Five Questions for Dave Kreamer

In preparation for Wednesday March 31st's El Dia Del Agua, it seemed like a good idea to ask our keynote speaker - David Kreamer of the University of Nevada Las Vegas our 5 questions for hydrologists. Dave is an alum of the dpeartment receiving his MS in 1976 and his PhD in 1984 (I guess he just could not get enough). So without further ado here are Dave's answers.

1. Why the Dept of Hydrology and Water Resources?

I was rock climbing in the Catalina Mountains outside Tucson, and began conversing with another climber on a parallel route next to me. I told him that I was an undergraduate in Microbiology, minor chemistry (pre-med), but I was thinking more about the out-of-doors for a job choice. The climber, a guy named Ted Petronoff, said he was in hydrology, and he was doing work in the Grand Canyon on water quality. And by the way, there was a high amount of Shigella, (a type of bacteria that can cause digestive problems) in a side drainage to the Canyon, Kanab Creek, and would I be interested in rafting down the Colorado River taking water quality samples? After a couple of milliseconds thought, I said "sure", and asked him the name of his major professor in the Dept.

The next week I was in an office in the Hydro Dept. It didn't hurt that the U of Arizona has the best dept. in hydrology in the nation, and I am constantly happy about the circumstances, professors and people that shaped my career and life. I am grateful for the experiences, fellowship and training I received at Arizona.

2) Best hydrologic insight you have ever had?

I have several favorite hydrologic insights. As an invited, independent peer reviewer for Yucca Mountain I discovered that politically driven science wasn't always optimal. With the encouragement of Stan Davis, I offered suggestions for improvement of the scientific studies beng conducted. At a low level nuclear waste site in South Carolina I found out that I could make gaseous tracer tests work and be able to be modeled in the vadose zone. With the advice of Paul Hsieh, I put forward a gaseous diffusion model for those tracer tests, which in a strange way was analogous to the inverse, curve-match Theis equation. In the Grand Canyon I found that high uranium concentrations we discovered in spring water, coupled with unusual uranium disequilibrium ratios and other groundwater tracer values could start a major Superfund cleanup. And in Africa I realized that the quality of human life and ecosystem health could be advanced in some basic ways I didn't learn about in school.

3) Favorite thing about being a hydrologist?

My favorite thing about being a hydrologist is to do such varied work involving travel to new places, making a difference in the lives of others, figuring out hydrologic intellectual riddles, working in the lab, modeling on all scales, teaching, and being in beautiful outdoor areas. My favorite thing about being a professor is working with students - they're the best!

4. Why hydrophilanthropy?

I think every hydrologist I've met is proud that in some way they are working for the advancement of the world. For me, hydrophilanthropy is a way to extend academic studies to real-world and immediate, human and ecosystem benefit, while at the same time seeing the world through different eyes and fundamentally challenging you own pre-conceptions about the planet.

5) Favorite thing about Tucson?

I love Tucson and it's hard to choose. My favorite thing about Tucson perhaps might be some quiet, not-often-visited, pools in the polished granite canyons of the Santa Catalina Mountains where you can swim and linger next to saguaro forests.

Earth week 2010

Despite the ominous sound of Earth week 2010 it promises to be a celebration of graduate and undergraduate research in the Earth and Environmental Sciences. Seen as a way to stitch together the new School of Earth and Environmental Sciences (SEES) at the University of Arizona this event integrates Tree Ring Day on March 29th, GRATIS (Graduate Research oin Atmospheric Sciences) on March 30th, El Dia del Agua on MArch 31st and GeoDaze on April 1st and 2nd.

For more information see below where I have copied an announcement from Karl Flessa Chair of SEES and head of Geosciences at the University of Arizona.

-----------------------------------

EarthWeek is next week! Come to the Arizona History Museum Auditorium March 30-April2 to see and hear about student research, hear keynote talks by leaders in our field, hear plenary speaker Randy Olson talk about science communication and on Wednesday night, come to The Loft Cinema to see SIZZLE.

Each day of EarthWeek features one or more of the School’s units, so be sure to attend more than one day! Our students have worked hard to pull all of this together and our sponsors have donated cash and other prizes. So show your support by showing up.

Details below.

EarthWeek Features Student Research Plus 'Sizzle: A Global Warming Comedy'

EarthWeek, March 29 through April 3, is a student-run event that features research presentations by graduate and undergraduate students in a range of environmental sciences.

By Mari N. Jensen, College of Science March 24, 2010

EarthWeek, a showcase of research by undergraduate and graduate students in the School of Earth and Environmental Sciences at the University of Arizona, will be held Monday, March 29 through Saturday, April 3.

The student-organized event features research presentations by students from the departments and units within the school: the Arizona Accelerator Mass Spectrometry Laboratory, atmospheric sciences, geosciences, hydrology and water resources, the Laboratory of Tree-Ring Research, and soil, water and environmental science.

The weekday events include presentations and posters to be held in the Arizona History Museum auditorium, 949 E. Second St. All of the scientific presentations are free and open to the public.

Randy Olson of Prairie Starfish Productions and the University of Southern California will deliver the plenary lecture, "Don't be Such a Scientist: Talking Substance in an Age of Style," on Wednesday, March 31, at noon.

Olson, marine-biologist-turned-independent film director, will talk about how scientists can do a better job of grabbing the public's attention by changing their communication style.

Randy Olson, marine-biologist-turned-independent-film director, will be the plenary speaker at the School of Earth and Environmental Sciences' EarthWeek.

As part of EarthWeek, Olson's movie, "Sizzle: A Global Warming Comedy," will be shown at The Loft Cinema at 3233 E. Speedway Blvd. on Wednesday, March 31, at 7 p.m. Writer-director Randy Olson will do a Q&A with the audience following the screening. He will be joined by UA professors Julia Cole of geosciences, Diana Liverman of the Institute of the Environment, Brian McGill of the School of Natural Resources and the Environment and Jacqueline Sharkey of the School of Journalism. An admission fee will be charged for the film.

The week culminates with a field trip on Saturday, April 3, to Mt. Lemmon in the Santa Catalina Mountains. The trip will examine geological features along the General Hitchcock Highway.

Schedule of Research Presentations

Monday, March 29, 9 a.m. to 4:30 p.m.

Tree-Ring Day

Laboratory of Tree-Ring Research

1:30 p.m. Keynote: Who Needs the Medieval Warm Period?

Malcolm Hughes, UA

Tuesday, March 30, 8 a.m. to 5 p.m.

GRATIS -- Graduate Research in Atmospheric Sciences

Departments of atmospheric sciences and soil, water and environmental science

11:00 a.m. Keynote: Career Opportunities after Graduation

Martin Murphy and Nick Demetriades of Vaisala

Wednesday, March 31, 8 a.m. to 5 p.m.

20th Annual El Dia Del Agua Student Symposium

Departments of hydrology and water resources and soil, water and environmental science

3:30 p.m. Keynote: Hydrophilanthropy

David Kreamer, University of Nevada, Las Vegas

Thursday and Friday, April 1 and 2, 8 a.m. to 5 p.m.

GeoDaze: 38th Annual Geoscience Symposium

Departments of geosciences and soil, water and environmental science

Keynote on Thursday, April 1, 4 p.m.

The California River and its role in carving the Grand Canyon

Brian Wernicke, California Institute of Technology

Saturday, April 3

GeoDaze Field Trip to Mt. Lemmon

Leader: Paul Kapp, UA associate professor of geosciences

The scientific focus of the trip will be the history and significance of Cretaceous to Miocene magmatism and deformation.

There are still some spaces available for the field trip. Register at

http://earth.geo.arizona.edu/geodaze/2010/register.html

George Davis (left), UA Regents' Professor of geosciences, leads the GeoDaze 2008 field trip. Participants at a stop on the west side of the Catalina Mountains, in the Cargadero Canyon area. (Photo credit: Lepolt Linkimer)

EarthWeek, organized by the graduate students in the UA's School of Earth and Environmental Sciences, provides a forum for students to present their research and receive feedback from faculty, alumni and peers. The annual event also provides an opportunity for students and faculty to interact with interested community members and representatives of industry and government agencies.

EarthWeek is supported by the School of Earth and Environmental Sciences and corporate sponsorship and donations from alumni, faculty and friends.

• What | EarthWeek 2010
• When | March 29 through April 3
• Where | Arizona History Museum auditorium, 949 E. Second St., Tucson

Jim Yeh seminar - Active and Passive Hydrologic Tomography: a revolution in subsurface hydrology

Today (March 24th's) Hydrology and Water Resources Seminar will be presented by TC "Jim" Yeh on his recent and future work on hydraulic tomography. Title and Sumamry to follow.

"Active and Passive Hydrologic Tomography: a revolution in subsurface hydrology"

Wed March 24
4pm Harshbarger Rm 206

Abstract:
Aquifers are inherently heterogeneous at multiple scales. Limitations of analytical mathematics and our inability to sample aquifers at high density however have dictated adoption of aquifer homogeneity assumption. As scales of our interests become finer and computation and sensor technologies advance, we have developed methods for integrative analysis of multiple pumping tests (i.e., hydraulic tomography or active hydrologic tomography) for characterizing aquifers of tens and hundreds of meters in size at high resolutions. While more field assessments are needed, recent validations of the active hydrologic tomography based on numerical, laboratory and field experiments are promising. They show that not only is the tomography capable of detecting the pattern of hydraulic heterogeneity but also a groundwater flow model with the estimated heterogeneity can accurately predict flows under excitations different from those used in the tomography analysis. As a consequence, model calibration or inverse modeling effort should no longer be viewed as a history or curve matching exercise.

Promising results of active hydrologic tomography encourage the development of basin-scale hydrologic tomography. Basin-scale tomography requires energy sources of great strengths. Spatially and temporally varying natural stimuli are ideal energy sources for this purpose. In our recent study, we explored the possibility of using river-stage variations for basin-scale hydraulic tomographic surveys (i.e., passive hydrologic tomography). Specifically, we use numerical models to simulate groundwater level changes in response to temporal and spatial variations of the river stage in a hypothetical groundwater basin. We then exploit the relation between temporal and spatial variations of well hydrographs and river stage to image subsurface heterogeneity of the basin. Results of the numerical exercises are encouraging. In addition, preliminary analysis of hourly groundwater, river stage, and precipitation data collected by a densely distributed monitoring network in Zhoushuixi alluvium fan (3,000 km square), Taiwan supports the concept of passive hydrologic tomography for characterizing basin-scale aquifers and provides insights to the interaction between streams and groundwater at basin
scales.

Stewart Udall has passed

Stewart Udall has passed away. Udall served as a congressman from Tucson before being named Interior Secretary under Kennedy and then Johnson. Udall also received both his bachelors and law degress form the University of Arizona. Udall played a key political role in the growing US conservation movement in the 1960's and helped preserve wide swaths of federal land including Point Reyes and Cape Cod National Seashores along with Canyonlands, Redwood and North Cascades National Parks, among others. Udall was also key in helping protect air, land and water resources throguh the passage of the Clean Air and Water Acts as well as the National Environmental Protection Act.

Matt Garcia over at Hydro-logic has a nice tribute to Udall and the New York Times as always has a thorough obituary of Stewart Udall, his life and his contributions.

World Water Day

Break out the balloons and the streamers. Raise a glass of the clear quenching healthy beverage that is water. Today is world water day. This day was set aside to remember and conduct activities to advocate for better management of our renewable water resources. I the United States activities vary from festivals and government lobbying to simple education events. Learn more here. In Tucson this year there is a water festival to celebrate our most precious resource.
So remember to celebrate water today and raise a glass of the clear stuff for one an all.

An additional link from Matt Garcia on World water day here.

Blog of the week - Water Use it Wisely

As hydrologists we all get questions about how to best conserve water one of the best resources out on the web is the site Water Use it Wisely . If you are just getting started in being water wise you can check out the sites 100 ways to conserve. Of course many who find their way to this blog are probably a little more savvy and thus should maybe check out - their water harvesting links section. The site is supported by water utilities and municipalities across the country. So if you have never visited the site it is one of the better ones out there on conserving water.

Improving Seasonal Predictions of Climate Variability and Water Availability at the Catchment Scale

This paper by Switanek, Troch and Castro (2009) highlights using the entire field of sea surface temperatures to predict future precipitation in a river basin. The study focuses on the Little Colorado and Gunnison river basins in the Western United States. It is well known that seas surface temperatures influence ocean-atmosphere-land interactions and this coupling has been commonly used to look at the effects of specific sea surface temperature anomolies such as the El Nino SOuthern Oscillation (ENSO) and the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO). Both the PDO and ENSO are well studied but use a broad region to identify climate prediction links for these anomalies. This current study uses broad based correlational studies to identify specific regions of correlation to look at seas surface temperature links to future precipitation in the two river basins studied. Once the correlation structure is known the authors then demonstrate that using their method results in greater predictive skill for hydrologic flows over traditional climate prediction methods.

Five Questions to Thomas Meixner

The following is meant to be a regular Monday feature of this blog where an alum, faculty member, student or staff member answers five questions related to the department.

Today's victim is the editor of the blog Tom Meixner. Who from here on out will be writing this blog in the first person.

1) Why the Department of Hydrology and Water Resources?
I attended the University of Arizona for my graduate education. Roger Bales was my adviser. He recruited me by letting me work on the topic that I wished to pursue the coupled modeling of nitrogen and water. This topic continues to be an area of my research. Upon arriving at Arizona for my graduate education I also learned of the unique nature of the department, because we are a department of hydrology and not geosciences or environmental sciences or engineering everyone focuses on the different aspects of water in the earth system. this focus enables a cogency to develop among students and faculty. After I got my PhD I was hired at the University of California Riverside as an assistant professor. i was a professor there for 6 years before being lucky enough to be hired as an associate professor in the Hydrology department. Upon returning I remembered the joy of being surrounded by hydrologists again. At Riverside when people had a hydrologic question they came to me. this helped me broaden my understanding of hydrology but truly there are indeed many topics in hydrology on which I am less than an expert. At Arizona I have the luxury of getting hydrologic science advice from the bets oin the world both in the department, through our joint faculty and across our wonderful campus.

2) Best hydrologic insight you have ever had?
As with most of my scientific effort it has been a joint process to discover and quantify the importance of floods for the rivers and aquifers of the southwest. These floods connect rivers and their aquifers intimately either by forcing recharge though change in stage (Baillie et al 2007 and Simpson 2007) or by inducing scour and removing clogging layers in the subsurface of effluent dominated rivers (Treese et al 2009).

3) Favorite thing about being a hydrologist?
I get to work in the field on problems that important to society for its survival and its growth both economic and spiritual.

4) Why start this blog?
Seemed like it would be a good way to connect the folks in the department in a virtual way by highlighting, people, projects, papers and events that are of import to the Hydrology and Water Resources Family.

5) Favorite thing about Tucson?
In the words of Ty Ferre Tucson is the largest city that embraces its the desert as the place that it is. So many other Southwest US cities live in opposition to the desert while Tucson lives in communion with its desert at least as much as any city can.

Andrew Somor wins cool MacBook

Andrew Somor a second year Masters student in Hydrology and Water Resources has been rewarded with a MacBook for writing the best essay to the University of Arizona's MacBook scholarship essay contest. I am sure Andrew will soon be using the MacBook to complete his thesis and apply for positions. Anyone out there hiring?

Bigelow Tower and Snow Videos

The work of Shirley Papuga and Paul Brooks was recently featured on Channel 13 KOLD news here in Tucson as part of KOLD's 60 second science feature. The video story features a time lapse video from a remote repeat photography camera near the Mount Bigelow tower site in the Santa Catalina Mountains above Tucson. Dr. Papuga's group installed the camera as part of science efforts by Biosphere 2 and the Santa Catalina Mountains Critical Zone Observatory. Paul is caught on camera talking about the importance of snow and the way the tower is used to better understand the meteorology of the southwest.

The video is embedded below-

COSMOS project

A team of researchers led by Marek Zreda in coordination with Jim Shuttleworth and Xubin Zeng was recently funded to build a network of soil moisture probes for meteorological measurement across the United States. The project has previously been featured by the UA News service here. As with all NSF funded projects the investigators project summary can be viewed by the public. The project relies on deploying a set of probes that count neutrons using a portable detector. The concept is similar to the classic neutron probe but instead of using a live neutron source the device counts neutrons that are excited by natural cosmic rays similar to classic neutron probe methods the presence of water slows down these naturally occurring neutrons and thus the fewer neutrons counted the greater the water content (Zreda et al 2008). A key attribute of the probes is the relatively large area that affects the neutrons that are counted. The observational footprint of the device has a radius of 330 m and is most sensitive to soil moisture near the surface (up to a depth of 50 cm). This footprint and depth profile makes the device ideal for soil moisture observations in and around meteorological stations. this application was one of the keys to getting the project funded by NSF. The field deployment of these devices promises to revolutionize our understanding of the role that soil moisture plays in land surface atmosphere feedbacks.

Neuman Seminar on multi-fractals

Today Wednesday March 10 Dr. Shlomo Neuman will be giving the department seminar on "On Fractal and Multifractal Scaling of Hydrological and Geophysical Variables" at 4PM in Harshbarger 206. The topic is one with which Dr. Neuman is very familiar and has spent a signficiant portion of his career pursuing. We can all look forward to an elightening seminar that steers us clear of mistakes in the use of fractals and multi-fractals in hydrologic applications.

For a taste of what Dr. Neuman will cover you can read this article from the Reviews of Geophysics in 2003 that Dr. Neuman co-authored with Vittorio Di Federico.

Abstract -
Space-time fluctuations in hydrologic variables generally depend on scale. There has been a growing tendency to treat such variables as samples from self-affine (monofractal) or multifractal random fields (or processes) with spatial (or temporal) increments having exceedance probability tails that decay as powers of -α where, in most reported cases, 1 < alpha <= 2. The literature considers self-affine and multifractal modes of scaling to be fundamentally different, the first arising from additive and the second from multiplicative phenomena. Among recent advances is a theoretical demonstration that samples from additive fractional Brownian motion (alpha = 2) yield square (or absolute) increments which behave as if the field was multifractal when in fact it is monofractal. Samples from additive fractional Lévy motions ( 1 < alpha < 2) tend to exhibit spurious multifractality. Deviations from apparent multifractal behavior at small and large lags are due to nonzero data support and finite domain size, unrelated to noise or undersampling (causes cited for such behavior in the literature). These findings are based on an earlier advance, the formal decomposition of anisotropic (when alpha = 2) into
a continuous hierarchy of statistically independent and homogeneous random fields, or modes, which captures the above behavior in terms of only E + 3 parameters where E is Euclidean dimension. The decomposition has precise spectral and wavelet analogues. It has been used successfully to elucidate the reason why apparent autocorrelation scales of many variables increase with domain size; explain why apparent longitudinal dispersivities of subsurface tracer plumes increase with mean travel distance or time; provide a reason as to why the rate of this increase diminishes with increased resolution of plume details; derive expressions for scale-dependent effective permeabilities of self-affine geologic media; recognize and quantify the uncertain nature of such effective parameters; develop multiscale relationships between length scales, apertures, densities and permeabilities of natural rock fractures; derive ensemble analogues of Horton’s scaling laws for river networks; relate statistical moments of river network attributes to arbitrary lower and upper cutoff scales that may (but need not) be taken to represent data support and maximum watershed size; provide a theoretical basis for the previously
unexplained observation that transverse fluctuations of basin boundaries and main channels, having a common Hurst scaling exponent, are larger in the former than in the latter; upscale and downscale statistics of data collected on disparate support scales; provide a way to condition these statistics on data measured at specific space-time locations; and create a blueprint for the propagation of corresponding data and parameter uncertainties through hydrologic models. These broad interpretive and analytical powers of the approach are sure to expand in the future.

Hydrologic effects of the expansion of rubber (Hevea brasiliensis) in a tropical catchment

Guardiola Claramonte and coauthors (2010) just published this paper which investigates the hydrologic effects of rubber plantations on catchment scale hydrologic processes. Dr. Guardiola-Claramonte completed the work as part of her dissertation under the direction of Dr. Peter Troch in the department. She also worked with a diverse team of investigators at multiple institutions. She and her co-authors were able to document that rubber plantations increase transpirative use of water and thus decrease stream discharge out of headwater catcments. As rubber plantations continue to expand in southern China and southeast Asia these authors work could influence basin scale management of water resources in these systems.

Seminar in SWES today

Over in the Soil Water and Environmental Sciences Department here at the University of Arizona Joan Rose of Michigan State University will be speaking.

UA ADVANCE DISTINGUISHED SPEAKER
Dr. Joan B. Rose

Homer Nowlin Chair in Water Research, Michigan State University

Monday, March 8, 2010
3:00-4:00PM, Marley Building, Room 230
Public Lecture

“CLIMATE, SEWAGE AND WATER QUALITY IN THE GREAT LAKES”

The assessment of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change predicted increased threats to human and ecosystem health due to climate change. Although the climate – hydrology nexus and potential impacts of climate change on water resources are well documented, linkages between climate, land use, water quality and human health are poorly understood. The Great Lakes are a unique water basin and offers opportunities to explore this relationship via a coupled human aquatic systems approach.


This Wednesday in Hydrology Shlomo Neuman will be speaking in the departments seminar series. He will be discussing fractals and multi-scaling.

Announcing 20th el Dia del Agua

20th El Dia del Agua March 31st

SAVE THE DATE ~

DEPARTMENT OF HYDROLOGY & WATER RESOURCES
20th ANNUAL EL DIA DEL AGUA

Wednesday, March 31, 2010
8:00 AM – 5:00 PM
University of Arizona
The Arizona Historical Society Museum
949 East Second Street, Tucson, Arizona

El Dia del Agua is the annual research showcase of the Department of
Hydrology and Water Resources. This one-day event features presentations by
students and a keynote address by Randy Olson ( http://www.dontbesuchascientist.com/ ) . Monetary awards are
presented for the best student presentations (both oral and poster). We
encourage members of the hydrologic community and, especially, prospective
graduate students to join us for this event.

El Dia del Agua is held at The Arizona Historical Society Museum located at
949 East Second Street.

For further details and associated forms link onto our website at
http://www.hwr.arizona.edu If you or your organization, firm, or agency is interested in being a
sponsor for El Dia del Agua, please contact us at:

Department of Hydrology & Water Resources
University of Arizona
Harshbarger Building Room 122
Tucson, Arizona 85721
520.621.7120
http://www.hwr.arizona.edu