Urban Desertscape Enhancement

The Urban Desertscape Enhancement (UDE) collaborative working group aims to educate homeowners on the importance of water conservation and native plant landscaping.

UDE focuses on increasing native desert habitat in urban areas and saving water across the Maricopa County region. Protecting local parks and preserves from invasive plants starts with you. Learn more about how you can participate in water conservation and invasive plant efforts below!

UDE Desert Landscaping Contest

Does your house have the best desert landscaping? Submit photos of your property for a chance to win fun prizes! The winner will have their property featured on the cover of our upcoming Urban Desert Landscape Enhancement Guide! This guide is being created by CAZCA with funding from the Stanley Smith Horticultural Trust, the Guide will teach property owners about using native plants in ornamental horticulture, low water use plants, water capture, and other topics.

Several houses will be selected to feature in the guide, the top three will receive prizes and the first place winner will be featured on the cover.

Prizes include:

• A tour of the DBG Herbarium from Wendy Hodgson
• A cactus grown by the Desert Botanical Garden Horticulture team
• A gift card to Gertrude’s

RULES:

Project Partners

We are grateful for the support and leadership of our partners in this effort.

The CAZCA Greenprint

The Greenprint is a mapping tool designed collaboratively with the Trust for Public Land, the Nature Conservancy and Sonoran Institute. This natural infrastructure viewer can help bridge the information gap between sectors and facilitate the inclusion of natural resource data in decision-making.

While there are many kinds of data in the Greenprint, this tool offers particular insight into lands valuable for habitat connectivity, protecting water resources, and addressing both heat vulnerability and equitable access to open spaces.

Project Partners

We are grateful for the support and leadership of our partners in this effort.

Collaboration Hub

The CAZCA Collaboration Hub is a pilot initiative with the goal of improving data-sharing and cross-sector collaboration. The Collaboration Hub is based on ESRI’s ArcGIS Hub platform, and we have designed our hub to share the work of our partners, facilitate collaboration, and assist in information sharing.

Follow the CAZCA Hub to begin sharing projects, resources, and data, and engage with CAZCA’s working groups and our partner’s conservation initiatives.

Project Partners

We are grateful for the support and leadership of our partners in this effort.

Desert Defenders

Invasive species are one of the biggest threats to healthy ecosystems. They often crowd out native species, decrease biodiversity and increase wildfire risk. Join the new Desert Defenders program to help us find and remove these plants!

Desert Defenders is a collaborative, community science program focused on finding, mapping and removing invasive species at local parks and preserves. The plant species that we focus on are known to have a moderate to severe impact on local ecosystems, and a few pose a risk for our community by increasing fire risk and even impacting human health.

To access resources, sign up to volunteer, or find a program at a specific park/municipality, scroll down.

Project Partners

We are grateful for the support and leadership of our partners in this effort.

Sonoran Insiders

The Sonoran Insiders is an innovative social media ambassador program designed to link local influencers with conservation non-profits and land managers.

This new program seeks to bridge the gap across fields and industries to collaborate with local digital influencers for conservation. We believe passionate members of the community can help amplify local efforts to raise awareness on local environmental, conservation and recreational issues to foster better stewardship and conservation action.

For conservation professionals, this is a great way to leverage influencer audiences for the stewardship and responsible use of public lands and National Forests in Arizona. For our ambassadors, it’s an opportunity to have unique experiences, share and exchange knowledge, and support responsible use.

Project Partners

We are grateful for the support and leadership of our partners in this effort.

Sonoran Seed Collaborative

Sonoran Seed Collaborative is a native plant project dedicated to restoring our desert parks and preserves. We aim to find the best practices for growing and propagating local, native Sonoran Desert plants to harvest for seeds that can be used in future restoration projects in our area.

This project was started in 2018 in collaboration with the Arizona Columbine Garden Club, Tovrea Carraro Society, Arizona Native Plant Society, and Desert Botanical Garden as a jumping off point to support a regional network of local growers of native seeds and plants for conservation.

Project Partners

We are grateful for the support and leadership of our partners in this effort.