Letter from the Executive Director
JERAD BALES, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, CUAHSI
Dear Friends of Water Science,
The water community and CUAHSI, in particular, received some exciting news last week. NOAA announced the creation of the Cooperative Institute for Research to Operations in Hydrology (CIROH), which will be housed at the University of Alabama, home of the National Water Center (NWC). You can read the full announcement here. CIROH funding is expected to be about $360M over the duration of the five-year award.
CUAHSI is one of 28 institutions involved in the Cooperative Institute: 20 academic institutions and 8 nonprofit or for-profit organizations. Steve Burian at the Alabama Water Institute will serve as the CIROH Executive Director.
CIROH partners will focus on supporting the mission of the National Water Center by improving water prediction capabilities through community modeling, development of new hydroinformatics tools, incorporation of sociological, economic, and resilience issues into water prediction, and educating the next generation of water scientists. (In some ways, CIROH activities also are reminiscent of CUAHSI’s earlier efforts in the Community Hydrologic Modeling Program, or CHyMP.)
CUAHSI is expected to play a role in all the CIROH activities, especially hydroinformatics, community modeling, and education. All these activities are aligned with CUAHSI’s mission. We also anticipate support for further development of the HydroClient and HydroShare. Details about CUAHSI’s involvement will be forthcoming, as the Alabama Water Institute begins issuing a series of task orders to partners, but CUAHSI is excited to be supporting this important venture.
Take care, Jerad
Voices From The Community
LAUREN GRIMLEY
PhD Candidate,
Department of Earth, Marine and Environmental Science (EMES), University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
I first got involved with CUAHSI when I attended the National Water Center Summer Innovators Program in Tuscaloosa, AL the summer of 2017 as a Research Fellow. For me, the experience reminds me of going to summer camp – you make new friends, try new things, and take time to reset in hot, humid weather. I enjoyed the program so much I returned the following summer to work with CUAHSI as a Course Coordinator (e.g., camp counselor). As an early-career researcher, I rely on the support of the scientific community for guidance. My community is largely comprised of the grad students, professors, and researchers I met those summers in Alabama. These connections landed me a job as a Research Hydrologist in Baton Rouge, Louisiana where I used hydrodynamic models to simulate compound flooding (e.g., rivers, storm surge, and rainfall) from tropical cyclones.
Now I am a student again, pursuing my PhD at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill where my research is focused on taking my knowledge and experience in quantifying compound flood hazards to better characterize flood risk in eastern North Carolina. Broadly, my research is aimed at investigating the interactions between anthropogenic activities, hydroclimatic shifts, and the natural environment. There is a need for hydrologists to work closely with social scientists to better integrate robust models of the flood hazard with detailed models of the human dimension of flooding. I was awarded the CUAHSI Pathfinder Fellowship this year which will support my dissertation research by enabling me to visit the Technical University of Delft in the Netherlands to work with and learn from a community of social scientists in the Department or Multi-Actor Systems who are studying natural hazards and climate change adaptation.
I remain connected to CUAHSI and plugged into the hydrology community by attending webinars, workshops, and interacting at conferences. I am a member of the AGU Hydrology Section Student Subcommittee (H3S) and I am actively engaged with CUAHSI to plan professional development events for early-career hydrologists. Despite the varying geographies of my education and career path, CUAHSI has always supported my goals and aspirations to be a strong and well-rounded researcher.
General Announcements
NEW STAFF
CUAHSI is pleased to welcome Mia Ferguson as our new DevOps Engineer. Mia has a passion for people, organizations, and technical stacks being in their "flow state". Before CUAHSI, Mia focused on supporting reliable and secure web services focused on healthcare and vehicle safety. Mia studied mechanical engineering and anthropology at Swarthmore College. When Mia is not thinking about designing scalable systems, they're most likely constructing, hanging out with cats, surfing, dancing, or drawing.
Fun fact: Mia has fostered over 20 dogs and cofounded a nonprofit called End Rape On Campus (EROC)!
THE NEW CUAHSI WEBSITE IS LIVE!
We are pleased to announce that our new website is now live. The new and enhanced CUAHSI website better promotes the CUAHSI brand and makes it easier to learn about our programs and services.
You will notice a few of the design improvements we've made:
- Users can more easily navigate and learn more about CUAHSI’s full suite of services.
- Improved accessibility features and accessibility compliance.
- Increased visibility for our Data Services and Software Products.
We would like to acknowledge our partners, Greensky Consulting and Clearpeak, for their vision, creativity, engineering expertise and hours of work in bringing this website to fruition.
We hope you love our new virtual home as much as we do! Happy clicking everyone!
NEW CUAHSI CODE OF CONDUCT
We are pleased to announce that the CUAHSI Board of Directors has approved a CUAHSI Code of Conduct. This Code of Conduct details professional, ethical, and inclusive conduct expectations and applies to all “CUAHSI-associated activities” and those who participate in or are otherwise involved. Approval and subsequent implementation of the code is a vital step in our commitment to an open and welcoming environment for all.
We currently are establishing secure reporting channels for conduct concerns, and building implementation processes for all our educational programming. The Code of Conduct can be found here.
CUAHSI SELECTED FOR ACCESS+ INITIATIVE
CUAHSI applied for and was selected to participate in the second cohort of the Amplifying the Alliance to Catalyze Change for Equity in STEM Success (ACCESS+) initiative. Funded by an NSF ADVANCE Partnership, ACCESS+ seeks to create STEM spaces where a diversity of women and gender minorities thrive because of cultures that value inclusive excellence. By leveraging the expertise and networks of the ACCESS+ collective, the ACCESS+ team aims to bring about systemic, nationwide transformation in support of more inclusive STEM academic professional cultures. For more information, please see https://accessplusstem.com/.
As a participant, CUAHSI will undertake a DEI professional society self-assessment. Then, with guidance from ACCESS+, we will explore areas of strength and opportunities and prepare an action plan to guide our DEI work.
INFORMATICS BLOG
The Internet of Things (IoT) and big data infrastructure are the emerging network and information technologies that can comprehend automatic monitoring and facilitate data engineering and problem-solving particularly for flood informatics research. By using these techniques, a national-scale Flood Analytics Information System (FAIS) is developed to advance and drive the next generation of flood informatics research and innovation. The application is smartly designed to integrate crowd intelligence, data analytics systems, machine learning, and natural language processing of tweets to improve flood situational awareness. FAIS proved to be proficient and user-friendly for flood data gathering and assessment as it was tested during a 2-day Hurricane Dorian flooding event (2019) across the Carolinas where > 15,000 geotagged tweets were collected to identify 38 dynamic and at-risk areas to flooding in real-time. To learn more, read the full report here.
LET'S TALK ABOUT WATER GRANT AWARDEES
Thank you to all that submitted proposals for the Let's Talk About Water Grant call. We had a great pool of applicants! Here are this year’s LTAW awardees:
- Sarah Fisher, Director, Lewis and Clark Community College
- Samuel Smidt, Assistant Professor, University of Florida
- Social Responsibility in Water Science for the Greater Global Good
- Danelle Haake, Director, Lewis and Clark Community College
- Biodiversity of Freshwater Mussels: Community Science in Action
- Janine Baijnath-Rodino, Postdoctoral Researcher, University of California, Irvine
- The Manifestation of Water in Natural Disasters
- Tina Korani, Assistant Professor, San Jose State University
- Following water in the San Joaquin River Delta
For Instructors and Students
NEW WORKSHOP ANNOUNCEMENT!
Surface Water Field School
University of Oregon, August 2022
Applications are open now! Apply Here
Interested in learning advanced surface water measurement techniques? Adding a field component or satellite observations to your research?
Join water researchers in the field to learn the latest techniques for measuring rivers, lakes and wetlands, and how to relate field surface water measurements to satellite observations!
This workshop will educate up-and-coming hydrologists on best practices in surface water field measurement and is especially geared towards those interested in comparing field measurements to satellite observations and towards underrepresented groups within the hydrological sciences. The workshop will also provide a brief introduction to field safety and field planning, and no prior field hydrology experience is necessary to participate.
Instructors:
Dr. J. Toby Minear, University of Colorado, Boulder
Dr. Taylor Rowley, University of Massachusetts, Amherst
Dr. Mark Fonstad, University of Oregon
Dr. Sarah Cooley, University of Oregon
Watch the CUAHSI Training website for more information coming soon, and reach out to jmasterman@cuahsi.org with any questions!
UPCOMING WEBINAR SERIES
Hydrologic Science and Indigenous Voices
In this series, Indigenous leaders in water leaders/voices of water/science explore how hydrological sciences are defined and who is included in that definition. The series considers how Native American people relate to water, what water issues they think are important, how we can increase inclusivity in the hydrologic sciences community, and what challenges and opportunities they face with building resilience to climate change. Visit the website for updates to this series.
Hosted by:
Maribeth Kniffin, MS, PhD
Founder, Riverbytes, LLC
Research Affiliate, Department of Philosophy, University of California, Davis
Register Here
Series Dates and Time:
Starting May 18, 2022 through June 22, 2022
Wednesday's from 12-1pm ET (11am-12pm CT).
RECORDING AVAILABLE ON OUR YOUTUBE CHANNEL
You can find the recording of the Introduction to the NSF's Hydrologic Sciences Program - Virtual Town Hall, that took place on March 30, 2022 on our YouTube channel, here.
HydroShare
HYDROSHARE DATA SPOTLIGHT
Resources stored in HydroShare retain their value to the community through time. For example, data from continuous monitoring sites in New Hampshire, first uploaded in 2018, were viewed almost 30 times just in the last month, with almost 460 views since the data were published in HydroShare. The resource includes 15-minute data for five parameters at 9 sites in NH, with extensive metadata for each site. Data were most recently updated in late 2020, and used in this publication. The data set has been downloaded 39 times, demonstrating that HydroShare enables data reuse.
Upcoming Events & Deadlines
- Instrumentation Discovery Travel Grant - Deadline to apply, April 15, 2022
- Hands On Hydrogeodesy Workshop - Deadline to apply, April 27, 2022
- HydroML Symposium - May 18 - 20, 2022, registration is open
- Cyberseminar Series - Hydrologic Science and Indigenous Voices, May 18-June 22, 2022
- Surface Water Field School - Deadline to apply, May 19, 2022
- MODFLOW and More Conference - June 5-8, 2022
- Frontiers in Hydrology Meeting - June 19 - 24, 2022, registration is open
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