The Impacts of Land Use Change on Water Resources and Traditional Acequia Culture in Northern New Mexico

Rural areas throughout the western United States are undergoing rapid and far-reaching land use changes that impact water management, riparian ecosystems, and traditional cultures. Impacts to water resource use and management include: potential risks of groundwater contamination due to increased numbers of single household septic systems, potential overdraft of groundwater resources, surface water quality impacts, and changes in the distribution of water supplies from agricultural to municipal/industrial uses. In northern New Mexico, the acequia water use regime and attendant acequia-related cultural values are at particular risk due to increasing urbanization pressures and the potential impacts on actual water use, water quality, and riparian vegetation along irrigation ditches and streams. GIS, remote sensing, and aerial photography interpretation techniques are used to create a series of land use change maps to assess the impacts of critical water resources on local communities along the Black Mesa Reach of the Upper Rio Grande Basin. To examine cultural values associated with the acequia system and the traditional way of rural life, we conduct field interviews and research related archived documents. Land use maps we generate depict changes in water resource use and management, risks to groundwater, changes in acequia management and water use, and riparian ecosystem impacts. This project provides insight to local and state planning programs with constructive methods for further research, and is also applicable to other western states with similar challenges

Concept Raps versus Concept Maps: A Culturally Responsive Approach to STEM Vocabulary Development

This article argues that the development of rap song lyrics or lyrical concept mapping can be a viable pedagogical alternative to the development of concept maps as a means to reinforce STEM vocabulary. Hip-hop pedagogy is a culturally responsive pedagogy that leverages the funds of knowledge acquired from hip-hop culture. Unfortunately, many students with strong hip-hop cultural identities may lack equally strong mathematics identities. Given the success of hip-hop pedagogies within the science content area, we posit that hip-hop pedagogies are appropriate in other STEM content areas such as mathematics. Concept mapping is an instructional tool that has been empirically validated as an effective means to develop strong conceptualizations of mathematics content. While hip-hop pedagogy is well established in the science content area, it remains underdeveloped within mathematics education. We argue that the lyrical structure of a rap song is fundamentally similar to the structure of a concept map. This article provides a framework to support lyrical concept mapping as a culturally responsive instructional tool that can be used as an alternative to traditional concept mapping. Special attention is placed on the use of hip-hop pedagogy to affirm and empower dually marginalized students

Modeling Sustainability of Water, Environment, Livelihood, and Culture in Traditional Irrigation Communities and Their Linked Watersheds

Water scarcity, land use conversion and cultural and ecosystem changes threaten the way of life for traditional irrigation communities of the semi-arid southwestern United States. Traditions are strong, yet potential upheaval is great in these communities that rely on acequia irrigation systems. Acequias are ancient ditch systems brought from the Iberian Peninsula to the New World over 400 years ago; they are simultaneously gravity flow water delivery systems and shared water governance institutions. Acequias have survived periods of drought and external shocks from changing economics, demographics, and resource uses. Now, climate change and urbanization threaten water availability, ecosystem functions, and the acequia communities themselves. Do past adaptive practices hold the key to future sustainability, or are new strategies required? To explore this issue we translated disciplinary understanding into a uniform format of causal loop diagrams to conceptualize the subsystems of the entire acequia-based human-natural system. Four subsystems are identified in this study: hydrology, ecosystem, land use/economics, and sociocultural. Important linkages between subsystems were revealed as well as variables indicating community cohesion (e.g., total irrigated land, intensity of upland grazing, mutualism). Ongoing work will test the conceptualizations with field data and modeling exercises to capture tipping points for non-sustainability and thresholds for sustainable water use and community longevity