WaterWired

The American Water Resources Association (AWRA) Announces New Executive Vice President Dresden Farrand

 

MIDDLEBURG, VA, December 18, 2018

 

The Board of Directors of the American Water Resources Association (AWRA) is pleased to announce that Dresden Farrand will join the association as its executive vice president effective January 2, 2019.

 

"I am honored to be selected to serve as the executive vice president of the American Water Resources Association,” commented Farrand. “I am joining an organization that for decades has brought value to multidisciplinary water resources education, management, and research.”

 

"Dresden’s ability to capture a vision and see it through is one reason why she has been chosen to lead the American Water Resources Association into the future," noted AWRA President Brenda Bateman. "As a well-credentialed expert in association management, she will partner with the board, staff and members to help AWRA continue to thrive. We are delighted to have her on board."

 

Prior to joining the AWRA team, Farrand was the vice president of membership and chapter development for the Independent Electrical Contractors Association (IEC), a national trade association, where she created strong new sources of revenue and organizational growth. Her other association successes include building programs and services, increasing membership and fostering high performing teams that put members at the center of their work. She is a certified association executive (CAE), and holds a masters degree in public administration from University of Missouri-Columbia and a masters degree in public policy from St. Louis University.

 

“With the addition of Dresden, we are confident that the organization will continue to grow and provide meaningful services to our members and stakeholders,” noted AWRA President-Elect Lisa Beutler. “We welcome Dresden and look forward to her professional stewardship."

 

Farrand succeeds Ken Reid who will retire on January 4, 2019 after serving as Executive Vice President of AWRA for 37 years.

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Note: the aforementioned is a press release written by Christine McCrehin, AWRA's Director of Membership and Marketing.  

Disclosure notice: I am the AWRA Technical Director.

“Management is doing things right. Leadership is doing the right things.” – Peter Drucker

Two Evenings with Neil deGrasse Tyson

Mary Frances and I treated ourselves to two nights - about 4.5 hours on 28 and 29 November - listening to
lectures by famed astrophysicist Dr. Neil deGrasse Tyson. It was a remarkable experience. As if you did not know Tyson is an excellent lecturer with a well-developed sense of humor and a style that puts you at ease. He is an accomplished storyteller. And did I say smart? 

This won't be a review - just my few stream-of-consciousness (really?) thoughts on the event.

The Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall in dpwntown Portland was the venue. It holds about 2800 people. It was close to full on Wednesday and looked to be just about full on Thursday. Both crowds were enthusiastic.

Yes, he did start each talk with a playful dig at those who feel Pluto should be a planet (after an introduction via 'Fly Me to the Moon'). 

He spoke on a different topic each night: 1) Adventures in Science Literacy (28 November); and 2) The Cosmic Perspective (29 November). Brief descriptions are on the event website:

“Adventures in Science Literacy”
The joys of knowing how the universe works and the disasters that can unfold when you do not. In this illustrated talk, examples of each will be drawn from across time and cultures, culminating in a commentary on the state of science in America today.

“The Cosmic Perspective”
There is no view of the world as emotionally potent as the one granted by a cosmic perspective. It’s one that sees Earth as a planet in a vast empty universe. It profoundly influences what we think and feel about science, culture, politics, and life itself.

 He promoted a few books (this is one of his PowerPoints):

We bought signed cooies of Astrophysics for People in a Hurry and his most recent (written with Avis Lang),  Accessory to War: The Unspoken Alliance Between Astrophysics and the Military. I don't fault him for doing a little sales pitch; he did not spend a lot of time on his books.

He gave a few fascinating examples on each topic. He spoke of his encounters with the US justice system - three calls for jury duty, but released each time during voir dire. In one case involving a person alleged to have sold 3000 milligrams of cocaine to an undercover police officer he questioned why '3000 milligrams' was used instead of '3 grams' (about a tenth of an ounce). Thisfirst case resonated with me since I use similar examples in the water resources field.

He said he felt it could prejudice the jury, since '3000' would sound like a lot to many people. He was excused. In another his excuse came about because he said that eyewitness accounts are not as reliable as most people believe. He used his debunking of many 'flying saucer' cases as examples. Excused again!

He made an interesting correlation between the iconic 1968 Earthrise photo by Apollo 8 and the rise of the environmental movement and laws that arose in the late 1960s and early 1970s. 

All in all, money and time very well spent. We enjoyed it and it appeared that our fellow attendees did as well.

Fans will be glad to hear that the TV series Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey will premier in March 2019... 

One minor complaint: he spent a lot of time running from center stage to the podium at stage left to change slides. Duhhhh.....

I would be remiss if I did not mention the sexual impropriety allegations against him by three women. Here is the Guardian article and Tyson's Facebook post on the issue.

"Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity." - Martin Luther King, Jr., 1963 (tnx Neil deGrasse Tyson)

Kathleen Rugel: Getting to Water: Website, Blog, Book, and Lots More!

Dr. Kathleen Rugel, aquatic ecologist, WaterWonk extraordinaire, friend and Policy and Practice Fellow at the National Socio-Environmental Synthesis Center (SESYNC) is no stranger to these pages. About a year ago I linked to her piece about the ACF Basin ACF Basin: Crossing Lines: Reaching Across the Table to Share Water. 

She has just created a website. Getting to Water: How Neighbor and Nation Share Our Most Precious Resource. She is also writing  a book of the same name.

Here is her introduction:

Getting To Water is a collection of case studies about how water is being shared and protected around the world. These are local to international examples of prudent management of water which is shared, often between stakeholders with very different agendas. The culmination of this project is a book entitled: Getting to Water: How Neighbor and Nation Share Our Most Precious Resource. I hope you will visit this site often as I travel regionally and internationally to collect these inspiring stories which can be used to guide anyone charged with or interested in helping to manage their water resources.

In her email to me she wrote:

 I just returned from Romania and Vienna where I was interviewing people working on the Danube River. I included a blog on the website with brief first impressions along with several other blogs,

Here is a link to her blog. Check out her piece on the ACF Basin.

Kathleen will be at the upcoming AWRA meeting in Baltimore. It'll be great to see her.

Excellent - enjoy!

"Re-examine all you have been told...and dismiss whatever insults your soul: and your very flesh shall be a great poem..." -- Walt Whitman (from the preface to Leaves of Grass - thanks to K. Rugel)

Stephen J. Burges Perspective 2: 'Why I am an Optimist'

Back with Steve Burges. Yesterday's paper was oriented to a journal whereas today's 2011 paper focuses on hydrology and water resources.   

Burges, S. J. (2011), Invited perspective: Why I am an optimist, Water Resour. Res., 47, W00H11, doi:10.1029/2010WR009984. [Free access]

Download Burges_Optimist-WRR_2011

Abstract

I address a range of topics that provide the sociopolitical‐technological setting for my professional life. I discuss some influential features of post–World War II world geopolitics, landmark technological developments of that era, and the resulting follow‐up technologies that have made it possible to approach various problems in hydrology and water resources. I next address societal needs that have driven developments in hydrology and water resources engineering and follow with a discussion of the modern foundations of our science and what I think are the principal issues in hydrology. I pose three community challenges that when accomplished should advance hydrologic science: data network needs for improving the water budgets at all scales, characterizing subsurface water flow paths, and the information archiving and mining needs from instruments that will generate substantially richer data detail than have been used for most hydrologic work to the present. I then discuss several hydrologic and water resource risk‐based decision issues that matter to society to illustrate how such risks have been addressed successfully in the past. I conclude with a long‐term community “grand challenge,” the coupled modeling of the ocean‐atmosphere‐landform hydrologic cycle for the purpose of long–lead time hydrologic prediction.

Introduction

The work that we can do is influenced heavily by the social and political setting and the technical capabilities of the times. I was born in August 1944 in Newcastle, Australia, so I have chosen to address issues that place my living and work environment into perspective starting from the mid‐1940s. I start with some details of the world geopolitical setting and follow that with a discussion of landmark technological developments that have occurred during my lifetime and the resulting follow‐up technology that made it possible to approach various problems. I next list what I consider to be the major issues in hydrology and water resources engineering and follow with a short discussion of the foundations of much of our science. With this background I address issues associated with improving the catchment water budget and pose three community challenges: the need for improved measurement of hydrologic fluxes and states, how to characterize “hillslope” heterogeneity, and data storage and use from increasingly data rich instruments.

Hydrologists and engineers a century ago faced the same risk‐based decision problems (e.g., floods and droughts) we face today, albeit usually with shorter records than are now available. One modern concern is how to account for apparent or possible “nonstationarity” in our data time series. I address this by considering two examples and also provide two inspiring examples for how societally important risk‐based (under considerable uncertainty) designs were made with only short records. I close with a community “grand challenge” to work toward hydrologic prediction at time scales on the order of a decade and longer.

I once had a colleague tell me that he told his students that there was little point in reading papers more than five years old. This paper and yesterday's should disabuse us of that ridiculous statement.

Enjoy!

"That men do not learn very much from the lessons of history is the most important of all the lessons that history has to teach." - Aldous Huxley (quoted in @TheVDT via @TheWeek)

Stephen J. Burges Perspective 1: 'Water Resources Research - Past, Present, and Future'

The title of this guest editorial refers to the journal Water Resources Research, arguably the most prestigious multidisciplinary water resources journal in the world. It's from July 1990 and written by Stephen J. 'Steve' Burges, one of the great hydrologists of our time. I've gotten to know Steve much better these last few years and he sent me this as a result of an online request I made of him.

Still relevant almost 30 years later.

Download Burges_WRR_Guest_Editorial_July_1990

Abstract

Water Resources Research was established as a multidisciplinary journal largely to satisfy needs perceived by a committee headed by the late Walter Langbein in 1962. The papers in volume 1, number 1, set the tone and high standard of scholarship for all subsequent issues; we are all in debt to the founding co‐editors, Allen Kneese and Walter Langbein, for their leadership and vision. Most research workers consider this journal to be a highly desirable forum to share their ideas and findings with colleagues. What has served the community well for twenty‐five years may or may not be the most appropriate medium as we enter the era of multimedia and multisensorial display of the information from which we distill our knowledge.

I'll post another perspective from Steve tomorrow. Chew on this one till then.

Enjoy!

"Yesterday's the past, tomorrow's the future, but today is a gift. That's why it's called the present." - Bill Keane