountain systems.
- Defining Factor: Water capture, storage, and conservation drive resilience across hazards.
- Hazards Assessed: Drought, extreme heat, and wildfire.
- Scoring Framework: Landscape indicators are summarized to parcels using zonal statistics, converted to hazard scores, and integrated into a composite resilience index.
- Use Case: Identify resilience anchors, restoration opportunities, and strategic conservation investments that support readiness and ecosystem function.
Downloads
Supporting materials for Fort Huachuca