New Mexico Water eNews

NMSU Student Receives Student Water Research Grant to Study Mitigation of Harmful Algal Blooms
by Marcus Gay, NM WRRI Sr. Student Program Coordinator

Algae are a group of aquatic organisms that form the base of the aquatic food chain. Harmful algal blooms (HABs) occur when algae grow out of control in freshwater or marine environments producing toxins, dissolved oxygen depletion, and anoxic conditions. There have been reports of HABs causing harmful poisoning effects on animals, including mammals, birds, and aquatic life across the United States. These HABs can also cause kidney and liver toxicity, skin rashes, and respiratory problems in humans. HABs are occurring worldwide due to polluted water caused by human activities, revealing a need for effective technologies that help mitigate the effects of HABs and prevent future blooms.

The New Mexico Water Resources Research Institute has awarded a Student Water Research Grant to a graduate student at New Mexico State University (NMSU) to investigate this topic. Wijayalath Kodige Nimasha Lakshani Abeykoon, a master’s student in Environmental Engineering, is working on research focused on mitigating HABs using modified clay with her faculty advisor Dr. Yanyan Zhang.

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Call for Abstracts and Papers for 2022 Animas and San Juan Watersheds Conference
by Mark Sheely, NM WRRI Program Specialist

The New Mexico Water Resources Research Institute is pleased to announce the return of the Animas and San Juan Watersheds Conference, which will take place June 8-9, 2022, at the San Juan College Henderson Fine Arts Center in Farmington, New Mexico, and online.

This year’s conference theme, Collaborations, Perspectives, and Science across the Watersheds, reflects the need to share and learn from the numerous research, monitoring, and restoration projects taking place across the Animas and San Juan rivers. This year’s conference will focus on continuing to look for ways in which communities across the watersheds can work together to address their pressing water resource needs today and in the years to come.

The conference planning committee invites those interested in sharing an oral or poster presentation during the conference to submit an abstract by April 11, 2022, for consideration. We welcome a wide variety of relevant presentation topics. You can learn more about this Call for Abstracts and Papers, and submit your own, by clicking the button below.

Those submitting abstracts will be asked to create an account that will be used to submit, start and save for later, or modify your abstract submission.

Meet the Researcher

Meet the Researcher, Christopher Brown, Professor, New Mexico State University
by Jeanette Torres, NM WRRI Program Coordinator

This month’s featured researcher is Christopher Brown, a professor in the Department of Geography at New Mexico State University (NMSU). Brown teaches three Viewing a Wider World courses (Urban Geography, Economic Geography, and the Geography of Latin America), and he emphasizes the need for team-based learning among his students by providing them with relevant news stories and discussion topics to help facilitate understanding and involvement. Brown is also the inaugural Faculty Fellow for the NMSU Beyond Borders Community of Practice, where he works with faculty across campus to advance border studies and research, with a special focus on supporting the development of external funding proposals.

Brown is currently on several research teams with unique project goals and objectives. One includes an NSF proposal exploring ways to make food supply chains more resilient. Brown also has worked with researchers outside of NMSU to develop a concept paper shared with the incoming commissioner of the United States International Boundary and Water Commission (IBWC), seeking to address environmental and water resource issues in the U.S.-Mexico region. Brown recently learned that this paper has been well received by both the US and Mexican sections of the IBWC, and discussions are underway to explore the establishment of a binational science advisory group, based on the ideas in the paper. According to Brown, the research he is working on to advance water resource management issues in border regions could be a fundamental issue that applies to many global regions. “I have an interest in the comparative nature of the political ecology of these regions, and I think this provides a very useful lens on how to balance globalization and related economic development, with the need to better manage natural resources, especially water resources,” Brown states.

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Researchers Complete Comprehensive Chemical Characterization and Risk Assessment of Produced Water from the Permian Basin and Pecos River
by Carolina Mijares, NM WRRI Student Program Manager

NM WRRI announces the publication of Technical Completion Report No. 398. Pei Xu, Yanyan Zhang, Wenbin Jiang, Lei Hu, and Xuesong Xu from New Mexico State University's Department of Engineering and Kenneth C. Carroll and Naima Khan from the Department of Plant and Environmental Science completed their study titled, Characterization of Produced Water in the Permian Basin for Potential Beneficial Use.

The researchers received funding through NM WRRI's NM Universities Produced Water Synthesis Project, which initiated Year 1 projects in January 2020 with researchers at NM WRRI, NMSU, NMT, and UNM. NM WRRI's NM Universities Produced Water Synthesis projects are funded through state appropriations for a statewide water assessment. The Year 1 objective of this project was to stimulate discussion about the legal and regulatory aspects of produced water reuse and how the Produced Water Act requires changes to the current regulations. NM WRRI Technical Completion Report No. 398 is posted on the Institute's website in its entirety and can be found here.

The report abstract summarizes the project:

The rapid development of the unconventional oil and gas industry has promoted economic growth in the southwestern region of the United States. One of the major barriers for using treated produced water as an alternative water source is the lack of a comprehensive assessment of produced water quality and environmental toxicity. In this study, we employed advanced analytical methods to measure more than 300 targeted analytes including inorganics (e.g., salts, major ions, and metals), organics (e.g., total organic carbon, volatile and semi-volatile organic contaminants), and radionuclides in produced water. In vitro assays were developed as valuable tools for the toxicity assessment of produced water. Overall, an understanding of the physicochemical and toxicological properties of produced water is critical for establishing management practices, proper risk assessment, spill response, treatment, and beneficial use applications.