H₂OSU is also available at: http://water.oregonstate.edu/newsletter/.
November 7, 2007

The View from 210

The picture in this and October’s newsletters shows me “working” at the wastewater treatment plant in Astana, Kazakhstan in the summer of 2005. I was pressed into service (notice the white pants and shoes) by the Japanese firm constructing the facility.

Don’t forget: proposals for the USGS Small Grants Program are due on 16 November. Contact Todd Jarvis (Todd.Jarvis@oregonstate.edu) if you have any questions.

Thanks to all of you who made the IWW Collaboratory’s is Open House on October 19 a huge success. Despite the inclement weather, the turnout was quite remarkable. All the food was gone, and Director Kathy Motter was kept busy showing the visitors the facility. The lab is a resource for all Oregon University System affiliates.

I’m sure you all heard about the gaffe that Presidential candidate and New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson made regarding the West getting water from the East. He made the unfortunate comment “States like Wisconsin are awash in water.” You can imagine the ensuing reaction, not just in Wisconsin, but in other places around the Great Lakes. Richardson quickly backed off the remark, but the damage was done. He did say we need a national water policy, which I support, but that was lost amid the Sturm und Drang of his “awash” comment. An interesting back-story: a colleague of mine told me he shared a taxi ride with a Richardson aide who told him of the Governor’s water plan. When my colleague told him of the difficulties with such a water importation scheme, the aide quickly changed the subject. I suspect the Richardson campaign may now be short a water expert or two.

I returned from my annual trek to Tbilisi, Georgia, for our South Caucasus River Monitoring project. The work is winding down (December 2008) and our colleagues from Georgia, Armenia, and Azerbaijan are seeking additional funding to continue their work. They’ve accumulated a lot of data on surface water quality in the Kura-Araks basin and are anxious to develop predictive water quality models, which we are helping them do. We did have some time to take a spectacular drive on the Georgian Military Highway through the Caucasus Mountains to within a few miles of the Russian Federation border (now closed). I’ve got a brief description and some pictures on my blog: http://aquadoc.typepad.com/aquablog/2007/10/georgian-milita.html.

Some updates on conferences we are planning:

• Aquifer Storage and Recovery and Artificial Recharge in Oregon, 28 February 2008, LaSells Stewart Center, OSU, Corvallis. We expect to have the program established by the end of this month. David Pyne, author of Aquifer Storage Recovery, arguably the world’s foremost expert on ASR, is confirmed as our keynote speaker. We also learned why David is so good: he took a hydrology class from Civil and Construction Engineering’s Wayne Huber when both were at the University of Florida. Other speakers who have confirmed their participation: Kent Madison of Madison Farms, Jen Woody of OSU, Jason Pulley of the City of Salem, and Larry Eaton/Jeff Barry of GSI Water Solutions, Inc. We will post an announcement to our listserv, The Oregon Water List, when all is ready. We have no further information at this time.

• First International Conference on Nonrenewable Ground Water Resources, 13-14 October 2008, Portland, OR. The Call for Abstracts has been issued; abstracts are due 4 February 2008. We will also have a one-day optional field trip on 15 October, likely to the Mosier Creek Basin east of Hood River. We will have both oral and poster presentations, and are seeking presentations on all aspects of nonrenewable ground water resources. The formal title, courtesy of Todd Jarvis, may be a record in terms of length: International Conference on Nonrenewable Ground Water Resources - Sociotechnological Aspects of Nonrenewable Ground Water Resources: Half-Empty, Hall-Full, Top-Down, Bottom-Up, and Some Paths Forward.

The IWW and the Department of Geosciences (Lynnette de Silva) will host a one-day visit of experts from the Nile Basin on 20 November. There will be two from Egypt and one person each from Ethiopia, Tanzania, and Kenya. They are anxious to see field-based work, so we have scheduled a trip to Warren and Laurie Halsey’s Raindance Ranch in Monroe, a wetland restoration site. 

The Inavale School project with Corvallis School District 509J, a plan to use the Inavale School as a place-based ‘K-through-gray’ environmental learning center and research facility, is progressing nicely. Superintendent Dawn Tarzian has prepared a draft of a plan and a number of us are enhancing it.

Benton County is moving ahead with its water plan development. The IWW has provided an intern to the County, WRGP Adam Stebbins. Yours truly will be serving on the steering committee.

Todd Jarvis has assembled a great water film series for the winter term – see the list posted on the IWW site. Discussions will follow most films. We’ll have refreshments, too. 

Still no National Research Council Klamath Basin report; it should be released around the end of November.

Till next month,

Michael

"If individuals salvaging public water lost to encroaching phreatophytes were permittted to create new water rights where there is no new water, the price of saltcedar jungles would rise sharply. And we would expect to see a thriving, if clandestine, business in saltcedar seed and phreatophyte cultivation."

– the late Steve Reynolds, former New Mexico State Engineer (for 35 years!)

Conference Report: Western Governors’ Association and Western States Water Council Conference on Water Policies and Planning in the West

In October, I attended this sobering event in Salt Lake City along with over 200 participants from 23 states and Cameroon.  The population of the Pacific Northwest is estimated to increase by 40 to 45%, with up to 4 million new neighbors predicted to join us by the year 2030!  Oregonians featured prominently during the conference, with Oregon Water Resources Director Phil Ward introducing the keynote speaker Bob Johnson, Commissioner for the Bureau of Reclamation during the conference dinner.  Lorna Stickel, Portland Water Bureau & Regional Water Providers Consortium Project Manager provided an excellent overview of how the City of Portland is planning for climate change.  Governor Jon Huntsman of the State of Utah set the pace of the conference with a provocative challenge to the western states – “Water planning best be a bottom up approach”.  With Umatilla and Benton counties already working towards this approach, perhaps they will be showcased at the next Western Governors’ Association conference!

- Todd Jarvis, IWW Associate Director

Upcoming Events

November 12-16 - National Geography Awareness Week and GIS Day. OSU will have a special program for over 400 middle school students, a GIS Vendor Fair, and a keynote speech by Janet Ohmann of the USDA Forest Service, PNW Research Station. OSU's GIS Day activities are sponsored by the Department of Geosciences, the Department of Forest Science (in conjunction with the USDA Forest Service and the USGS), and the OSU Valley Library. Contact graduate student Michelle Kinzel if you'd like to help with the middle school student's GIS hike.

November 13-16, 2007, Hood River, Oregon. 2007 Watershed Council Gathering. Network of Oregon Watershed Councils 3rd Biennial Gathering with presentations, fieldtrips and opportunities for networking.

Wednesday, November 14, 4-5:30 p.m., 102 Owen Hall, OSU. River Restoration Education and Training in the Pacific Northwest and Beyond (Fall Water Resources Seminar Series). Speaker: Janine Castro, Ph.D., U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service and an OSU Geosciences Alum. FMI: Todd Jarvis.

Tuesday, November 27, 4:00 p.m., 108 Wilkinson Hall. Snow, Glaciers and Global Warming (Geosciences Seminar). Speaker: Anne Nolin, OSU Geosciences.

Wednesday, November 28, 4-5:30 p.m., 102 Owen Hall, OSU. Southern Steelhead Recovery, Is that Possible in Southern California?, A Case Study from the Santa Ynez River (Fall Water Resources Seminar Series). Timothy H. Robinson, Ph.D., Sr. Resources Scientist, Cachuma Conservation Release Board. FMI: Todd Jarvis.

December 10-14, San Fancisco - American Geophysical Union Fall Meeting - IWW is sending down at least two vans. Contact Mark Porter, grad student in CBEE (737-7568, porterma<at>engr.orst.edu), if you'd like to ride in the van so he can get a numbers count.

Funding Opportunities for Students

Columbia University Earth Institute, Postdoctoral Fellows Program in Sustainable Development of the Planet - "The Fellows Program provides innovative post-doctoral scholars with the opportunity to build a foundation in one of the core disciplines represented within the Earth Institute (i.e., any of the social sciences, earth sciences, biological sciences, engineering sciences and health sciences), while at the same time acquiring the cross-disciplinary expertise and breadth needed to address critical issues related to sustainable development and reducing environmental degredation, poverty, hunger and disease. The program offers a unique intellectual surrounding that fosters cross-disciplinary interaction, research and education. Earth Institute fellowships will ordinarily be granted for a period of 24 months. Applications due: December 1, 2007.

AAAS Science and Technology Fellowships - These paid post-doctoral fellowships "provide the opportunity for accomplished scientists and engineers to participate in and contribute to the federal policymaking process while learning firsthand about the intersection of science and policy". The fellowships are highly competitive including individual interviews in Washington, DC. Applications due: December 20, 2007.

Association for Women in Science Predoctoral Fellowships - About 5-10 AWIS graduate fellowships in the amount of $1,000 are awarded each year. female students enrolled in a behavioral, life, physical, or social science or engineering program leading to a Ph.D. degree may apply. The award may be used for any aspect of education, including tuition, books, housing, research, travel and meeting registration, or publication costs, for example. Applications due: January 24, 2008.

Funding Opportunities for Faculty

IWW-USGS 2007 Small Grants - Up to $30K grants available to faculty at any Oregon university or college. Proposals are due November 16.

NSF Biological Sciences - Ecosystem Science Cluster - Ecosystem Studies Program - Supports investigations of whole-system ecological processes and relationships in ecosystems across a diversity of spatial and temporal (including paleo) scales. Proposals may focus on areas such as: biogeochemistry; decomposition of organic matter; belowground nutrient cycling and energy flow; primary productivity; radiatively active gas flux; element budgets on watershed, regional, continental, or global scales; relationships between diversity and ecosystem function; ecosystem services; and landscape dynamics. Inter- and multi-disciplinary proposals that fall across traditional programmatic boundaries are welcomed and encouraged. Proposal due: January 9, 2008.

NSF Course, Curriculum, and Laboratory Improvement (CCLI) - This program seeks to improve the quality of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) education for all undergraduate students. The program supports efforts to create new learning materials and teaching strategies, develop faculty expertise, implement educational innovations, assess learning and evaluate innovations, and conduct research on STEM teaching and learning. The program supports three types of projects representing three different phases of development, ranging from small, exploratory investigations to large, comprehensive projects.This call is for Phase 2 and 3 projects that build on successful smaller scale projects (that may or may not have been funded by CCLI). Proposals due: January 10, 2008.

Don't forget, a list of water-related external funding opportunities is available on the IWW Web site.

H₂OSU is a periodic e-mail news briefing provided by the Institute for Water and Watersheds. It is distributed through the OSU Hydro Email lists and the Oregon Water List (http://water.oregonstate.edu/news/email_lists.htm). Questions, comments and ideas for news briefs may be sent to the IWW at iww@oregonstate.edu. More news from the IWW is available at http://water.oregonstate.edu/news/index.htm.