Center for Watersheds and Environmental Sustainability, DRI

The Center for Watersheds and Environmental Sustainability (CWES) at the Desert Research Institute creates new predictive approaches for understanding the behavior of watersheds in a planning and management policy context. In addition, CWES facilitates development of interdisciplinary research teams within the Desert Research Institute that address watershed science, planning, and restoration.

It is the vision of CWES to develop a research program to integrate the current scientific knowledge base and translate this knowledge into relevant information to aid political entities in developing sustainable environmental and economic policies with their watersheds.

Within the Western United States, there has been rising concern about the quality of our natural environment. This concern is related to the intrinsic value of a naturally-functioning environment and the aesthetic value it provides to the human experience. The causes for concern about the environment in the west are many, but a common element amongst many of these concerns is water. In much of the mountainous west, the highly variable nature of the availability of water, both temporally and spatially, make it the critical resource for sustaining both human and natural environments. Due to this situation, it is a natural outcome that sustainable economies and environments in the west go hand in hand, and must be developed at the watershed scale.

To learn more about the CWES, please visit the website below.