Hydrology Commons^™

Uwrl Featured In Awra Impact Magazine, Utah Water Research Laboratory

News

The UWRL was featured in the September 2019 issue of the of the American Water Research Association (AWRA) Water Resources IMPACT Magazin. This issue includes a series of articles about western water issues collaboration, with a particular emphasis on Utah's water issues. The AWRA 2019 Water Resources Annual Conference will be held in Salt Lake City, Utah, on November 2-6, 2019, and the UWRL is one of the tour destinations for the conference.

Blake Tullis Appointed New Interim Associate Vice President For Research, Utah Water Research Laboratory

News

UWRL faculty member and Associate Director Blake Tullis was recently appointed to the position of Interim Associate Vice President within the Office of Research.

Mac Mckee Retires As The Uwrl's Longest Serving Director, Utah Water Research Laboratory

News

After just over 16 years at the helm of the Utah Water Research Laboratory at Utah State University, Dr. Mac McKee will retire effective June 30, 2019. His tenure as Director of the UWRL began in April 2003, and since that time, he has worn the hats of administrator, professor, and researcher.

Usu Sponsors Recent Ucowr Conference At Snowbird, Ut, Utah Water Research Laboratory

News

USU recently sponsored the UCOWR/NIWR Annual Water Resources Conference at Snowbird, Utah, June 11-13, 2019. UWRL faculty member and UCOWR lead delegate David Stevens served as Conference Chair, and the conference planning committee consisted of delegates David Stevens, Chair (UWRL); Jeffery Horsburgh (UWRL), Bethany Neilson (UWRL); and David Rosenberg (UWRL); and Mac McKee (Retired). Additional USU delegates include Belize Lane (UWRL), Joanna Endter-Wada (Biology/NR), Laurie McNeill (UWRL), and Joe Wheaton (Watershed Sci). USU students and faculty also participated with presentations and posters over the course of the four-day conference.

Uwrl Outstanding Faculty Spotlight Dr. Alfonso Torres‑Rua, Utah Water Research Laboratory

News

Each month the Utah Water Research Laboratory (UWRL) takes a moment to highlight a student, alumni, or staff member that has gone above and beyond in their research field and achievements. This month we highlight Alfonso Torres-Rua, an Assistant Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Utah State University. Alfonso also works as the Chief Scientist at AggieAir, a service center housed within the UWRL.

Graduate Student Mahyar Aboutalebi Receives Spie Award, Utah Water Research Laboratory

News

Graduate student Mahyar Aboutalebi recently received the Best Paper Award at the SPIE 'Autonomous Air and Ground Sensing Systems for Agricultural Optimization and Phenotyping IV' Conference in Baltimore, MD, April 2019. This is the second year in a row that Mahyar has received an award for an SPIE paper, since his entry last year was awarded runner up for Best Paper.

Usu Student Group Wins 3rd Place In National Stormwater Challenge, Utah Water Research Laboratory

News

The United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced that a group of students from USU have won 3rd place in their annual Campus RainWorks Challenge. The group competed against 39 other teams from across the nation with their submission in the Demonstration Project category.

Eva Nieminski Uwrl Outstanding Alumni Spotlight, Utah Water Research Laboratory

News

Each month the UWRL takes a moment to highlight a UWRL student, alumni, or staff, that has gone above and beyond in their research field and achievements. This month we are highlighting Eva Nieminski, a UWRL alumni known for her water quality research and extended service to the state of Utah.

Dr. Jeff Horsburgh Announces Water Visualization Competition Winners, Utah Water Research Laboratory

News

Utah Water Research Lab Faculty Dr. Jeff Horsburgh, an Associate Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Utah State University, recently issued a challenge to USU students called the Cyberinfrastructure for Intelligent Water Supply (CIWS) Data Visualization Challenge. Beginning in December of 2018, and ending March 1^st 2019, the goal was to have students develop a visualization of high resolution water use data. These visualizations were focused on creating displays that would be helpful for either water users or water providers.

Hemp Research Underway At Utah State University, Utah Water Research Laboratory

News

Scientists at Utah State University are studying cultivation practices to optimize the yield and quality of hemp for botanical medicines.

Mahyar Aboutalebi Uwrl Outstanding Student Spotlight, Utah Water Research Laboratory

News

Each month, the UWRL takes the opportunity to recognize a student, alumni, or staff member who displays extraordinary passion dedication and leadership.

Aggieair Partners With Udwr, Forest Service, And Gtac To Aid In Recovery Of Fishlake Streams, Aggieair

News

AggieAir recently partnered with the Utah Division of Wildlife Resources, Forest Service Fishlake National Forest, and Geospatial Technology and Applications Center (GTAC) to aid in the assessment and recovery of three streams within the Fishlake National Forest. These three streams, Seven Mile Creek, Lake Creek, and lower Fish Creek, have known water quality and fishery issues from past grazing, forest fires, and water management.

Usu Drones To Pave Way For More Drone Services In The Future, Mike Anderson

News

Having drones deliver your Amazon packages, or even take you to work, may seem like science fiction — but they could be just a couple of many services of the future.

Uwrl Faculty Member Randy Martin Gives First Usu Research Landscapes Lecture, Utah Water Research Laboratory

News

On February 26th, Dr. Randy Martin, a Utah Water Research Laboratory faculty member and Associate Research Professor in the USU Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, gave Utah State University’s first Research Landscapes lecture in Salt Lake City.

Karl Christensen Awarded Awwa Intermountain Section Scholarship, Utah Water Research Laboratory

News

USU/UWRL graduate student Karl Christensen was recently awarded this year’s Graduate Science and Engineering Scholarship from the American Water Works Association (AWWA) Intermountain Section. The scholarship was created “to encourage science education and training related to the field of conservation, water quality, supply, resources, reuse or treatment.”

Ayman Nassar Receives Awwa Intermountain Section Scholarship, Utah Water Research Laboratory

News

The American Water Works Association (AWWA) Intermountain Section has selected USU/UWRL graduate student Ayman Nassar to receive this year’s Eva Nieminski Honorary Graduate Science Engineering Scholarship. The scholarship was created “to encourage science education and training related to the field of conservation, water quality, supply, resources, reuse or treatment."

Introductory R For Water Resources - Fall 2019 - University Of North Carolina At Chapel Hill, David Gorelick, Gregory Characklis

All ECSTATIC Materials

This is all course material for R for Researchers, a one-credit course taught at UNC Chapel Hill in Fall 2019 to introduce upperclassmen and graduate students to the R programming language and apply learned skills in basic water resources applications, as well as other (semi-related) topics of interest to students.

Lecture notes were distributed before (as a subset of full lecture notes) and after lectures, and lectures involved collaborative coding exercises with students in class without any powerpoint material. Course material here includes:

Syllabus: rough schedule and description of lectures

Lectures: pdf lecture notes with embedded code, including …

Assessment Of The Effects Of Climate Change On Evapotranspiration With An Improved Elasticity Method In A Nonhumid Area, Lei Tian, Jiming Jin, Pute Wu, Guo-Yue Niu

Watershed Sciences Faculty Publications

Climatic elasticity is a crucial metric to assess the hydrological influence of climate change. Based on the Budyko equation, this study performed an analytical derivation of the climatic elasticity of evapotranspiration (ET). With this derived elasticity, it is possible to quantitatively separate the impacts of precipitation, air temperature, net radiation, relative humidity, and wind speed on ET in a watershed. This method was applied in the Wuding River Watershed (WRW), located in the center of the Yellow River Watershed of China. The estimated rate of change in ET caused by climatic variables is −10.69 mm/decade, which is close to the …

Ncer Assistance Agreement Annual Progress Report For Grant #83582401 - Assessment Of Stormwater Harvesting Via Manage Aquifer Recharge (Mar) To Develop New Water Supplies In The Arid West: The Salt Lake Valley Example, Ryan Dupont, Joan E. Mclean, Richard C. Peralta, Sarah E. Null, Douglas B. Jackson-Smith

Civil and Environmental Engineering Faculty Publications

The goals of the original proposed project remain the same, that is, to test the hypothesis that Managed Aquifer Recharge (MAR) for stormwater harvesting is a technically feasible, socially and environmentally acceptable, economically viable, and legally feasible option for developing new water supplies for arid Western urban ecosystems experiencing increasing population, and climate change pressures on existing water resources. The project is being carried out via three distinct but integrated components that include: 1) Monitoring of existing distributed MAR harvesting schemes involving a growing number of demonstration Green Infrastructure (GI) test sites; 2) Integrated stormwater/vadose zone/groundwater/ ecosystem services modeling; and …

Can The Desiccation Of Great Salt Lake Be Stopped?, Wayne A. Wurtsbaugh, Craig Miller, Sarah E. Null, R. Justin Derose, Peter Wilcock

Watershed Sciences Faculty Publications

Great Salt Lake is a terminal lake, with its watershed in the Wasatch and Uinta Mountains of Utah, Wyoming and Idaho. Like all terminal lakes, the water inflows are balanced only by evaporative loss from its surface—when inflows decrease the lake shrinks until evaporation matches that inflow.

Sediment Dynamics In The Bear River-Mud Lake-Bear Lake System, Patrick Belmont, Mitchell Donovan, Janice Brahney, Lindsay Capito, Zach Burgert

Watershed Sciences Faculty Publications

The overarching goal of this project was to compile and analyze a variety of existing datasets, and generate several new datasets, to advance our understanding of how the Bear River Mud Lake-Bear Lake system functions, how it has, or is expected to change, identify which components are degraded or vulnerable to degradation, and determine if/where critical data and/or knowledge gaps exist. We conducted a series of analyses to evaluate changes in hydrology and suspended sediment, collected sediment cores from nine locations in Mud Lake to evaluate how sedimentation rates, sediment sources and water quality have changed over time, and utilized …

Uwrl Opens Funded Research Opportunities, Utah Water Research Laboratory

News

The Utah Water Research Laboratory (UWRL) is looking for enthusiastic and self-motivated applicants for a variety of funded water resources research opportunities. As a multidisciplinary laboratory in the College of Engineering, the UWRL attracts applicants from a variety of STEM backgrounds and is engaged in a wide range of challenging national and international research efforts. Current research opportunities are in the following areas:

Water Lab Hosts 2018 Homecoming, Utah Water Research Laboratory

News

The Utah Water Research Lab celebrated an Alumni Homecoming on October 13^th, 2018. Over 200 alumni and current water lab affiliates joined in this celebration, including emeritus faculty and staff, current faculty and students, and their families.

Identifying Usu Energy Loss, Utah Water Research Laboratory

News

AggieAir_TM, a Service Center of the UWRL specializing in the development and use of small unmanned aerial systems for collecting scientific imagery and data, recently worked with USU Facilities to help them identify energy waste on campus.

Uwrl Welcomes Two New Faculty, Utah Water Research Laboratory

News

The Utah Water Research Lab is excited to welcome two new faculty members, Assistant Professor Brian Crookston and Assistant Research Professor Zac Sharp. These two new faculty members bring in a great wealth of professional experience and knowledge to the UWRL and it's staff and students.

Reducing High Flows And Sediment Loading Through Increased Water Storage In An Agricultural Watershed Of The Upper Midwest, Usa, Nate Mitchell, Karthik Kumarasamy, Se Jong Cho, Patrick Belmont, Brent Dalzell, Karen Gran

Watershed Sciences Faculty Publications

Climate change, land clearing, and artificial drainage have increased the Minnesota River Basin’s (MRB) stream flows, enhancing erosion of channel banks and bluffs. Accelerated erosion has increased sediment loads and sedimentation rates downstream. High flows could be reduced through increased water storage (e.g., wetlands or detention basins), but quantifying the effectiveness of such a strategy remains a challenge. We used the Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT) to simulate changes in river discharge from various water retention site (WRS) implementation scenarios in the Le Sueur watershed, a tributary basin to the MRB. We also show how high flow attenuation can …

Aggieair Is Extending Its Wings, Utah Water Research Laboratory

News

This week marks another milestone for AggieAirTM, the UWRL remote sensing research unit that pioneered the development and use of small unmanned aerial systems (sUASs) for collecting and processing high-resolution, scientific grade imagery and other data. The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has granted the AggieAir program two of their largest Certificates of Waiver or Authorization (COAs) to date. The FAA grants COAs to public operators for specific UAS activity only after extensive and comprehensive operational and technical review. These new COAs allow AggieAir open access to a vastly larger area than ever before. One COA covers the entirety of Cache …

Graduate Student Mahyar Aboutalebi Receives Spie Award, Utah Water Research Laboratory

News

Graduate student Mahyar Aboutalebi recently received the Runner-up for Best Paper Award at the SPIE 'Autonomous Air and Ground Sensing Systems for Agricultural Optimization and Phenotyping III' Conference in Orlando, L, April 2018.

Graduate Student Mahyar Aboutalebi Receives Spie Award, Utah Water Research Laboratory

News

Graduate student Mahyar Aboutalebi recently received the Runner-up for Best Paper Award at the SPIE 'Autonomous Air and Ground Sensing Systems for Agricultural Optimization and Phenotyping III' Conference in Orlando, L, April 2018.

June 2018 Water Blog Newsletter Now Available, Utah Water Research Laboratory

News

There's no doubt about it; good data is essential to good water management. In this issue of the Water bLog, we highlight research at the UWRL that focuses on meeting Utah's need for ongoing long-term data to inform future decisions about water resources management.