Empowering communities to conduct water monitoring with LABraries
Groundwater is the quiet workhorse of Arizona. It moves unseen beneath the desert floor, sustaining households, farms, ecosystems, and entire rural communities. But because it’s hidden, groundwater is often misunderstood and, more importantly, under-monitored.
For decades, many Arizona communities have lacked the resources, tools, or funding needed to regularly test their wells or track trends over time. As a result, the state faces significant groundwater data gaps that make it difficult to plan for a future shaped by drought, growth, and changing climate conditions.
To confront this challenge, two of ASU’s Arizona Water Innovation Initiative programs - Impact Water - Arizona (IWA) and the Global Center for Water Technology - partnered with the Arizona Department of Environmental Quality (ADEQ) to launch a new approach to community science: the LABrary. This collaboration included funding support for three LABraries as a natural extension of the community-based work already underway.
Arizona’s LABrary system is a growing network of community-based hubs that make water science tools, training, and data collection resources accessible to anyone who wants to better understand their local environment. From handheld probes to groundwater depth sensors, these “libraries for science” are putting data and stewardship into community hands. It is simple, portable, and scalable, but its impact is already proving profound.
“Groundwater is essential, but you can’t see it so people don’t always know what’s happening to it,” explains Meghan Smart, Principal Scientist at ADEQ. “The LABrary gives communities the ability to ask questions and find answers about their own water. That’s empowering.”
A collaborative effort to develop a LABrary
On October 30, IWA held the Patagonia Rural Groundwater Resilience Workshop, where community members gathered to learn about tools available to test their wells and explore what long-term monitoring could look like for their region. Bob Proctor, who leads the local non-profit Friends of Sonoita Creek, noticed that there was a lack of water data in the area, in part because it is a relatively remote, rural community.
“I thought that it was really important to start collecting data on the quality of the water,” said Proctor. “Alongside a few local, retired hydrologists we started talking with ADEQ about what we could do ourselves."
ADEQ then reached out to Impact Water - Arizona and the first LABrary came to life. The workshop coincided with the LABrary launch and helped to convene residents to view a LABrary groundwater sampling demo firsthand.
ADEQ’s Smart leads the community science and education team that co-developed the LABrary design. Smart explained how the LABrary experience helps people visualize the complex, underground resource that is groundwater.
“The process often begins with a watershed model demonstration, giving people a hands-on way to see how groundwater moves because it can be hard to visualize,” said Smart. “Participants can then visit a well to collect data, handle equipment, and return to the LABrary to process samples. These steps, taken together, can help local residents understand the full story of their local groundwater.”
Susan Craig, director of Impact Water – Arizona, said the LABrary effort supports a broader vision to inspire and empower people to take meaningful action on Arizona’s water challenges.
“Through the Rural Groundwater Resilience Workshop series, we have heard countless stories from community members about drying wells and declining groundwater tables,” Craig said. “LABraries are a community-driven tool that can help communities address these concerns themselves.”
Smart and Craig say that local leadership is essential to the success of the LABrary effort. Communities can host a LABrary and appoint a “LABrarian” to staff the LABraries’ open hours and support users. For example, in Patagonia, Friends of Sonoita Creek spearheaded the effort and selected the Paton Center for Hummingbirds as the LABrary’s first site.
"It was great to see the opening of the LABrary at the Paton Hummingbird Center, and that ASU supported ADEQ,” said Proctor. “We had a whole bunch of different people from different organizations here. That's the most important part of collaboration – getting people together to mix and talk over issues."
Fostering groundwater protection through community
While increasing the amount of credible rural groundwater data is a central goal of the LABrary effort, these community facilities offer another key benefit: providing a space for connectedness. LABraries create a space where members of the community can check out water monitoring tools, engage with hands-on activities, and connect with their local ecosystem by using the tools outdoors.
Craig described LABraries as both a practical resource and a catalyst for community engagement. By training volunteers and supporting local data collection, they help communities build capacity and credibility around groundwater information.
“When communities can collect and understand their own data, they gain a tangible way to participate in stewarding their groundwater resources,” she said.
Smart emphasized that LABraries broaden environmental understanding beyond groundwater and data.
“The library will provide an opportunity to understand how the environment plays a role in the community, including the interaction between groundwater and surface water,” she said. “The goal is to help people see the environment as a whole ecosystem rather than separate pieces.”
Training in development
Arizona’s groundwater challenges are not just local - they are statewide. Significant geographic gaps in monitoring, namely in rural Arizona, make it difficult for agencies to understand long-term trends, prepare for drought, propose appropriate legislation, or support communities experiencing declining supplies or contamination.
That’s where the LABrary model becomes transformational.
When people voluntarily contribute data from their tests, ADEQ gains insights from areas that are otherwise unmonitored. These contributions remain community-owned, but when aggregated, they help fill the missing pieces of Arizona’s groundwater puzzle.
“This isn’t about collecting data for data’s sake,” Smart explains. “It’s about building the clearest picture we can of what’s happening across rural Arizona. Community-generated data helps us make better decisions, identify risks earlier, and deploy resources where they’re needed most.”
And because the LABrary is designed for ongoing use, each community has the opportunity to build a time-series dataset—revealing how groundwater quality and levels fluctuate over seasons, water years, or decades.
Many rural communities also view youth engagement as essential to long-term groundwater resilience. LABraries offer both advanced tools and more accessible activities, such as trash cleanups, watershed demonstrations, and mock insect sampling that build early curiosity and environmental stewardship.
The future of LABraries
The Patagonia LABrary, open for just over six weeks, has already created excitement. Smart noted a recent milestone when 50 students were invited for a tour and demonstrations, allowing them to see the LABrary, learn about the tools, and understand how groundwater and surface water are monitored. Smart and Craig both identified engagement, such as tours, with K-12 and university classes as a key pathway to boost the impact of the LABraries.
New sites are planned for Bouse, Salome, and Flagstaff, each tailored to the community’s geophysical context and needs. The ADEQ team noted that the model will continue to evolve, with Smart saying that although the LABraries began with a focus on groundwater, they envision them as hubs for broader environmental education.
The team anticipates an ambitious path forward with major improvements and expansion to the LABrary model in the years to come.
“I'm looking forward to the growth of this model, and we will keep adding. I don't think we'll stop,” Smart stated. “It started with the idea of groundwater, but really, we're already wrapping in surface water, education, and the sky is the limit.”
As more communities begin using the LABraries, Arizona moves closer to a future where groundwater is not only monitored more consistently, but also understood and protected through the power of community science.
About the authors: Dayanara Avilez is a program coordinator with Impact Water, she specializes in sustainability with an emphasis on water. Marlene Rivas is a program manager with Impact Water - Arizona.
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