Zhuping Sheng
Texas A&M University

The Paso del Norte region is located along the Mexico-USA border, extending from Elephant Butte Dam in Southern New Mexico to Fort Quitman in West Texas. Most of the region has a semiarid climate, facing periodic droughts. Increasing water demands by growing population of over 2 million living in three cities, Las Cruces, New Mexico and El Paso, Texas in the United States, and Ciudad Juarez, Chihuahua in Mexico compete for limited water resources with agricultural uses. Urban growth, limited water resources, complex arrangement of institutional and regulatory frameworks, differences in water resources infrastructure and technical and financial capabilities between the US and Mexican sides are some of the most important water resources issues that challenge regional water managers and planners. Different institutions and stakeholders in the region have been pretty active in water planning and management initiatives. Also, they have been successfully developing and sustaining regional cooperation efforts toward coordinated water resources planning and management. There is a need to integrate different water resources plans into a comprehensive regional water plan to address above challenges. Given the complexity of the regions’ water resources systems, the authors propose a conceptual framework for creation of a water resource Decision Support System (DSS) for the region. The DSS will be a semi lumped distribution model running in monthly basis, incorporate the most important water supply and demand components, and provide with a user-friendly interface to easily develop and test “What if Scenarios”, including effects of climate change and uncertainty in water availability and impacts of alternative management scenarios. The DSS can assist the different planning entities and groups to quantitatively evaluate their long term water resources plans, to identify the local and regional impacts of these alternatives on their water resources system, and to facilitate the dialogue and consensus reaching among stakeholders.