WaterWired

Emily Green's The Week That Was, 19-25 September 2010 - And More!

I'm late getting this out - it's almost next week! 

Emily Green has another excellent weekly summary of news items only WaterWonks could appreciate!

First a note: 75 years ago on this date, Hoover Dam was dedicated. President Franklin D. Roosevelt was there along with 18,000 other people. Las Vegas had 9,000 residents. Hard to believe.

What does the future bode for Hoover Dam, Lake Mead, and the Las Vegas area? Water czarina Pat Mulroy is worried. And water use in the Southwest heads for a day of reckoning.

 Happy birthday, Hoover! Will you have many more?

And yesterday was Jerry Lee Lewis' 75th birthday!

Emily's post runs the gamut: dust impacting the hydrology of the Colorado River basin (see photo of dust-covered snow); China speaks of implementing its grrat South-to-North water transfer to help keep Beijing from desiccating.

Maybe the Chinese should call on the LaRouche folks for help.

There is Everglades restoration. Water rights in New Zealand. Georgia eyeing the Tennessee River. The Met in LA. Water rates in San Diego. Exempt wells in Washington. Drought in Spain. Agroexporters and dropping water levels in Bolivia. Dam removal in California. And much, much more!

It was quite a week, well-chronicled by Ms. Green.

And some quotes, as usual.

Have a great New Year's Eve - tomorrow is a new water year!

"… the 'first-in first-served' system of allocating water rights has not worked in areas of high demand and must be overhauled." — Reference to a New Zealand study by the Land and Water Forum of proposed water management overhauls, Tougher controls on water likely, Dominion Post, September 23, 2010

"There wouldn't be a Las Vegas. Las Vegas wouldn't exist." -- Pat Mulroy, general manager of the Southern Nevada Water Authority, referring to Hoover Dam

Classifying Aquifers Using Geographical Information Systems

Ken Lanfear, Editor of the Journal of AWRA (JAWRA) recently posted on the JAWRA blog about a JAWRA paper by Scott M. Payne and William W. (Bill) Woessner, "An Aquifer Classification System and Geographical Information System-Based Analysis Tool for Watershed Managers in the Western U.S." (you will need to pay or have a subscription to download the paper).

Bill's a friend and colleague and one best of the best hydrogeologists I know. He's now chair of the Department of Geosciences at the University of Montana.

Here is the abstract:

 Aquifers and groundwater systems can be classified using a variety of independent methods to  characterize geologic and hydraulic properties, the degree of connection with surface water, and geochemical conditions. In light of a growing global demand for water, an approach for classifying groundwater systems at the watershed scale is needed. A comprehensive classification system is proposed that combines recognized methods and new approaches. The purpose of classification is to provide groundwater professionals, policy makers, and watershed managers with a widely applicable and repeatable system that reduces sometimes cumbersome complex databases and analyzes to straightforward terminology and graphical representations. The proposed classification system uses basin geology, aquifer productivity, water quality, and the degree of groundwater/surface water connection as classification criteria. The approach is based on literature values, reference databases, and fundamental hydrologic and hydrogeologic principles. The proposed classification system treats dataset completeness as a variable and includes a tiered assessment protocol that depends on the quality and quantity of data. In addition, it assembles and catalogs groundwater information using a consistent set of nomenclature. It is designed to analyze and display results using Geographical Information System mapping tools.

 Here is what Ken said about the paper (emboldening is mine):

I wish I had a dollar for every classification system ever proposed [Amen!]. This one, however, got my attention because it seems widely applicable, repeatable, and reduces sometimes cumbersome complex databases and analyzes to straightforward terminology and graphical representations. Moreover, it’s based on a watershed scale.

The proposed classification system uses basin geology, aquifer productivity, water quality, and the degree of groundwater/surface water connection as classification criteria. The approach is based on literature values, reference databases, and fundamental hydrologic and hydrogeologic principles. The proposed classification system treats dataset completeness as a variable and includes a tiered assessment protocol that depends on the quality and quantity of data. The hierarchical approach is designed to improve communication between groundwater professionals and natural resource managers, similar to the classification system for natural rivers developed by Rosgen.

Classification systems always seem to involve different opinions over how things should be lumped, split [Ah! The lumpers vs. the splitters!], summarized, inspected, detected, neglected, and selected, and this one is no exception. The paper went through three full rounds of reviews before reaching tentative acceptance. Many thanks go to the reviewers who offered so many helpful comments.

The last paragraph is enlightening but not surprising, given the ubject matter. Three rounds of reviews!

And I liked it, too.

"...splitters see very small, highly differentiated units – their critics say that if they can tell two animals apart, they place them in different genera … and if they cannot tell them apart, they place them in different species. … Lumpers, on the other hand, see only large units – their critics say that if a carnivore is neither a dog nor a bear, they call it a cat." - -George Gaylord Simpson, originator of the term 'lumpers and splitters'

Empowerment and Gender Equality for Water and Sanitation in Rural India

Abby Brown, who runs the excellent Water for the Ages blog, presented her Master of Science in  Water Resources Policy and Management project last week and successfully defended her work, Empowerment and Gender Equality for Water and Sanitation in Rural India. She interned with the NGO Arghyam, based in Bangalore.

Here is a PDF of her Power Point: Download OSU_PPT_Abby_Brown

Here is the Water in India section of her blog.

I will put her paper up as soon as it is finalized. She did an amazing job.

Now that she's finished, she will once again start posting to her blog, something we've all been anticipating.

"The water in a vessel is sparkling; the water in the sea is dark. The small truth has words which are clear; the great truth has great silence. " -- Rabindranath Tagore

World Rivers Day and World's Biggest Rivers Graphic

Yesterday was World Rivers Day and this graphic came from thebigwild.org.

Here is a download: View this photo

Information for this graphic was taken from this list.

The size of the Amazon River really comes through; it accounts for about 20% of all river discharge to the oceans.

 

     “Like dreams, small creeks grow into mighty rivers." -- Unknown 

UFOH2O - Bottled Water That's Out of This World!

Although the concept of bottled water is somewhat alien to me (although on a recent trip to the Dominican Republic I drank bottled water in most instances) it is apparently considered essential by LGM and LGW (Little Green Men and Little Green Women) on their long, stressful FTL (faster than light) journeys between Earth and the nether reaches of the galaxy.

Gayle Leonard found the brand they prefer, UFOH2O:

Now you can buy it here on Earth on eBay.

Interesting choice of the background color. Doesn't look too appetizing, does it? Perhaps it appeals to aliens.

For a story on how UFOs have messed with our nuclear missiles, go here.

"Of course the flying saucers are real, and they are interplanetary." ---Air Chief Marshall Lord Dowding (head of Royal Air Force during World War II), quoted by Reuters, August, 1954