December 9, 2008

Lt. General Robert Van Antwerp told us the Corps of Engineers is spending something like $6B annually in the region to bring it to a level of protection for the 100-year event by the 2011 hurricane season. The USACE has 330 miles of levees to repair or replace and has completed 50% of the work.

Garrett Graves of Gov. Bobby Jindal’s office announced that Louisiana lost 217 square miles to Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. The state has embarked on an ambitious $150B master plan to protect southern/coastal Louisiana. The cost for a levee: $140M/mile. Graves noted that an agricultural levee in Iowa goes for about $1M/mile.

While at the AWRA meeting I moderated a session on “Waterblogged: Water in the Blogosphere”, which brought together some of my fellow bloggers: OSU Water Resources student and Water For The Ages blogger Abby Brown, Watercrunch’s Robert Osborne, AWRA’s Jane Rowan, and Kaveh Madani, the UC-Davis PhD student and “brains” behind WaterSISWEB. WaterSISWEB is an incredible resource with great potential. Although it’s not a blog, it has some of the same features. What I did not realize until meeting Kaveh was that he developed the idea, sketched out the scheme, then hired programmers to implement his dream. If that was not enough, he did all this with his own money.

We all realized that one of our fears about waterblogging was unrealized: that we would run out of material. In fact, check out Abby’s recent post about water journalism.

Robert at Watercrunch has a nice summary of the meeting and the joy of face-to-face meetings:

Reading someone's blog that you have never met is sort of like driving through a city and not getting out to meet folks face to face. You may see familiar landmarks, may make some guesses on the local cuisine, but you are just guessing through a window.

 And no, Robert, I have not yet succumbed to Twitter!

Statewide Water Roundtables. You’re no doubt getting tired of hearing of these. We are about done with the report and a couple of Power Point presentations have been posted. The report should be posted by early next week at the latest. I’ll be making a presentation before the Environmental Quality Commission in Hillsboro on 12 December and the Fish and Wildlife Commission on 9 January. You know you’ve been working too long on a report when you start editing your own edits with the comment “Who wrote this crap?” 

The Peculiar Case of Dr. Anthony Turton. Dr. Anthony “Tony” Turton, one of the world’s top experts on hydropolitics and transboundary water resources and one of the founding partners of the Universities Partnership for Transboundary Waters, has been suspended by the Council on Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) after he sounded the alarm on an impending water crisis in South Africa. CSIR has no real equivalent agency in the USA but this situation is analogous to the EPA or USGS suspending a top water researcher for whistleblowing. Turton is a Director of the International Water Resources Organization and co-edits its journal, Water International.

From a report in The Times:

The move followed just days after the CSIR barred the top scientist from delivering the keynote address at its biennial conference in Pretoria on Tuesday. The council said certain images and unsubstantiated claims in his presentation had caused concern.

The hard-hitting presentation by Dr. Anthony Turton warned of an impending water quality disaster that had the potential to spark public violence.

I have posted more on this on the AWRA blog, where you can see the type of comments this issue has elicited. You can also download a copy of Tony’s presentation, which does contain graphic images. If you wish to support Dr. Turton’s reinstatement, you can sign an electronic petition, where you can also find more information on his suspension.

‘Water Law’ Acquires New Meaning. Last week I was in Las Vegas - according to some, the putative foreclosure capital of the USA - during O.J. Simpson’s sentencing and the indictment of Nevada’s Lt. Gov. Brian Krolicki.

Just another week in Nevada, right?

Actually, a different kind of crime was unearthed. Seems as though four employees of the Truckee-Carson Irrigation District (TCID) and the district itself were indicted for fudging flow data and altering flow meters so as to acquire more flow credits (about 45,000 acre-feet) from the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation. The TCID folks then sold the credits and used some of the money to help pay a settlement owed the Pyramid Lake Paiute Tribe. The employees apparently did not personally benefit, but were just “doing it for the team.”

Curmudgeons Criticize Charters. David Zetland, my blogging colleague at Aguanomics has a recent post on The Zaragoza Charter, a document produced at the recently-concluded Zaragoza Expo 2008. The charter has a preamble of 17 points and 26 principles. As some of you have no doubt noticed, it seems more common these days for conferences and symposia to produce declarations, proclamations, charters, principles, etc. David, who’s much too young to be a curmudgeon, has about the same dim view of these that I do. He says to file them under “good intentioned, but useless”. Your thoughts?

Todd Jarvis and I were considering issuing a tongue-in-cheek ‘Portland Proclamation’ at the conclusion of our recent event, but decided to exhibit some sensitivity to the feelings of others. Perhaps we will change our minds and surrender to our darker sides.

My first and only experience with these kinds of statements was at a conference in a particular part of the world. Some of us tried to get a statement in the ‘proclamation’ about ensuring equality for women. Suffice it to say that our suggestion was greeted with frowns (an understatement). Since my return airfare depended upon my remaining in the conference benefactor’s good graces, you can imagine that I folded faster than Myron Floren’s accordion. So much for my own ‘principles’.

But if you want to see the ‘mother’ of all these kinds of statements, wait for the Ministerial Declaration at the conclusion of the upcoming Fifth World Water Forum. Oh, boy!

The Last Word: Debunking Myths. Speaking of curmudgeons, I will impart some words of wisdom for those who are overly enamored of ground water budgets for determining development: my recent post, Ground Water: The Water Budget Myth. I can’t take credit for the ideas presented but am just paraphrasing the words of those who know a lot more than I. The master himself, Dr. John D. Bredehoeft, gave me his blessing. Hard to beat that.

Enjoy the holidays.

Till next month,

Michael

“You know you're old when you bend over to tie your shoes and wonder what else you can do while you're down there.”
– George Burns

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Project alters course of river (Statesman-Journal, 12/9/08) - A $1.2 million project at Willamette Mission State Park soon will allow the Willamette River to flow through a 2-mile channel blocked by a dike since the 1940s. It is one of a handful of key restoration projects identified by the state for partially returning the Willamette River to its historical meandering course. The idea is to undo what has been done to rivers for the past 150 years: forcing them to flow in a single, predictable channel. …Smaller channels allow water to slow down and cool, which is needed by native fish, particularly salmon. "It will help young fish as they migrate down the river and out to the lower Columbia and ocean," said Stan Gregory, aquatic ecologist with the department of fisheries and wildlife at Oregon State University. "When they migrate down in the middle of the river, they don't want to go flying down to the ocean. They need to seek refuge in slow-velocity waters and slip into those channels. And then it is also important for migrating adult salmon as they go upstream because it allows them resting places.

River map shows who uses the water - (Corvallis Gazette-Times, 11/29/08) - If you live in Corvallis, about 70 percent of what you drink, bathe in and water your lawn with comes from the Willamette River. That shouldn’t be surprising, given that the Willamette is the main watercourse draining all of western Oregon between the Cascades and the Coast Range. But think about this: Wilsonville just built a $50 million treatment plant on the Willamette. And dozens of cities, large and small, get their water from the McKenzie, the Santiam, the Tualatin and other Willamette tributaries. That’s apparent from a quick study of a new map produced by the Corvallis Environmental Center with funding from the Institute for Water and Watersheds at Oregon State University. “As the area grows, more and more communities are looking into tapping into the Willamette River for their water supply,” said Todd Jarvis, associate director of the Institute for Water and Watersheds. View the map online.

Navigating a change in our water future by Gordon Grant, Guest opinion (The Oregonian, 11/25/2008) - Readers of the recent article in The Oregonian concerning groundwater in the Cascades ("Cascades hide a mother lode of water," Oct. 20) and the follow-up opinion piece by Douglas Woodcock and Marshall Gannett ("Clearing the air on all that water," Oct. 31) might understandably be confused about the current state of knowledge on the source and availability of water in the Cascades now and in the future. There is actually a high level of agreement among federal, state and university scientists and water managers on this important issue. So let me help to clarify both the knowns and unknowns about the Cascade's remarkable groundwater system. Gordon Grant is a research hydrologist with the U.S. Forest Service and a coutesy professor of Geosciences at OSU.

Professional Science Masters degrees gaining national interest (OSU News and Communiications Service, 11/19/08) – The move towards a degree concept called the professional science masters – a terminal degree that’s a science-oriented version of the MBA – is now picking up speed nationally, as more businesses see the need for graduates who have both business and scientific literacy. Traditional science graduate degrees are usually narrow and focused on research, and traditional MBAs often possess little or no background in science. The “PSM” is seen as the perfect combination for managers who need to function in an increasingly competitive, high-tech and scientific-based business world, and in just a few years it has evolved from a curiosity to a national trend, educators say. This degree program includes and Environmental Science Professional Masters with a concentration in Water Resources.

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Brock Tabor, a M.S. candidate in water resource policy and management is conducting research into the various policy options and implications associated with the Alaska Coastal Management Plan. Alaska faces a number of different challenges in the coastal zone as a result of climate change, public opinion, and political interest at the local, regional, and federal level.  He is working with advisor Michael Harte, Director of the Marine Resource Management program in the College of Oceanic and Atmospheric Studies.  This experience has strengthened his interest in the paradigm shift of management strategies from the traditional sustainable yield model to an ecosystem-based approach to resource planning and management.

With help from an IWW research grant, Brock spent his 2008 summer discussing the legal and bureaucratic challenges that Alaska’s coastal management program has faced. He help focus groups and interviews with NGO staff, State administrators, community leaders, and legislative representatives in Southeast Alaska and the capital, Juneau. Brock is currently conducting stakeholder surveys and semi-structured interviews of local agents to assess network capacity and opportunities for innovative approaches and adaptation of ecosystem based management.

Prior to graduate school, Brock spent 12 years working in the tourism industry as a guide and self-described “political junkie.” His interest in collaborative-based approaches to water management stems from his participation in an indigenous marine reserve project in Panamá and work on community initiatives in Southeast Alaska and the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. The Coastal Zone Management Act of 1972 will be considered for reauthorization in 2010 and Brock hopes that his work will help Alaska adopt a progressive, adaptive management approach to state resource conservation and development.

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IWW Attends the Western States Water Council. Associate Director Todd Jarvis attended this meeting in Salt Lake City which focused on The West’s Water Future: Water Information Needs and Strategies.  Approximately 90 attendees representing nearly every western state and federal natural resource agency participated.  Bob DeVyldere, Chief Information Officer for the Oregon Water Resources Department provided a presentation on the recently completed water supply and demand analyses completed for the Oregon Water Supply and Conservation Initiative, along with an overview of the Groundwater Neighborhood Network project that is currently underway in the Eola Hills area near Salem, Oregon.

IWW Promotes Darcy's Law. Associate Director Todd Jarvis was invited to speak on his career in groundwater engineering to Ron Sharman’s Environmental Technology class at Linn-Benton Community College.  Approximately 30 students attended the lecture where the famous groundwater flow model was used to visually portray the fundamentals of the Darcy Equation as it is applied to contaminant transport.

Presentation on the Statewide Water Roundtables made to the State of Oregon House Committee on Energy and the Environment. INR Director Gail Achterman, IWW Associate Director Todd Jarvis and chief roundtable facilitator Terry Buchholz of David Evans and Associates provided a snapshot overview of what was learned from the nearly 300 attendees to the roundtables held in Bend, Newport, Ontario, Medford, and Salem during September and October.  Slides from the presentation can be viewed on the Roundtables Web page, along with many of the other technical presentations given at the individual roundtable sessions.  A summary report is anticipated before Christmas and will be posted on the Web.

Looking for a gift for a hydrophile? Todd Jarvis met with the Willamette Riverkeeper to discuss opportunities of collaborating with IWW and OSU on projects along the mid Willamette River.  Executive Director and Riverkeeper Travis Williams indicated their 2009 Calendar is flying off the shelves, so for those of you searching for the perfect hydrogift for the holidays, visit their Web page for more details.

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Wednesday, December 10, 7:00 p.m., Corvallis-Benton County Library. Benton County Water Project Meeting. Learn about the Phase 1 Benton County Water Analysis and Demand Forecast.

Thursday, December 11, Northwest Viticulture Center outside Salem. Wells and the Well-Being of Oregon. A conference sponsored by the Oregon Sea Grant Extension and the OSU Institute for Water and Watersheds. It’s designed to provide information to individuals and groups on wells with a focus on domestic wells.

Friday, December 12, 11:00 a.m., Richardson 107. Special Forest Hydrology Seminar: Contributions of Bedrock Groundwater in Surface Hydrological Processes (Speaker: Ken Kosugi, Kyoto University). Prof. Kosugi is a world leader in forest hydrology, soil physics and erosion processes. His mid-1990s work in soil physics has become a benchmark in this field and his functions incorporated into many of today's popular models (e.g. HYDRUS 2D and 3D). The work that he will present this week was published in the September 2008 issue of Water Resources Research and is one of the most important headwater catchment studies completed to date. FMI: Jeff McDonnell.

Tuesday, January 6. Deadline to propose a technical session topic for the 2009 Geological Society of America Annual Meeting. The meeting will be held October 18-October 21 in Portland, Ore. The theme is: From Volcanoes to Vineyards: Living with Dynamic Landscapes.

Wednesday, January 7, 4:00-5:30 p.m., MU 208. Water Before Anything. World Premiere of a documentary film made by OSU Graduate Student Sarah Sheldrick and the first film in the IWW 2009 Water Film Series. The film tells the story of the Umatilla County Critical Groundwater Solutions Taskforce, a volunteer group that has been working to enhance and protect groundwater in the Umatilla Basin. The group has just completed a 2050 Plan and needed a way to share their message with their neighbors and the community. View the four-minute trailer at Google Video. Come meet Sarah!

Thursday, January 8th, 1 p.m. Hydrophiles Field trip to Rickreall Dairy. Julie Gabrielli, water resources engineering student, has organized this trip to see how Oregon agriculture takes care of their waste. Rickreall Dairy has a digester - this turns manure and bedding into methane gas for power generation while also producing fiber for fertilizers. Contact Julie if you'd like to attend and if there is interest, the group will include a winery tour into their afternoon. FMI: Julie Gabrielli.

Thursday, January 8 - Saturday, January 10, Vancouver, B.C. Western Inter-University Geosciences Conference. This conference rings geoscience students from across Western Canada together in an academic forum to share research initiatives and recent discoveries. This year students from the Western USA are also encouraged to participate.

Thursday, January 29 5:00 p.m., Bowerman Center for Environmental Law, Eugene. Water for People & the Environment: Conflict, Compromise & New Directions Conversation. FMI: enr@uoregon.edu.

Tuesday, February 3 - Thursday, February 5, Stevenson, WA. Stream Restoration Design Symposium.

June 17-20, 2009, McKenzie River Conference Center, Blue River, Oregon. Sagebrush to Seaweed Environmental Education Leadership Clinic.   The Environmental Education Association of Oregon is sponsoring this event. Community teams interested in working together to plan and implement educational projects with a watershed improvement focus are encouraged to attend this innovative four day clinic. The clinic is being offered free of charge to all participants through a generous grant from the US Environmental Protection Agency.

Read about more upcoming events on the IWW's calendar.

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U.S. EPA Greater Research Opportunities (GRO) Fellowships for Undergraduate Environmental Study. Eligible students will receive support for their junior and senior years of undergraduate study and for an internship at an EPA facility during the summer between their junior and senior years. The fellowship provides up to $19,250 per year of academic support and up to $8,000 of internship support for a three-month summer period. The deadline for receipt of pre-applications is December 11, 2008.

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 and include individual interviews in Washington, DC. Applications due: December 15, 2008.

The United States - Israel Binational Agricultural Research and Development Fund. Graduate student fellowship for three to six months. Post-doctoral fellowships for one year. The program promotes cooperative agricultural research between postdoctoral fellows from one country (the United States or Israel) and established scientists from the other. Recipients will travel to the host country to carry out their research. BARD gives preference to applicants with innovative research topics that are relevant to agricultural issues. Most projects focus on increasing agricultural productivity, particularly in hot and dry climates, and emphasize plant and animal health, food quality and safety, and environmental issues. Applications due January 15, 2009.

Association for Women in Science Undergraduate and Predoctoral Fellowships. Awards of $1,000 are to female students enrolled in a behavioral, life, physical, or social science or engineering programs.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 23, 2009 for undergraduates; January 30, 2009 for predocs.

NASA Earth and Space Science Fellowship (NESSF) Program – 2009/2010 Academic Year. Individuals pursuing Masters or Doctoral (Ph.D.) degrees in Earth and space sciences, or related disciplines. Awards are made to the university with the advisor serving as the principal investigator. For the 2009/2010 academic year, NASA expects to award approximately 42 new graduate fellowships in Earth Science, 3 in Heliophysics, 10 in Planetary Science, and 3 in Astrophysics. Topic areas in Earth Science include: climate variability and change, atmospheric composition, carbon cycle and ecosystems, water and energy cycle, weather and earth surface and interior. The maximum award is $30K for three years. Proposals due February 2, 2009.

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(listed by due date)

 

9 January 2009. NSF Biological Sciences - Ecosystem Science Cluster - Ecosystem Studies Program.

Description: 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.

12 January 2009. NSF Course, Curriculum, and Laboratory Improvement (CCLI).

Description: 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.

12 January 2009. NSF Research Initiation Grants to Broaden Participation in Biology.

Description: Currently, African Americans, Hispanics, Native Americans, Alaska Natives, and Native Hawaiians and other Pacific Islanders are under-represented in biology. These grants are intended to increase the diversity of researchers who apply for and receive BIO funding to initiate research programs early in their careers.
Funding Details: Awards are for 24 months and are limited to $175,000 total costs (direct plus indirect) with up to an additional $25,000 for equipment (maximum total award amount of $200,000).

16 January 2009. NSF Division of Earth Sciences - Geobiology and Low-Temperature Geochemistry Program.

Description: This program encourages studies of 1) the interactions between biological and geological systems at all scales of space and time; 2) geomicrobiology and biomineralization processes; 3) the role of life in the evolution of the Earth's system; 4) inorganic and organic geochemical processes occurring at or near the earth's surface now and in the past, and at the broad spectrum of interfaces ranging in scale from planetary and regional to mineral-surface and supramolecular; 5) mineralogy and chemistry of soils and sediments; 6) surficial chemical and biogeochemical systems and cycles and their modification through natural and anthropogenic change; and 7) development of tools, methods, and models for low-temperature geochemistry and geobiological research. GG facilitates cross-disciplinary efforts to harness new bioanalytical tools - such as those emerging from molecular biology - in the study of the terrestrial environment.

16 January 2009. NSF Geomorphology and Land Use Dynamics.

Description: This program supports innovative research into processes that shape and modify landscapes over a variety of length and time scales. The program encourages research that investigates quantitatively the coupling and feedback between such processes, their rates, and their relative roles, especially in the contexts of variation in climatic and tectonic forcings and in light of changes due to human impact.

 

18 January 2009. NSF Decision, Risk and Management Sciences.

Description: This program supports scientific research directed at increasing the understanding and effectiveness of decision making by individuals, groups, organizations, and society. Disciplinary and interdisciplinary research, doctoral dissertation research, and workshops are funded in the areas of judgment and decision making; decision analysis and decision aids; risk analysis, perception, and communication; societal and public policy decision making; management science and organizational design. The program also supports small grants for exploratory research of a time-critical or high-risk, potentially transformative nature.

Preproposal due: 20 February 2009. USGS/NIWR Water Resources Research National Competitive Grants Program (Full proposal due: 6 March 2009).

Description: This program supports research on water problems and issues of a regional or interstate nature beyond those of concern only to a single state and which relate to specific program priorities identified jointly by the USGS and the institutes. Proposals involving substantial collaboration between the USGS and university scientists are encouraged. Successful applicants must match each dollar of the federal grant with one dollar from nonfederal sources. Preproposals have to submitted online to the OSU Institute for Water and Watersheds and then IWW submits full proposals by March 6. Contact Todd Jarvis, todd.jarvis@oregonstate.edu for details. Note that the FY2009 funds have not yet been appropriated for this program.
Funding Details: Up to $250K of federal funds. 1:1 non-federal match required.

A list of additional water-related external funding opportunities is available on the IWW Web site.

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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) and the Web. 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.