H₂OSU is available at http://water.oregonstate.edu/newsletter/.
December 2006

Michael's Musings

December 6 was an auspicious day for the folks of Owens Valley, CA, and for many of us throughout the West. On that day, for the first time in almost 93 years, water commenced a journey down a 62-mile reach of the lower Owens River. The Los Angeles Department of Water and Power is finally “rewetting” the river and Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa pushed a button to make it happen. Flows should average 40 cfs throughout the year with peaks up to 200 cfs. Many are anxious to see how the river restores itself, as a fascinating environmental experiment is in the making. 

The Owens River resonated with me because on December 6 I was at the National Ground Water Association’s Annual Expo in Las Vegas.  To some, Las Vegas is to the rural areas of Nevada as Los Angeles was to the Owens Valley in the early 1900s. Las Vegas, occasionally called the 800-pound gorilla of Western water, is desperate for additional supplies to supplement the meager 300,000 acre-feet it can use from the Colorado River. It has cast its eyes upon the deep ground water of some rural areas in eastern Nevada and would like to pump and pipe water from there to almost 2 million thirsty residents and almost 40 million visitors per year. Some of the areas that might be considered for pumping – Spring Valley, White River Valley, Moapa Valley – I know well, having done field work and modeling there in the 1980s. The Las Vegas-Clark County metropolitan area is the economic engine fueling Nevada, and its visitors’ losses at the gambling tables and slot machines ensure Nevada remains one of the few states with no state income tax. This will be interesting and I will be curious to see how it all plays out. Now, if I were a betting man…

I recently spoke on the South Caucasus water situation at the Institute of Social Studies in The Hague at its conference, The Last Drop? Water, Security, and Sustainable Development in Central Eurasia. Most of the 14 papers dealt with the former Soviet republics of Central Asia – issues involving irrigation, management of transboundary water, environmental degradation, and security issues related to water. A number of papers dealt with the region’s “cotton economy”, which has been largely responsible for the desiccation of the Aral Sea. All in all, a very interesting two days that provided some indications of the future of the region via-a-vis water, growth, and security.

Let me close with news of four events in which the IWW is intimately involved: 1) the OSU Water Conference, whose February 20 date has been delayed until the spring term; 2) a conference next November at the Skamania Lodge in WA which we will be co-sponsoring with USDA, WSU, U of ID, and others; 3) the formation of a Joint Northwest Water Institute, in partnership with the Idaho National Laboratory and the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory; and 4) a Snake/Columbia Basin Energy-Water Summit in partnership with the aforementioned national labs, the U of ID, WSU, and Canada. We hope to convene this meeting in Boise this May. I’ll have more information on each of these in the coming months.

Enjoy the holiday season, and best wishes for 2007.

Till next year.
Michael

"Statistics always remind me of the fellow who drowned in a river whose
average depth was only three feet." -- Woody Hayes

Special Winter Term Course Offerings

The following courses have been advertised over the hydro email lists in the last few weeks:

Oregon Water Law and Policy. Professors William Jaeger (OSU) and Adell Amos (UO) are offering this interdisciplinary graduate-level course jointly between OSU and U of O. Students at both universities (law and non-law) can participate. The course will cover the basics of prior appropriation and riparian law with a focus specifically on the Oregon Water code. It will also examine the role of “institutions” in allocating scarce resources as they pertain to water and will study the advantages and disadvantages of different approaches to water resource management. Course numbers: WRP 599 - CRN 28154. Thursdays, January 11-March 15, 3:00-6:00 p.m.. Held on campus at OSU and UO, alternating between campuses.

Reading and conference on environmental flows - Desiree Tullos, professor of Biological and Ecological Engineering, will lead this course and writes, "the format will be less of a journal club and more of a brown-bag. The purpose is to connect students on campus working on environmental flows projects: we'll read a couple of fundamental papers and students will present and discuss issues in study design and data collection, analysis, and interpretation of their projects on environmental flows." Class size is limited to eight and the date and time will be negotiated between those registered the first week of January. To enroll, look for: BEE 505: CRN 29007 or BEE 605: CRN 29008.

Reading and conference on hyporheic flow and its effects on stream temperature - Stephen Lancaster, professor of Geosciences, will lead this course and writes, "We will be looking at papers relevant to quantification of heat budgets in hyporheic zones of large, gravel-bed streams. As I am a relative novice in this area, I hope some other PhD's will attend and share what they know, and I will be issuing some specific invitations to that effect." To enroll, sign up for one or two credits of GEO 505 (CRN 21274) with Lancaster as instructor. Day, time, & location TBA.

Hydrologic Modeling Techniques at Watershed/Regional Scales - Taught by Richard Cuenca, professor of Biological and Ecological Engineering. Description: Fundamentals of modeling concepts, model calibration and error analysis. Applications of remote sensing, digital elevation models (DEMs), other distributed databases (e.g. NDVI for vegetation and STATSGO for soils) within geographic information systems (GIS), and geostatistics (regionalized variable analysis) to hydrologic modeling. Demonstrations and “hands-on” experience with watershed modeling procedures. To sign up look for BEE 549 - 3 credits - CRN 28621. Held MWF 15:00-15:50.

Multiphase Transport - Mark Porter, PhD candidate in Water Resources Engineering, is soliciting interest for students to participate in a remote course with video lectures and Skype calls with the professors Bill Gray and Casey Miller from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Mark writes, "Both Bill and Casey are leading researchers in the areas of pore scale physics and multiphase flow in porous media. The main focus of the course on the Thermodynamically Constrained Averaging Theory (TCAT), which Bill and Casey have developed in the past few years." Dorthe Wildenschild, professor of Environmental Engineering, will offer the course as a reading and conference. Contact Mark for more details.

CE518 Groundwater Modeling - Taught by Dorthe Wildenschild, professor of Environmental Engineering, who writes, "This is likely the last time the course will be taught in its current format. Students learn to program solutions to simple groundwater problems in the beginning of the course and progress to use commercial codes Modflow, Modpath, etc. under the GMS umbrella for a larger term project involving TCE contamination. No programming skills required." Schedule: T, Th 9-11 and Th 4-6 in Owen 241. To enroll, look for CE518, CRN 26220.

Featured Research Site

The Andrews Experimental Forest is the site of many collaborations among University, state and Federal researchers and is the home for the NSF funded Andrews Long-Term Ecological Research (LTER) program. Since 1948, researchers at the Andrews Experimental Forest have been studying forest-stream interactions and forest ecology, especially the effects of forest management on water quality and quantity.

The Andrews has a substantial amount of baseline data on hydrology and biogeochemistry available through their website. There are four complete climate stations and 10 stream gaging stations located within the 16,000 ha area of the experimental forest (i.e. within the entire Lookout Creek basin). Online historic to current data pertaining to hydrology, climatology and stream ecology include: stream flow, stream chemistry, precipitation quantity, precipitation chemistry, air temperature, water temperature, soil temperature, wind speed, snow depth and many more. There is also real time data online from several of the sites.  Long-term and project-specific funding have been provided by the National Science Foundation and the USFS Pacific Northwest Research Station.

In addition to the long-term studies, there are many current water-related research projects involving OSU faculty and students at the Andrews. Some examples of recent projects include; study of flowpath dynamics and the role of vegetation in water storage, canopy interception of rainfall, nutrient fluxes during storm flows, short- and long-term additions of stable isotopes to follow in-stream nitrogen processing, macroinvertebrate diversity in streams through young and old-growth forests, and exploration of hydraulic residence times for instream and hillslope water.

Funding Opportunities

AAAS Science & Technology Policy Fellowships - Provide scientists and engineers with a unique public policy learning experience and an opportunity to apply their knowledge and analytical skills to national and international issues. Career-advancing opportunities are available with Congress and federal agencies, the areas of Congressional; Diplomacy; Energy, Environment, Agriculture & Natural Resources; Global Stewardship; Health, Education & Human Services; and National Defense & Global Security. Fellows represent a spectrum of career stages, from recent PhD graduates to faculty on sabbatical to retired scientists and engineers. The deadline for 2007-2008 Fellowships is December 20, 2006.

USDA, Cooperative State Research Education and Extension Service (CSREES), National Research Initiative Competitive Grants Pgm (NRICGP), 26.0 Water and Watersheds - FY 2007 Priorities for Research: 1) Understand the sources, fate, and transport of pathogens such as bacteria, protozoa, and viruses in soil and in surface and ground water systems of agricultural and rural landscapes and watersheds to reduce zoonotic pathogens in the environment. Special emphasis is considered for Salmonella, Cryptosporidium, and enteric viruses; and 2) Identify, evaluate, and understand producer management behaviors that improve agricultural water conservation in crop, livestock, and poultry production, with an emphasis on a) projects that integrate hydrologic, economic, and policy components; b) social determinants of water use; and c) documented water savings, especially at spatial scales greater than a single field. Proposals due: January 17, 2007.

NSF Geoscience - Geomorphology and Land Use Dynamics - Geomorphology and Land-Use Dynamics supports innovative research into processes that shape and modify natural landscapes over a variety of length and time scales. The program encourages research that investigates the coupling and feedback between such processes and their relative roles, especially in the contexts of variation in climate and and changes in human impact. Investigations are encouraged that quantitatively tackle issues of rates of change, that use complementary methodologies, innovative data and techniques, and that efficiently combine expertise from related fields. Proposals due: January 16, 2007.

Upcoming Events

Monday, January 8, 9:00 a.m., Room 10 Nash Hall. Monday Morning Meeting: Redband trout (Oncorhynchus mykiss gairdneri) distribution and longitudinal temperature profiles: Implications across a basin, Speaker: Luis Francisco Madrinan, Department of Fisheries & Wildlife, OSU. FMI: Stan Gregory.

Enter the Hydrophiles Logo Contest - Entries due by Wednesday, January 10th. Hydrophiles is interested in designing an official logo that they can print on T-shirts, waterbottles, hats, etc. First place winner will receive a $100 gift certificate to the OSU bookstore! Please submit your designs to Barbara Bukholder, either to by email (burkhoba@geo.oregonstate.edu) or by mailbox (in Wilkinson 104). Barbara is also looking for contest judges! Winners will be announced at the first Hydrophiles winter seminar on Jan. 17th...

Tuesday, February 6 - Thursday, February 8. Sixth annual Northwest Stream Restoration Design Symposium. Pete Klingeman is one of the organizers of this interdisciplinary conference that focuses on interdisciplinary stream restoration design questions. This year there will be three concurrent pre-symposium workshops on February 5. Held at Skamania Lodge, Stevenson, WA.

Link to a calendar of other upcoming water-related events...