MRI Award for Mobile Radar Units

Witold (Witek) Krajewski and Anton Kruger (University of Iowa) recently received a Major Research Instrumentation award from the Earth Sciences Division of NSF's Geosciences Directorate for the acquisition of four mobile X-band polarimetric radar units. The dual polarization capability will allow discriminating between rainfall, hail and snow and mitigating the effects of signal attenuation. Operating the four units as a single instrument will provide high spatial (ca. 250 m by 250 m pixels) and temporal (ca. 1-2 minute) resolution precipitation maps with reduced uncertainty, as well as the 3-D wind fields. CUAHSI is working with Witek and Anton to develop an "affiliate" node of the CUAHSI HMF-Water Cycle module, currently led by Jennifer Jacobs (UNH) that will provide community access to these radars. Details on the amount of time these radars will be available, deployment costs, and application procedures remain to be worked out. Construction, commissioning, software development, and performance evaluation will require approximately 2 years, so that the mobile radars will be ready for community deployment in 2009. [more information]

OSTP Report for Supporting Water Availability and Quality

The Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) has issued a report entitled A Strategy for Federal Science and Technology to Support Water Availability and Quality in the United States. The report was produced by the Subcommittee on Water Availability and Quality of the National Science and Technology Council's Committee on the Environment and Natural Resources.

"Scientists and engineers work to understand and quantify the complex factors that control water supply in order to strengthen water management decisions and provide new options. Scientific concepts and technological tools are used to measure the water supply, expand choices for water use, and reduce the uncertainties in water availability and quality. New measurement techniques, innovative observational network design, improved means for data access, and improved water-supply forecasting systems will help. Predictions of water availability over time are critical for decisionmakers, and are most useful when accompanied by estimates of their reliability."

Cyberseminars

A cyberseminar is a PowerPoint presentation shown over the web in conjunction with a conference call for narration by the presenter. CUAHSI pays on a connection basis so minimizing the number of connections on each campus is preferable. If time allows, a question and answer period may follow. The Fall schedule so far is:

October 19, 2007; 3:00pm ET

• Bob Hirsch, Associate Director for Water, USGS and Co-Chair of SWAQ
  Title: Future Directions for Science and Technology in Support of Water Availability and Quality in the US
  

  • WebEx Meeting Number: 566 786 820

November 2, 2007; 3:00pm ET

• Jay Famiglietti, University of California — Irvine
  Title: GRACE - Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment
  

  • WebEx Meeting Number: 561 922 823

November 16, 2007; 3:00pm ET

• Murugesu Sivapalan, University of Illinois
  Title: Advancing hydrologic predictability in a changing environment through inter-disciplinary synthesis
  

  • WebEx Meeting Number: 568 235 521

See the Cyberseminars page on the CUAHSI Web site for additional information.

Regional Meetings: Reminder!

CUAHSI has scheduled three Regional Meetings for this Fall, with additional meetings to be scheduled for Spring 2008. Meetings are open to all CUAHSI member universities. Attendance by all interested faculty is encouraged. These meetings will be great opportunities for you, your colleagues, and students to learn what the current state of affairs is, and how to engage in a variety of activities. We are hoping that hydrologic scientists, environmental engineers, ecologists, geomorphologists, geochemists, and other environmental scientists will participate.

The three Fall meetings are:

• Friday, October 5 in Austin, Texas hosted by David Maidment (University of Texas).
• Friday, October 12 in Chicago, Illinois hosted by Praveen Kumar (University of Illinois).
• Friday, October 26 in Boise, Idaho hosted by James McNamara (Boise State University).

For more information please go to www.cuahsi.org/meetings/index.html.