As I discussed quite a while ago in a post on ESA's Earth Observation Missions, the Soil Moisture and Ocean Salinity (SMOS) mission was successfully launched on Sunday (U.S. time) from a site in northern Russia. With the satellite in a sun-synchronous, nearly circular orbit at about 760 km, mission parameters call for a check-out period of six months followed by an operational period of 2.5-4.5 years. The new science satellite will have a repeat-time of about 23 days but, with its coverage swath, will generate maps of ocean salinity at a resolution of about 200 km (due to spatial averaging) on a monthly basis, providing a great improvement over existing systems that have measured only ocean temperature and surface winds from space (since the 1970s and 1990s, respectively), and ocean surface salinity only from ships and buoys scattered across that 70% of the globe. Observations will be further enhanced with the expected launch of Aquarius, a joint mission by the U.S. and Argentina that is scheduled to begin in late 2010. With ancillary observations of temperature, precipitation and winds from other polar-orbiting and geosynchronous satellites, the ocean current system that depends on both temperature and salinity is coming that much closer to full knowledge for Earth scientists.
Over land, the same instrument that will provide those ocean salinity measurements will give us a first look into large-scale mapping of soil moisture content in the top 1-2 meters of the soil column. According to ESA, we can expect to see global maps of soil moisture at about 50 km resolution and accurate to within 4% volumetric water content every three days, and with ground-truth measurements we should see these new observations bring about significant advances in guidance for practical applications in agriculture and hydrology, as well as a boon to further research in water- and carbon-cycle processes and, by extension, to nutrient-cycle processes related to agriculture and forestry around the world. This might seem like coarse data, but in fact it's an impressive achievement for a first mission due to an ingenious design: instead of a massive and unwieldy (and practically un-launch-able) dish/antenna for receiving the surface microwave signals, the SMOS satellite is a single-instrument platform that carries 69 smaller antennas (antennae?) arrayed in a Y-shape from the center. Using what is basically an interferometric method, the signals received at each smaller dish are correlated and compared with those of every other on the satellite in order to produce a single snapshot-like observation of the surface from which the soil moisture content is then inferred by physical methods. In essence, many small antennas make for one large ''virtual'' antenna that provides better observations than any single, but smaller, antenna and instrument could have produced. Kudos to the Europeans for not compromising on design, and for taking the lead without waiting for the Americans to get their act together...
Alas, we don't quite know the status of NASA's foray into soil moisture measurement from space - the couple American missions that I've heard of have suffered a tumultuous history of delays due to withdrawal of funding (Hydros, in 2005) and then reinstatement of the mission (as SMAP, in 2008) with underfunded progress all the way. NASA's Soil Moisture Active-Passive (SMAP) mission is apparently in the development phase, but was last heard from around April 2008. We can only assume that SMAP remains scheduled for launch in late 2012 or early 2013, which would overlap by a year or two with ESA's SMOS mission and improves on the latter's observations with soil moisture mapping at approximately 10-km resolution. In the meantime, NASA has been focusing on measurements obtained over land using new techniques on existing missions (e.g. AMSR-E on Aqua), and the USDA has a collaborative project with NASA going to further establish and justify the design of SMAP, using SMOS measurements as proxy observations for assimilation into agricultural models and as a hint of what is to come.
With all of the calls now for climate change assessments and predictions, it remains critical to know where we are starting from, or most of the communication remains noise without signal. Missions such as SMOS, and SMAP as it comes about, aim to clarify the signal and provide just such important information to meteorologists, oceanographers, climatologists, water resource and flood hazard managers, and the agricultural community on which we all depend.
02 November 2009
27 October 2009
Working on things...
With apologies to my readers, I am indeed still working on writing for my blog here. I have a few items in process, including a short series on the ''Water-Energy nexus'' in the American southwest and a commentary on the recent Nobel Prize in Economics awarded to Elinor Ostrom of Indiana University for her work on extra-market dynamics in the commons. Then there's the things I have that I want to get posted from prior work, including a collaborative submission to the Google 10^100 contest that may be worth reading for some of you, and recent grant proposal submissions that I'm still waiting to hear about. And then, I'm even (finally) working out the publication of my M.S. Thesis work in Hydrology that was embargoed for a few years while the subjects remained in court proceedings, a story all its own. In the meantime, with proposals and papers and work with AHIS to keep up on, my creative writing process is something like Snoopy's right now:
But I'm working on it! Thanks to Amazon.com for the cover image. Back soon...
16 September 2009
Water for People $1M Challenge
The organization Water for People has recently announced their second, seemingly annual Rosenthal Million Dollar Challenge Grant. Between 15 September and 15 November 2009, if WFP raises $500,000 through donations from people like you and me, Stephen and Sandy Rosenthal of New Orleans will match it for a total of $1M in new funding for WFP. They did this last year and succeeded greatly, so WFP is eager to see it happen again. In addition to ongoing efforts at proving clean water and sanitation facilities in many countries of Central and South America and Africa, WFP has recently expanded its efforts into more of sub-Saharan Africa, Central America and India. This past May it was announced that Malawi, a long-time WFP beneficiary, will also receive an additional $47M from the African Development Bank (AfDB) for water and sanitation projects over the next five years. Not only do WFP personnel go out there and do the building and plumbing themselves, but the group also contributes to the activity and employment of local small businesses who do the same.
One of the best project targets for WFP is providing new toilets and latrines in schools, where girls can then use the facilities in privacy. It helps keep girls in school, and contributes to the health of the community, and for those reasons is one of the focus activities of the Water Advocates' Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH) Initiative and activities funded by the newer organization Water.org. The WASH-in-Schools Initiative has become so successful that the Millennium Water Alliance, the Global Water Challenge, and the Water & Sanitation Rotarian Action Group have provided funding for as many as 20 U.S. embassies in other countries to implement Ambassador's WASH-in-Schools (AWASH) Initiatives in their areas. The Global Water Challenge also supports a School Water, Sanitation, and Hygiene Plus Community Impact (SWASH+) program to reach more than 1,500 schools over five years in Kenya, in partnership with several other organizations including the Coca-Cola Company and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, who also just announced a grant of more than $700,000 to WaterAid America. Sometime I'll try to draw a map of all the organizations and contributions in water and sanitation, though it would probably become obsolete immediately, but you can tell that the connections are becoming more and more dense by the week between charitable organizations and the countries where their efforts are most in need, especially as we draw closer to the Millennium Development Goals for these sectors.
Go and do! Pledge your support! A direct link to the WFP matched donations campaign page is here.
One of the best project targets for WFP is providing new toilets and latrines in schools, where girls can then use the facilities in privacy. It helps keep girls in school, and contributes to the health of the community, and for those reasons is one of the focus activities of the Water Advocates' Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH) Initiative and activities funded by the newer organization Water.org. The WASH-in-Schools Initiative has become so successful that the Millennium Water Alliance, the Global Water Challenge, and the Water & Sanitation Rotarian Action Group have provided funding for as many as 20 U.S. embassies in other countries to implement Ambassador's WASH-in-Schools (AWASH) Initiatives in their areas. The Global Water Challenge also supports a School Water, Sanitation, and Hygiene Plus Community Impact (SWASH+) program to reach more than 1,500 schools over five years in Kenya, in partnership with several other organizations including the Coca-Cola Company and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, who also just announced a grant of more than $700,000 to WaterAid America. Sometime I'll try to draw a map of all the organizations and contributions in water and sanitation, though it would probably become obsolete immediately, but you can tell that the connections are becoming more and more dense by the week between charitable organizations and the countries where their efforts are most in need, especially as we draw closer to the Millennium Development Goals for these sectors.
Go and do! Pledge your support! A direct link to the WFP matched donations campaign page is here.
03 August 2009
New CNA report links energy issues with climate change
It was quite a while ago that I referred a new report by the CNA Corporation entitled "National Security and the Threat of Climate Change" to fellow blogger Tom Barnett in the hopes that he might put forth serious consideration to the idea that climate change impacts can indeed become drivers of conflict on regional scales. Issues in Darfur were heating up, and for the most part that was explained away as a conflict between the agricultural black Africans and pastoralist Arabs over simple matters of territory and access. That explanation barely scratches the surface of the issues, however, so listen up.
The CNA Corporation has just recently released a follow-up report to that first on national security titled "Powering America’s Defense: Energy and the Risks to National Security" which is linked explicitly on their site to the earlier report on climate change. Both were produced by the CNA Military Advisory Board, it turns out - aside from diplomacy, the military is still our best guarantor of national security, no matter how thinly our troops may be stretched about the globe right now. The earlier report identified climate change as a "threat multiplier," essentially a driver that could turn marginally stable situations to bad, and make bad situations even worse. Climate change drives the desertification of the Sudan so that the semi-arid band across the immediate sub-Saharan portion of Africa, known better as the Sahel, moves southward toward the equator. One might suggest that this band is our principal indicator of stability in middle Africa, north of the Congo at least. As farmers lose marginal agricultural lands to the desert, they retreat toward the coastal areas, while monsoons fail to bring regular moisture to the same areas and much of subsistence society, put under greater pressure by the following pastoralists, eventually collapses. We've learned a lot of things from the settlement and development of the American West that we ought to be applying in our assessments of other regions: forty acres may support a hard-working and quick-learning family dedicated to farming for years on end, just to subsist and keep their land, but the same area can support one lonely head of cattle for a grazing season, and then the cow better move on to greener pastures or that forty acres will never recover from being grazed down to its grass roots.
And now, if climate change was not enough to wake up the masses and bring about some attention to the issues at hand, lots of people in places of power will be paying significantly more attention to a new report on energy. Let's get one thing straight and clear: national security means a lot of things, and the military part includes tanks and MRAPs and jets and aircraft carriers and submarines and helicopters and Tomahawk missiles, not a single one of which runs on renewable energy resources. When American troops enter a country to do their jobs, they don't bring along a football-field of photovoltaic panels or build a hydropower plant before getting to work. Does this mean that the military is falling behind? Not at all - they do what they have to do, and we all appreciate the freedoms that their work ensures. Without our current wars of choice, we would be putting off inevitable wars of necessity, and it has been recognized for decades that access to energy resources are a matter of national security. When it comes down to it, that's why America is in Iraq, why Russia won't let their former republics in the Caucasus go their own way, and why the governments of Nigeria and Venezuela are so problematic to us.
So why fight these wars of choice over non-renewable energy resources when those are the very threats to the global climate, the identified causes of recent climate change, the fossil fuels to which we are seemingly so addicted? To give us the luxury of time - it's that simple. We don't want to be backed into a corner, forced to find alternative energy sources at a moment's notice, drawn to bail out carmakers with concepts of the market drawn straight from Henry Ford's own playbook. We want the time to develop those alternatives at our own pace, to find new sources such as ethanol biofuels and develop them to the point of failure, when we finally recognize that the costs of that particular alternative are better measured in the water required than in the money spent to produce a commodity that, if properly priced, would cost only marginally more than the same volume of water at its own proper price, which is more than the rest of your car's sticker price. Fossil fuels are a finite, exhaustible resource that are replaceable only over a period of generations, requiring centuries of inspiration and innovation to reach the other side of this divide. It is certainly prudent to consider the national security implications of dwindling energy resources that are easily obtained when we are still working out the kinks on those sources that are more difficult to bring to market.
But water, well, we're still trying to figure that one out, aren't we? Until we do, sometimes it seems as if the legislators and others with power seem to care little, until their home district runs out. Contrary to popular belief, water is not an infinite and inexhaustible resource, no how much you can seem to pump from the ground, no matter how much it snows in the Sierra one winter, no matter if Lakes Mead and Powell come back up to full capacity in the next ENSO cycle, and no matter how much Atlanta pretends to own outright every drop of water in its vicinity, Alabama and Florida and the Gulf coast fisheries be damned (a theory of ownership which, I learned today, is called the principle of absolute territorial sovereignty or, in shorthand, the Harmon doctrine). Go ahead and invoke the principles of the water cycle instead, if you like, but do your homework first: sure, the water goes around and around, eventually. That leg between the mountain recharge front and the nearest river could take ten thousand years to travel, and in the meantime the water might just refill an emptied aquifer and stop right there instead. Water evaporated from the oceans can remain in the atmosphere for hundreds of years before ever falling as precipitation over land again.
Water is, essentially, just as finite and exhaustible as fossil fuels, because its replacement cycle can be longer than a human lifespan in many places. Many uses of water in society preclude the recycling and re-use of the same water again further downstream, the largest of which is probably agriculture: what does not transpire to the atmosphere in the process of plant growth might percolate through the soil, taking pesticides and fertilizers and nutrients with it. Agricultural return flows are inherently tricky to estimate, and certainly not of a quality to be relied on for those in need downstream. Here's the kicker, though: while fossil fuels are on the verge of replaceable technologies, such that true energy independence is still worth pursuing if only for the implications of that self-sufficiency on national security concerns, water is irreplaceable! No other substance, except air, is so vital to life as we know it and yet still so undervalued (and, often, underpriced) in our society. And no other substance can replace water in its many and varied uses.
So that brings me to a question: which of the CNA's recent reports is more important to us as Americans, and to us as humans? I'd have to say that we can still have a sense of national security without our current portfolio of energy dependencies; we will, in time, find replacement technologies and substances to meet our needs. But climate change will alter the entire geopolitical landscape, and the fact that it may come about on a regional basis at first will only mask the larger issues to come. And yet, we cannot fight climate change, so don't ask me to say that or support your effort, because you'll lose. In our lifetimes, the global climate will evolve on a trajectory toward which it has already been set, and our best chances for national or even human security rest in deep study to find the drivers and concentrated efforts at adaptation to the changes. A sea change in energy policy is one key to such adaptability, one which is reachable in a human lifetime and can bring about a great sense of national security, which I suspect is one reason that CNA chose to address the energy issues now. Climate change, the shifts in habitats and water availability on a global scale, the mistakes that we've made and the natural processes that we've come to understand, those are the things that will require a deeper and longer effort to come to terms with, because they are not entirely (if at all) within our control, and it is only human to ignore, then resist, and then wrestle most with those pressing problems which we cannot control.
The CNA Corporation has just recently released a follow-up report to that first on national security titled "Powering America’s Defense: Energy and the Risks to National Security" which is linked explicitly on their site to the earlier report on climate change. Both were produced by the CNA Military Advisory Board, it turns out - aside from diplomacy, the military is still our best guarantor of national security, no matter how thinly our troops may be stretched about the globe right now. The earlier report identified climate change as a "threat multiplier," essentially a driver that could turn marginally stable situations to bad, and make bad situations even worse. Climate change drives the desertification of the Sudan so that the semi-arid band across the immediate sub-Saharan portion of Africa, known better as the Sahel, moves southward toward the equator. One might suggest that this band is our principal indicator of stability in middle Africa, north of the Congo at least. As farmers lose marginal agricultural lands to the desert, they retreat toward the coastal areas, while monsoons fail to bring regular moisture to the same areas and much of subsistence society, put under greater pressure by the following pastoralists, eventually collapses. We've learned a lot of things from the settlement and development of the American West that we ought to be applying in our assessments of other regions: forty acres may support a hard-working and quick-learning family dedicated to farming for years on end, just to subsist and keep their land, but the same area can support one lonely head of cattle for a grazing season, and then the cow better move on to greener pastures or that forty acres will never recover from being grazed down to its grass roots.
And now, if climate change was not enough to wake up the masses and bring about some attention to the issues at hand, lots of people in places of power will be paying significantly more attention to a new report on energy. Let's get one thing straight and clear: national security means a lot of things, and the military part includes tanks and MRAPs and jets and aircraft carriers and submarines and helicopters and Tomahawk missiles, not a single one of which runs on renewable energy resources. When American troops enter a country to do their jobs, they don't bring along a football-field of photovoltaic panels or build a hydropower plant before getting to work. Does this mean that the military is falling behind? Not at all - they do what they have to do, and we all appreciate the freedoms that their work ensures. Without our current wars of choice, we would be putting off inevitable wars of necessity, and it has been recognized for decades that access to energy resources are a matter of national security. When it comes down to it, that's why America is in Iraq, why Russia won't let their former republics in the Caucasus go their own way, and why the governments of Nigeria and Venezuela are so problematic to us.
So why fight these wars of choice over non-renewable energy resources when those are the very threats to the global climate, the identified causes of recent climate change, the fossil fuels to which we are seemingly so addicted? To give us the luxury of time - it's that simple. We don't want to be backed into a corner, forced to find alternative energy sources at a moment's notice, drawn to bail out carmakers with concepts of the market drawn straight from Henry Ford's own playbook. We want the time to develop those alternatives at our own pace, to find new sources such as ethanol biofuels and develop them to the point of failure, when we finally recognize that the costs of that particular alternative are better measured in the water required than in the money spent to produce a commodity that, if properly priced, would cost only marginally more than the same volume of water at its own proper price, which is more than the rest of your car's sticker price. Fossil fuels are a finite, exhaustible resource that are replaceable only over a period of generations, requiring centuries of inspiration and innovation to reach the other side of this divide. It is certainly prudent to consider the national security implications of dwindling energy resources that are easily obtained when we are still working out the kinks on those sources that are more difficult to bring to market.
But water, well, we're still trying to figure that one out, aren't we? Until we do, sometimes it seems as if the legislators and others with power seem to care little, until their home district runs out. Contrary to popular belief, water is not an infinite and inexhaustible resource, no how much you can seem to pump from the ground, no matter how much it snows in the Sierra one winter, no matter if Lakes Mead and Powell come back up to full capacity in the next ENSO cycle, and no matter how much Atlanta pretends to own outright every drop of water in its vicinity, Alabama and Florida and the Gulf coast fisheries be damned (a theory of ownership which, I learned today, is called the principle of absolute territorial sovereignty or, in shorthand, the Harmon doctrine). Go ahead and invoke the principles of the water cycle instead, if you like, but do your homework first: sure, the water goes around and around, eventually. That leg between the mountain recharge front and the nearest river could take ten thousand years to travel, and in the meantime the water might just refill an emptied aquifer and stop right there instead. Water evaporated from the oceans can remain in the atmosphere for hundreds of years before ever falling as precipitation over land again.
Water is, essentially, just as finite and exhaustible as fossil fuels, because its replacement cycle can be longer than a human lifespan in many places. Many uses of water in society preclude the recycling and re-use of the same water again further downstream, the largest of which is probably agriculture: what does not transpire to the atmosphere in the process of plant growth might percolate through the soil, taking pesticides and fertilizers and nutrients with it. Agricultural return flows are inherently tricky to estimate, and certainly not of a quality to be relied on for those in need downstream. Here's the kicker, though: while fossil fuels are on the verge of replaceable technologies, such that true energy independence is still worth pursuing if only for the implications of that self-sufficiency on national security concerns, water is irreplaceable! No other substance, except air, is so vital to life as we know it and yet still so undervalued (and, often, underpriced) in our society. And no other substance can replace water in its many and varied uses.
So that brings me to a question: which of the CNA's recent reports is more important to us as Americans, and to us as humans? I'd have to say that we can still have a sense of national security without our current portfolio of energy dependencies; we will, in time, find replacement technologies and substances to meet our needs. But climate change will alter the entire geopolitical landscape, and the fact that it may come about on a regional basis at first will only mask the larger issues to come. And yet, we cannot fight climate change, so don't ask me to say that or support your effort, because you'll lose. In our lifetimes, the global climate will evolve on a trajectory toward which it has already been set, and our best chances for national or even human security rest in deep study to find the drivers and concentrated efforts at adaptation to the changes. A sea change in energy policy is one key to such adaptability, one which is reachable in a human lifetime and can bring about a great sense of national security, which I suspect is one reason that CNA chose to address the energy issues now. Climate change, the shifts in habitats and water availability on a global scale, the mistakes that we've made and the natural processes that we've come to understand, those are the things that will require a deeper and longer effort to come to terms with, because they are not entirely (if at all) within our control, and it is only human to ignore, then resist, and then wrestle most with those pressing problems which we cannot control.
22 July 2009
Stormrise, east of Tucson
Stormrise over Redington Pass between the Catalina and Rincon Mountains, east of Tucson, Arizona. Photo around 6 pm on 21 July 2009.
09 July 2009
Inaugural AMS Energy Conference and call for abstracts
First American Meteorological Society (AMS) Conference on Weather, Climate, and the New Energy Economy
The First Conference on Weather, Climate, and the New Energy Economy, sponsored by the American Meteorological Society, and organized by the AMS Committee on Energy, will be held 17–21 January 2010, as part of the 90th AMS Annual Meeting in Atlanta, Georgia. Preliminary programs, registration, hotel, and general information will be posted on the AMS Conference Web site in September 2009.
The AMS Energy Committee invites participation from researchers and practitioners who are experienced in and/or are studying the linkages between weather, climate and the next generation of the energy complex. Participation may range from practical (non-academic) presentations to submission of academic papers. We invite discussion on all subjects dealing with the New Energy Economy including observation, modeling, theoretical, forecasting, and applied studies. Planned session themes include energy supply and demand (wind, solar, natural gas, oil, etc.), the impacts of climate change on energy supply and demand, societal impacts in and of the New Energy Economy, policy issues in energy, education and communication of data and information to stakeholders, new economic opportunities, and additional topics as suggested by the participants.
If you or your colleagues would like to participate, please submit a short summary (abstract) of you topic electronically via the Web by 3 August 2009 (please refer to the AMS Conference Submission Web page for detailed instructions). An abstract fee of $90, payable by credit card or purchase order, is charged at the time of submission, and will be refunded only if your abstract is not accepted.
Authors of accepted presentations will be notified via e-mail by late September 2009. For additional information please contact the program chairperson, Jon Davis.
21 May 2009
Rainy Day...
...in Tucson, Arizona! Who'd'a thunk it? Does anybody out there know what to do when it rains? I seem to have forgotten...
Sorry I haven't been blogging much lately - so much work to be done! I am again in transition, though just a small move around the corner this time. The Arizona Water Institute is going away, at the behest of the state university system in Arizona. When the state showed a $3B deficit, what did they choose to cut? Education! When the state universities had to decide where to trim $100M+ this year, where did they look? Science! As a recently-added line item in the state's budget, AWI was a last-in-first-out target of miniscule financial proportions, at least in terms of true operating costs. As one of the few successful inter-university and government-linked collaborative efforts in the state, AWI was a target with significant impact. What can we not live without? Water!
Water's not the thing sometimes, at least "wet" water I mean. "Paper water" gets more attention around here. Rules and regulations, laws and policies, Central Arizona Project allocations, well water pumping reports, credits for aquifer recharge and trades between groundwater management areas, "water banking" for neighboring states, and that elusive concept of sustainability. AWI contributed to the understanding of all this paper water in Arizona and the Lower Colorado River Basin, so that real people could get real "wet" water when they need it. Our own director just shook hands with the Secretary of the Interior for her part in the Environmental Impact Statement that led to new operating rules for the Bureau of Reclamation along the Colorado River in times of shortage (like now). She co-authored a paper just published in Water Resources Research on the recent Arizona Water Settlements Act and its largely positive impacts on the fulfillment of water-related obligations to Native American tribes in Arizona. Other researchers funded by AWI have figured out how much various energy sources cost in terms of water (note: there are two different kinds of solar - one of them should never have been devised - and promotion of biofuel crops will be a bad idea in water-limited agricultural regions), found which pharmaceuticals persist in our drinking water, developed improved management plans for drought adaptation, and helped establish sensor networks in riparian areas and Native American lands across the state.
The state universities, and the state government as a whole, will rue the day when they cut their knowledge base in this way. Rue the day, I say!
So anyway, my official affiliation is moving from AWI to SAHRA, a National Science Foundation Science and Technology Center here at the University of Arizona. I get to keep my project, the Arizona Hydrologic Information System, and carry it as far as I possibly can. We'll see what we can do with it. I see a bright future in geospatial analytics, the mapping component of my efforts in hydrologic informatics...
Official (and unofficial) forecasts call for an early and strong monsoon onset in Arizona this summer, possibly accompanied by the development of a strong El Niño pattern in the eastern Pacific Ocean that would eventually bring an early end to the North American monsoon circulation, but at the same time increase the chances for East Pacific tropical storms, so maybe we'll see a double spike in precipitation over Arizona this summer. Will it end the southwestern drought? Unlikely.
In the meantime, some delta blues should fit the day nicely...
Sorry I haven't been blogging much lately - so much work to be done! I am again in transition, though just a small move around the corner this time. The Arizona Water Institute is going away, at the behest of the state university system in Arizona. When the state showed a $3B deficit, what did they choose to cut? Education! When the state universities had to decide where to trim $100M+ this year, where did they look? Science! As a recently-added line item in the state's budget, AWI was a last-in-first-out target of miniscule financial proportions, at least in terms of true operating costs. As one of the few successful inter-university and government-linked collaborative efforts in the state, AWI was a target with significant impact. What can we not live without? Water!
Water's not the thing sometimes, at least "wet" water I mean. "Paper water" gets more attention around here. Rules and regulations, laws and policies, Central Arizona Project allocations, well water pumping reports, credits for aquifer recharge and trades between groundwater management areas, "water banking" for neighboring states, and that elusive concept of sustainability. AWI contributed to the understanding of all this paper water in Arizona and the Lower Colorado River Basin, so that real people could get real "wet" water when they need it. Our own director just shook hands with the Secretary of the Interior for her part in the Environmental Impact Statement that led to new operating rules for the Bureau of Reclamation along the Colorado River in times of shortage (like now). She co-authored a paper just published in Water Resources Research on the recent Arizona Water Settlements Act and its largely positive impacts on the fulfillment of water-related obligations to Native American tribes in Arizona. Other researchers funded by AWI have figured out how much various energy sources cost in terms of water (note: there are two different kinds of solar - one of them should never have been devised - and promotion of biofuel crops will be a bad idea in water-limited agricultural regions), found which pharmaceuticals persist in our drinking water, developed improved management plans for drought adaptation, and helped establish sensor networks in riparian areas and Native American lands across the state.
The state universities, and the state government as a whole, will rue the day when they cut their knowledge base in this way. Rue the day, I say!
So anyway, my official affiliation is moving from AWI to SAHRA, a National Science Foundation Science and Technology Center here at the University of Arizona. I get to keep my project, the Arizona Hydrologic Information System, and carry it as far as I possibly can. We'll see what we can do with it. I see a bright future in geospatial analytics, the mapping component of my efforts in hydrologic informatics...
Official (and unofficial) forecasts call for an early and strong monsoon onset in Arizona this summer, possibly accompanied by the development of a strong El Niño pattern in the eastern Pacific Ocean that would eventually bring an early end to the North American monsoon circulation, but at the same time increase the chances for East Pacific tropical storms, so maybe we'll see a double spike in precipitation over Arizona this summer. Will it end the southwestern drought? Unlikely.
In the meantime, some delta blues should fit the day nicely...
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
