Category: Drinking water

GCC Undergraduate Research Grant recipient Dexter Howard leads first-author publication from the Carey Lab

Post author By jcoker
Post date March 2, 2021

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March 1, 2021

[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column width=”2/3″][vc_column_text]Dexter Howard, a former undergraduate researcher (B.S. ’20 in Water: Resources, Policy, and Management) and now PhD student with GCC affiliate Dr. Cayelan Carey, has first-authored a publication of his undergraduate thesis research. The paper, “Variability in fluorescent dissolved organic matter concentrations across diel to seasonal time scales is driven by water temperature and meteorology in a eutrophic reservoir”, published in the journal Aquatic Science February 2021. Read the article here.

Beginning in 2018, Dexter collected weekly samples of organic carbon (OC) in a Roanoke drinking water reservoir, thought to be the drivers of disinfection byproducts (DBPs) in the water column. In 2019, data collection expanded to the sub-hourly level more relevant to the decision-making timescale used by reservoir managers. The team’s analysis and findings of the magnitude and drivers of OC variability in the reservoir are now published in the journal Aquatic Sciences. Dexter’s undergraduate research experience included mentorship by IGC fellow Mary Lofton, GCC faculty in the Reservoir Science Group at VT, and with support from the GCC Undergraduate Research Grant program and the Virginia Water Resource Research Center at VT.

Kudos, Dexter & team![/vc_column_text][/vc_column][vc_column width=”1/3″][vc_single_image image=”54668″ img_size=”large” add_caption=”yes”][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_separator style=”shadow”][/vc_column][/vc_row]

Accolades Blog Drinking water Global Change News Newsletter Student Spotlight Undergraduate Experiential Learning

My Virtual Summer Internship with the EPA, by GCC Science Policy Fellow Kerry Desmond

Post author By jcoker
Post date August 28, 2020

[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]While Kerry’s participation in the Washington Semester Program with the School of Public and International Affairs was cancelled due to COVID-19, her summer internship with the US Environmental Protection Agency continued remotely. Kudos to Kerry for successfully completing her summer internship and for her resiliency and adjustment to the remote and virtual experience. We wish her the best in her senior year![/vc_column_text][vc_separator][vc_column_text]

August 27, 2020

by Kerry Desmond, winner of the Global Change Center’s 2020 Science Policy Fellowship

After completing the end of my junior year virtually, I was both eager and hesitant to begin a virtual internship with the Environmental Protection Agency. Although I am a civil engineering student with a focus in environmental and water resources engineering, I have always been interested in environmental and public health policy and was so excited to get involved in work that combined both fields. My specific placement within the EPA was in the Water Enforcement Division (WED) of the Office of Civil Enforcement (OCE). The priority of WED is to enforce the Clean Water Act and Safe Drinking Water Act, and the division is divided into two branches: Industrial and Municipal. Through the projects I worked on, I had the opportunity to work with engineers, scientists, and attorneys from both branches (along with EPA personnel in other HQ offices, regional EPA personnel, and consultants). Despite my initial hesitation, my experience working remotely proved to be just as exciting and stimulating as I had hoped it would be.

[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column width=”1/2″][vc_single_image image=”51198″ img_size=”full” add_caption=”yes” alignment=”center” style=”vc_box_border”][/vc_column][vc_column width=”1/2″][vc_column_text]The main project I worked on during the summer was helping improve the functionality of an Address Comparison Tool (ACT) for facilities with stormwater permits. Essentially, ACT takes a known permittee list from EPA’s Enforcement and Compliance History Online (ECHO) database and compares it to a list of facilities that should theoretically have a stormwater permit (typically provided by a state or an outside database). The goal is to find disparities among the two lists and discover facilities that don’t have permits so that they can be targeted and become candidates for federal enforcement. Since ACT compares two facilities at a time and determines a score for them, I was tasked with conducting analysis to determine a numerical threshold for the scoring system. This threshold would be used to differentiate duplicate addresses from unique addresses. This required a lot of deliberation with my mentor and an outside consultant, as well as a lot of analysis within ACT and Excel, but I thoroughly enjoyed the challenge of trying to figure out the complexities of ACT and its scoring system.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]Along with this project, I had the opportunity to conduct a research project with another intern for a National Compliance Initiative (NCI) under the Safe Drinking Water Act. Specifically, we were tasked with coming up with a recommendation as to whether there is a need for public water system-specific inspector training for risk communication and community involvement. This project was especially interesting because we had the chance to interview EPA personnel from all across the Agency and hear about current and past projects that necessitated this type of communication and involvement. I also had the chance to work on another NCI, which focused on National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) Significant Noncompliance (SNC) facility targeting. SNC encompasses the highest priority NPDES permit violations such as significantly exceeding pollutant effluent limits, or not submitting a discharge monitoring report for multiple quarters. The goals of the targeting plan were to determine the highest priority corporations with multiple facilities in various states and the highest priority individual facilities in any state. I conducted the analysis by looking at criteria within ECHO to evaluate these target facilities and characterize the type of violations and scope of enforcement actions already taken.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]

I had a bit of time to get adjusted to a remote environment, but I knew it would be different to work in a virtual office setting rather than a virtual class setting. I was especially weary because, as an intern or new hire, you’re often filled with questions and need assistance with the little nuances of a new company. I was really lucky to have two engineering mentors that were always willing to talk over the phone, video call, or even answer a quick IM or email that I would send. Along with the ease of contacting people, it was also easy to hop onto virtual meetings, which allowed me to quickly get a feel for the type of work WED does.

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Blog Drinking water Environmental Justice Faculty Spotlight Global Change Outreach Pollution Water

VT researcher working to provide clean water to Appalachia

Post author By jcoker
Post date June 22, 2020

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From CALS VT News | June 20, 2020

More than 2 million Americans live without access to safe drinking water or adequate sewer sanitation, according to a 2019 study by the U.S. Water Alliance. That includes around a quarter-million people in Puerto Rico and half a million homeless people in the United States. The biggest chunk, though — around 1.4 million people — are United States residents who live in homes that don’t have proper plumbing or tap water.

They are clustered in five areas: California’s Central Valley; predominantly Native American communities near the four corners of Utah, Colorado, Arizona, and New Mexico; the Texas-Mexico border; the Mississippi Delta region in Mississippi and Alabama; and central Appalachia. Virginia alone has around 20,000 homes without plumbing.

Leigh-Anne Krometis, an associate professor of biological systems engineering which is in both the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences and College of Engineering at Virginia Tech, is one of the foremost experts on water quality and availability in Appalachia. And while the basics of her work seem, well, basic — “I just spent a decade proving that not having sewers is a bad thing, which we’ve known for literally thousands of years,” she said — the implications are more complex.

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Often, the best minds in American civil and environmental engineering are looking abroad, at how to bring clean water to remote villages and slums in developing countries. The crisis over lead in the tap water in Flint, Michigan, was a reminder that all over the United States, people lack access to safe drinking water and adequate sanitation.

In the past three years, Krometis has authored a series of studies of water quality and availability in the Appalachian region. In 2017, she published “Tracking the Downstream Impacts of Inadequate Sanitation in Central Appalachia” in the “Journal of Water and Health.”

That article looked at what happens to streams when homes near them don’t have proper plumbing. Usually, that means a “straight pipe” that carries untreated sewage into an unlined hole in the ground, which drains either directly or indirectly into a stream. Krometis and her team found E. coli bacteria consistent with untreated human waste in those streams, in spots that were correlated with their proximity to homes without proper sewage systems. Sometimes the contamination carried as far as six miles downstream.

Krometis’ newest article on the subject, “Water Scavenging from Roadside Springs in Appalachia,” published in May 2019 in the “Journal of Contemporary Water Research and Education,” connects her earlier research on wastewater to the issue of drinking water. Some untold number of people in Appalachia drink untreated water from springs or streams — often the same streams that are close to straight sewage pipes. Krometis and her team tested the water at 21 springs used for drinking water, and more than 80 percent of them tested positive for E. coli.

Krometis also surveyed people who drink untreated spring water, and found that most of them do have running water in their homes, often from wells. They said they preferred the spring water because it tastes better than their tap water, or because they don’t trust the quality and reliability of the water in their homes.

Fixing these two interrelated problems, of wastewater and drinking water, isn’t easy. The homes that use straight pipes and roadsides springs tend to be far away from the nearest municipal sewer and water systems, and often separated by mountains and ravines. It could cost $50,000 or more to hook one of these homes up to a sewer system, even if there is one nearby, Krometis said. Septic tanks are usually unsuitable because the soil isn’t deep enough.

“These are legitimately challenging engineering problems, and they require a lot of money, and these places don’t have a lot of money,” she said. “We haven’t figured out ways to get water and sewer to extremely rural areas, and there are also huge issues with the homeless and the working poor in urban areas.”

There are cheaper and easier solutions, of the type used in developing countries. Public water kiosks for drinking water are one, and are already in use in some parts of Kentucky and West Virginia; small water or sewer treatment devices installed for each home or cluster of homes are another option. Krometis supports these tactics, though she sees the political and cultural obstacles to using them in the United States.

“The technologies that are best practices in Africa or Southeast Asia, we don’t use in the United States. They’re unacceptable because we’re a developed country,” she said. “But in my mind, if you have somebody who’s impoverished and doesn’t have access to clean water, that’s a problem that we need to address.”

People are hesitant to give residents of Appalachian mountain hollows or California’s dry and dusty farm town water and sewer systems that aren’t up to the standards of their fellow Americans in cities and suburbs. Krometis understands that hesitation, but she also understands that many of those poor Americans are going without any access to reliable, clean water.

“I see both sides of the coin,” she said. “The problem is, we’re not even having that debate.”

Written by Tony Biasotti

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Blog Climate Change Conservation Drinking water Educational Outreach Global Change Research Water

Virginia Water Center recognized as a national leader in water education and outreach

Post author By jcoker
Post date February 24, 2020

[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]From VT News | February 24, 2020

For the first time, the Virginia Water Resources Research Center, housed at Virginia Tech, received a status of “outstanding” from the U.S. Department of the Interior. Virginia’s Water Center was one of 12 such centers in the nation to receive this designation.

“The water center operates as something of a clearinghouse and a focal point for water education, outreach, and research at Virginia Tech,” explained Professor Stephen Schoenholtz, director of the Virginia Water Center and a faculty member in the Department of Forest Resources and Environmental Conservation. “We’re an independent, nonsiloed place to foster and promote research on water issues across a wide range of areas.”

The Virginia Water Resources Research Center traces its origins to the federal Water Resources Research Act of 1964, which sought to establish research centers on matters related to water supply, water quality protection, and water resource management in all 50 states as well as the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands, and Guam. Virginia Tech was selected to house the commonwealth’s center in 1965. The Virginia Water Resources Research Center was written into the Code of Virginia by the General Assembly in 1982 and is currently housed within Virginia Tech’s College of Natural Resources and Environment.

U.S. water centers and institutes that are part of the 1964 act receive funding in five-year cycles, and their output is evaluated by an independent panel of scientists from the U.S. Geological Survey. The most recent review, for the years 2011 through 2015, credited the program as having done an exemplary job of communicating water news and information to the broader public. The Virginia Water Resources Research Center was further praised for its focus on research aimed at solving state water issues.

“Engagement and outreach have been a big focus for our center over the last decade,” Schoenholtz said. “We aim to provide unbiased information for water resource management decisions that are being made at the state, regional, and national level.”

Among the center’s outreach efforts is a database of breaking water news stories, water-related legislation decisions and documents, and links to information about water-related subjects pertaining to the state. The center produces Virginia Water Radio, a weekly program focusing on a specific water issue or topic of interest in Virginia. The broadcasts are tied to the Virginia Standards of Learning and can be used in K-12 classrooms throughout the state.

The center provides seed grants for undergraduate and graduate students studying water resources and funds an internship program for undergraduate students at Virginia Tech. This spring, two interns traveled with Schoenholtz to Washington, D.C., to meet with federal policymakers to discuss water issues affecting Virginia. The center also led Virginia Tech in developing a unique undergraduate degree program in water: resources, policy, and management, which takes an interdisciplinary approach to water science, management, and policy.

Looking ahead, Schoenholtz would like to increase student training and expand grant opportunities for undergraduate and graduate students. Discussions are also underway about offering master’s and doctoral degrees in water science.

“Water issues range from very local, affecting individual households, to global scales that affect everyone, and those challenges are only going to increase in the face of climate change and growing population,” Schoenholtz noted. “With the Virginia Water Center, we have a wide range of possibilities to address these challenges while working to keep the public aware of the numerous resources available to them.”

Written by David Fleming

CONTACT:

Krista Timney
540-231-6157

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Blog Climate Change Conservation Disease Drinking water Evolution Faculty Spotlight Food & Agriculture Global Change Research

The GCC welcomes seven new faculty affiliates

Post author By jcoker
Post date January 27, 2020

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Meet our newest faculty affiliates:

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Dr. Cully Hession

Professor, Department of Biological Systems Engineering

Research focus: His lab focuses stream channel structure and sediment dynamics, influence of human activities on streams, techniques for measuring and improving in-stream habitat, and development of technologies and strategies for successful stream restoration. Current research focuses on using drones and drone-based lidar to map riverscapes and tracer studies to better understand sediment transport and fate. Dr. Hession is also PI/co-Director of an interdisciplinary research and extension training program called “Training Future Leaders to Solve Resource Challenges at the Confluence of Water and Society.”[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_separator style=”shadow”][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column width=”1/2″][vc_single_image image=”47579″ img_size=”275×355″ style=”vc_box_border”][/vc_column][vc_column width=”1/2″][vc_column_text]

Dr. Florian Zach

Assistant Professor, Deparment of Hospitality & Tourism Management

Research interests: Dr. Zach is interested in strategic issues that support the sustainable development of tourism destinations. He has investigated the inter-organizational collaboration and networks to understand how destination stakeholders collectively develop tourism innovations. Additionally, he works with colleagues to understand human-computer interaction issues stemming from the use of cutting-edge technologies in the context of tourism. Current projects include exploring the effects of summer adventure parks built by ski resorts in the Austrian Alps as a response to shorter winter and longer summer seasons and also the impacts of the 2018 Florida Red Tide on hotel & short-term rentals (Airbnb & similar).[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_separator style=”shadow”][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column width=”1/2″][vc_single_image image=”47688″ img_size=”275×355″ style=”vc_box_border”][/vc_column][vc_column width=”1/2″][vc_column_text]

Dr. J. Leighton Reid

Assistant Professor, School of Plant & Environmental Sciences

Research interests: Dr. Reid’s research interests encompass tropical forest restoration in Latin America and Madagascar as well as temperate forest, woodland, and grassland restoration in the eastern United States. Specifically, he investigates how local restoration interventions interact with their surrounding landscape to affect biodiversity recovery, how keystone plant species can be used to catalyze ecological succession, why some restored ecosystems persist much longer than others, and what soil and environmental factors limit the recolonization of rare plants in regenerating ecosystems.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_separator style=”shadow”][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column width=”1/2″][vc_single_image image=”47595″ img_size=”275×355″ style=”vc_box_border”][/vc_column][vc_column width=”1/2″][vc_column_text]

Dr. Rachel Reid

Research Scientist, Department of Geosciences

Research interests: Dr. Reid is a paleoecologist interested in how disturbances, such as climate and environmental change, impact species, ecosystems, and their interactions over a range of timescales. As a Research Scientist at Virginia Tech, Dr. Reid runs the Stable Isotope Laboratory.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_separator style=”shadow”][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column width=”1/2″][vc_single_image image=”47396″ img_size=”275×355″ style=”vc_box_border”][/vc_column][vc_column width=”1/2″][vc_column_text]

Dr. Theo Lim

Assistant Professor, Department of Urban Affairs & Environmental Planning

Research interests: Dr. Lim’s research focuses on the environmental planning of linked land, water, infrastructure, and social systems. His interests include urban hydrology, distributed stormwater practices, community green infrastructure, energy planning in agricultural and rural settings, land development impacts on the hydrological cycle, and applications of data science in urban & environmental planning.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_separator style=”shadow”][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column width=”1/2″][vc_single_image image=”47637″ img_size=”275×355″ style=”vc_box_border”][/vc_column][vc_column width=”1/2″][vc_column_text]

Dr. Ben Gill

Associate Professor, Department of Geosciences

Research interests: Dr. Gill specializes in reconstructing the present and past chemical cycles on our planet. He leads the Biogeochemistry Laboratory Group at Virginia Tech. The main research focus of his group concerns understanding the connections between major changes in the environment (oxygenation/deoxygenation oceans, climatic warming and cooling, etc.) and major events in the history of life (originations, diversifications and mass extinctions).[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_separator style=”shadow”][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column width=”1/2″][vc_single_image image=”47465″ img_size=”275×355″ style=”vc_box_border”][/vc_column][vc_column width=”1/2″][vc_column_text]

Dr. James Weger-Lucarelli

Research Assistant Professor, Department of Biomedical Sciences & Pathology

Research interests: Dr. Weger-Lucarelli’s research focuses on understanding viral and host determinants that mediate disease severity, transmission, evolution, and protection against mosquito-borne viruses. The Weger-Lucarelli lab uses molecular, virological, and computational methods to study these interactions, with the goal to recognize and study emerging viral threats before they product massive outbreaks. He is also working to produce innovative vaccines to prevent mosquito-borne viral disease.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_separator style=”shadow” border_width=”5″][/vc_column][/vc_row]

Blog Drinking water Global Change Science Communication Seminars, Workshops, Lectures Special Events

Researchers collaborate to address water and health issues in rural China and Appalachia

Post author By jcoker
Post date October 31, 2019

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From V T News | October 31, 2019

On Oct. 4, the first-ever Water & Health in Rural China & Appalachia Conference kicked off at Virginia Tech on the Blacksburg campus. This event also marked the formal inclusion of Virginia Tech in a collaborative research program with researchers from UC Berkeley and China.

Inadequate access to safe drinking water remains a substantial problem for low-income rural communities around the world. From central Appalachia to rural China, the causes and consequences of water contamination and unreliable access to safe water overlap considerably.

Virginia Tech faculty and students came together with officials from the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention and researchers from UC Berkeley. Together, they shared their past, present, and upcoming research on water and health-related challenges and opportunities in communities living in low-income areas in rural Appalachia and China. The conference was also bookended by meetings and working sessions, which also served as planning platforms for new collaborative projects.

Alasdair Cohen, an assistant professor of environmental epidemiology in the Department of Population Health Sciences and Virginia Tech Public Health Program, in the Virginia-Maryland College of Veterinary Medicine, organized the event. Previously, Cohen worked at UC Berkeley as a project scientist and research director for The Berkeley/China-CDC Program for Water & Health, which he helped create in 2016.

Opening remarks were given by Laura Hungerford, professor and department head of the Department of Population Health Sciences, and Tao Yong, the chief scientist at the National Center for Rural Water Supply Technical Guidance of the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention and also the committee chairman of the Chinese Preventative Medicine Association’sRural Drinking Water and Environment Professional Committee.

For the rest of the day, talks covered a variety of topics, ranging from environmental health, economic change, reflections on failed and innovative drinking water technologies, and future collaborations. 00:0001:34

Isha Ray, co-director of the Berkeley Water Center and associate professor of water and development at UC Berkeley, discussed findings from her research on the challenges of access and accountability in the rural drinking systems of Mexico, Tanzania, India, and the United States.

Ray pointed out that low-income, overworked individuals do not always have the energy, time, and costs required to keep up with the many methods of water purification: “It’s not that they aren’t willing to do anything. It’s that they lack the financial resources.”

She added that governments need to take more responsibility, otherwise their drinking water problems will never be solved and their constituents will continue to suffer. “If affordability becomes wrapped up with accountability at the very lowest stages of use, the chances that we will fail, and continue to fail, are high,” she said.

According to the World Health Organization, 785 million people lack access to even basic drinking-water services, 144 million of whom are dependent on surface water. The lack of access to sufficient quantities of reliably safe drinking water is expected to increase as water scarcity, climate change, and population growth, put more stress onto water supply systems.

“Water is the one resource for which there is no substitute,” said Stephen Schoenholtz, a professor of hydrology in the Department of Forest Resources and Environmental Conservationin the College of Natural Resources and Environment and director of the Virginia Water Resources Research Center.

He explained how tackling these issues requires an all-hands-on-deck effort. “You can’t look at water quality and supply in terms of one set of values. You have to take many things into account to solve these complex systems,” he said.

Shu Tao, professor of environmental science in the College of Urban and Environmental Sciences at Peking University – Beijing, spoke about the cultural tradition, economics, and health implications of boiling water in rural China.

“Income appears to be the most important driver for when people transition from boiling with solid fuels to cleaner fuels like electricity,” said Tao.

At the end of the event, faculty from Virginia Tech and Berkeley signed a memorandum of understanding to mark the restructuring and expansion of their water and health research program to now include Virginia Tech.

“We’ve been discussing the expansion of our program to Virginia Tech for some time now, so it’s especially rewarding to be together here today to reaffirm and formalize our collective commitment to this program and its goals of expanding safe water access and improving environmental health in China, the USA, and elsewhere around the world,” said Cohen, who is also a faculty member of the Global Change Center, housed in Virginia Tech’s Fralin Life Sciences Institute.

The newly expanded program is now called “The Berkeley / China / Virginia Tech Program for Water & Health.” More information can be found at the recently launched program website: http://ruralwaterhealth.org/.

Sponsors for this event included the Department of Population Health Sciences and the Virginia-Maryland College of Veterinary Medicine, the Global Change Center, the Fralin Life Sciences Institute, the Virginia Water Resources Research Center, and The Inn at Virginia Tech.

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CONTACT:
Kristin Rose (540) 231-6614

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Climate Change Drinking water Ideas New Publications Pollution Science Communication Water

Human domination of the global water cycle absent from depictions and perceptions

Post author By jcoker
Post date June 17, 2019

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From Science Daily | June 10, 2019

Pictures of the earth’s water cycle used in education and research throughout the world are in urgent need of updating to show the effects of human interference, according to new analysis by an international team of hydrology experts.

Leaving humans out of the picture, the researchers argue, contributes to a basic lack of awareness of how humans relate to water on Earth — and a false sense of security about future availability of this essential and scarce resource.

The team has drawn up a new set of diagrams to promote better understanding of how our water cycle works in the 21st century. These new diagrams show human interference in nearly all parts of the cycle.

The study, published in Nature Geoscience, with an additional comment in Nature, was carried out by a large team of experts from Brigham Young University and Michigan State University in the US and the University of Birmingham in the UK, along with partners in the US, France, Canada, Switzerland and Sweden.

It showed that, in a sample of more than 450 water cycle diagrams in textbooks, scientific literature and online, 85 per cent showed no human interaction at all with the water cycle, and only 2 per cent of the images made any attempt to connect the cycle with climate change or water pollution.

In addition, nearly all the examples studied depicted verdant landscapes, with mild climates and abundant freshwater — usually with only a single river basin.

The researchers argue there is an urgent need to challenge this misrepresentation and promote a more accurate and sophisticated understanding of the cycle and how it works in the 21st century. This is crucial if society is to be able to achieve global solutions to the world’s water crisis.

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“The water cycle diagram is a central icon of hydro science, but misrepresenting the ways in which humans have influenced this cycle diminishes our awareness of the looming global water crisis,” says Professor David Hannah, UNESCO Chair in Water Sciences at the University of Birmingham.

“By leaving out climate change, human consumption, and changes in land use we are, in effect, creating large gaps in understanding and perception among the public and also among some scientists.”

The new diagrams drawn up by the team show a more complex picture that includes elements such as meltwater from glaciers, flood damage caused by land use changes, pollution and sea level rises.

Professor Stefan Krause, Head of the Birmingham Water Council states: “For the first time, the new water cycle diagram adequately reflects the importance of not just quantities of water but also water quality and pollution as key criteria for assessing water resources.”

Professor Ben Abbott, from Brigham Young University, is lead author on the paper: “Every scientific diagram involves compromises and distortions, but what we found with the water cycle was widespread exclusion of a central concept. You can’t understand water in the 21st century without including humans.”

“Other scientific disciplines have done a good job depicting how humans now dominate many aspects of the Earth system. It’s hard to find a diagram of the carbon or nitrogen cycle that doesn’t show factories and fertilizers. However, our drawings of the water cycle are stuck in the 17th century.”

“Better drawings of the water cycle won’t solve the global water crisis on their own, but they could improve awareness of how local water use and climate change have global consequences.”

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Drinking water Ideas News Research Special Events Water

Water & Health in Rural China & Appalachia Conference at VT – October 4th, 2019

Post author By jcoker
Post date May 13, 2019

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Save the Date!

October 4th – Water & Health in Rural China & Appalachia Conference will be held at Virginia Tech

The goal of this one-day conference is to connect VT faculty and students with researchers and officials from the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention (China CDC) and UC Berkeley in order to share past/present/planned research that is relevant to low-income settings in rural Appalachia and China. The conference and attendant working sessions (held before and after) will also serve as a forum for officially expanding The Berkeley/China-CDC Program for Water & Health to Virginia Tech, as well as a planning platform for new collaborative projects. The Global Change Center is a sponsor of this event.
When: Friday, October 4th, 2019, from 9am-5pm, including lunch (with topic-specific working sessions on October 3rd and 7th)
Where: The Skelton Conference Center, at the Inn at Virginia Tech (901 Prices Fork Rd, Blacksburg, VA 24061)

Schedule and additional information to follow. Please email GCC Faculty Affiliate Alasdair Cohen (PHS) with any questions.

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Drinking water Ideas News

Testing the water: Virginia Tech team launches system to predict water conditions

Post author By jcoker
Post date April 5, 2019

[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]From Virginia Tech

April 2, 2019

Each morning, Jamie Morris, water production manager at the Western Virginia Water Authority in Roanoke, receives an automated email from a team of Virginia Tech researchers.

It resembles a weather forecast. But instead of predicting weather, it forecasts 16-day water quality conditions. It provides data about expected water temperatures and mixing, and soon it will include algae levels and amounts of dissolved oxygen in the Falling Creek Reservoir in Vinton.

Eventually, the water authority will begin using this information to determine how to chemically treat the reservoir water ahead of time, ensuring that it is palatable for Roanoke Valley residents. Falling Creek is one of four reservoirs managed by the authority.

“If we have a couple of days’ notice, that’s much better than having to react within minutes,” Morris said.

After more than a year, this unique water forecasting system, developed by a Virginia Tech team led by Cayelan Carey, an assistant professor of biological sciences, is ready to go. And it is drawing interest from groups around the globe who want to emulate it. In May, a representative from a group that manages lakes in Ireland and in other parts of Europe is making plans to visit Virginia Tech to see the forecasting system in action.

The work started in 2018 after Carey’s team received a $1 million Smart and Connected Communities grant from the National Science Foundation to develop a real-time water forecasting system for the reservoir. Since then, faculty and graduate students representing various disciplines have visited the reservoir weekly in the spring and summer and monthly in the winter to install sensors, take water samples, and collect other data.

Meanwhile, Falling Creek has been offline since June because of concern over poor water quality, Morris said.

The spring is an important time of year for tracking water quality. As outside temperatures warm, more algae can develop in water, creating taste and odor issues, and possibly staining.

Before Carey’s team got involved, the water authority’s lab technicians collected water samples by hand at the reservoir and took them back to the lab for testing, Morris said.

Now, “it’s much easier when I pull up a graph” from Carey’s lab, he said.

Sensors that Carey’s team installed in the reservoir collect a variety of information, such as carbon and oxygen levels and aquatic life. This information, combined with weather predictions and a model, is transmitted to a cloud network that water utility managers and scientists can access, Carey said.

A key gauge in this forecast is the likelihood of the lake turning over, which occurs when cold temperatures cause the water layers to break down and mix, bringing iron, manganese, and nutrients from the bottom of the lake to the top. This results in poor water quality, Morris said.

Carey’s team uses a modeling system that Quinn Thomas, an assistant professor of forest dynamics and ecosystem modeling at Virginia Tech, created to study the growth of loblolly pine forests. It translates well to water work, he said.

“We can post our forecast before the next day happens,” Thomas said. “That’s the foundation of the scientific method, making predictions based on inference that you’ve developed over time.”

Carey’s team includes undergraduate and graduate students, as well as faculty who are ecologists, social scientists, geologists, and engineers spanning the College of Science, the College of Engineering, and the College of Natural Resources and Environment.

Across disciplines, “the whole idea is that every piece feeds into another piece,” Carey said.

For example, Virginia Tech computer science students have visited the reservoir to understand how water data is collected, while natural science students are helping social science students collect data.

“By engaging in the hands-on experience of working together in really applied settings, but in ways that are predictable to making a project work, students are being exposed to different disciplines in ways that would never be possible in the classroom,” Carey said.

Whitney Woelmer, a Virginia Tech graduate student studying biological sciences who works in Carey’s lab, is one of the team members. Her passion for water and the environment stems from growing up in Michigan, surrounded by the state’s many lakes.

“Our job is to say what we think will happen,” Woelmer said of the forecasting system. Her focus is analyzing the presence of the reservoir’s phytoplankton, which are microscopic algae.

Both students and faculty are gearing up for more visits to the reservoir this summer. Woelmer also is leading a new water sampling initiative in the Beaverdam Creek Reservoir, which is managed by the water authority, in Bedford County.

This summer, a Virginia Tech graduate student and a team of other students will survey Roanoke area residents about their water. Michael Sorice, an associate professor in the Department of Forest Resources and Environmental Conservation at Virginia Tech, is leading this group. They plan to survey 800 Roanoke Valley residents about their water and their trust of a water utility’s work to keep it safe for consumption. The team will go door-to-door with surveys for residents to fill out.

The idea is to understand a community’s response, Sorice said. He also is working with the water authority to identify ways that employees can integrate data from the forecasting system into their daily workflow.

The fundamental question — “How can we design this system so that it is meeting a real need for the water authority?” Sorice said.

Written by Jenny Kincaid Boone

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Accolades Drinking water News Student Spotlight

Mary Lofton is new GLEON GSA Co-Chair Elect

Post author By jcoker
Post date November 27, 2018

From GLEON.org

NOVEMBER 27, 2018

Dear fellow GLEONites,

I am writing to introduce myself as the new Co-Chair Elect of the GLEON Student Association. I am honored and excited to be taking on this role and very much look forward to working with you all over the next couple of years.

I am currently a 3^rdyear Ph.D. student with Dr. Cayelan Carey at Virginia Tech in the United States. My dissertation research focuses on phytoplankton community dynamics in lakes and reservoirs, including understanding the effects of epilimnetic mixing on phytoplankton biomass, exploring the drivers of benthic recruitment of phytoplankton and phytoplankton vertical distribution in the water column, and helping to develop an ecological forecasting system for phytoplankton dynamics to assist drinking water managers in maintaining good water quality. As such, my research interests span a variety of both applied and basic research questions.

Mary Lofton is the new GLEON Student Association (GSA) co-chair elect.

My first direct experience with GLEON was last year when I attended the G19 meeting at Mohonk Mountain House in New York, USA. I was incredibly excited to attend because I had heard so many positive anecdotes about the GLEON community from my lab mates and advisor. I would get the chance to meet all those scientists whose papers I had been reading; I would meet other graduate students from all over the world; I would spend the meeting actually developing projects that we would work on throughout the year; and there would probably be a great dance party. The meeting lived up to my expectations – I left feeling energized, inspired, and full of plans for all the great science I was going to do with newfound GLEON collaborators in the year ahead.

As a graduate student, my favorite thing about the GLEON community is its grassroots nature – by which I mean that students are given the opportunity to work alongside, chat with, and receive feedback from research scientists at all career stages from around the world. The working group format of GLEON meetings and GLEON’s focus on bringing undergraduate and graduate students and other early-career scientists together for workshops and projects allows students to form independent collaborations outside their home institutions. This is a tremendous opportunity for students to learn to navigate the challenges of team science and allows us to develop skills for engaging in productive collaborations and fostering a positive sense of community in scientific settings. The connections we build through this grassroots network help us meet potential post-doctoral advisors and discover job opportunities. The relationships that we forge through GLEON can help us hit the ground running with collaborators and proposal ideas if and when we end up leading labs or research sites of our own. And the close-knit nature of the GLEON community means that we have experts to reach out to if we want to learn a new skill – whether it be data management, analytical methods, ecosystem modeling, or engaging citizen scientists.

As GSA Co-Chair Elect, my goal is to make all the benefits of GLEON as accessible as possible to as many students as possible, and to effectively use the GLEON network to help students acquire the training, resources, and experience that they need most. To that end, I’m hoping to speak with as many students and other early-career scientists I can at the upcoming G20 meeting to hear what sort of activities, initiatives, workshops, and so on YOU would like to see the GSA take on in the next year or two. So please come talk to me about your ideas! If being a member of GLEON has taught me anything, it is that having a diversity of ideas and opinions on the table and fostering open discussion can lead to great outcomes. I hope to hear from each of you soon about what you would like to see from the GSA and how you would like to contribute to the activities of the GSA moving forward.

Sincerely,

Mary Lofton

About the Author: Mary Lofton is from Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, VA, USA and is a 3^rdyear PhD student with Dr. Cayelan Carey studying phytoplankton community dynamics in southwest Virginia drinking water reservoirs.