CUAHSI announced—at our Townhall & Reception on December 6^th at Fall AGU 2011—the five winners of the 2011 Pathfinder Fellowship Awards. Graduate training in hydrologic science typically focuses on a single field site or single modeling approach. To assist graduate students in enriching their research program by moving beyond a "one site, one view" approach to research, the Pathfinder Fellowship awards provide travel support for graduate students to make an extended visit to conduct field research at an additional site or to collaborate with a research group using alternate modeling methods of those in a graduate student's current research program.

This year's fellowship awardees are:

• Ryan Gordon, Syracuse University, Department of Earth Sciences
• Tracie Jackson, Oregon State University, Department of Geosciences
• Keshia Koehn, University of Notre Dame, Department of Civil Engineering and Geological Science
• Katrina Koski Henry, New Mexico Tech, Department of Earth and Environmental Science
• Kenneth Takagi, Boston University, Department of Earth Sciences

Congratulations to the awardees! For more information on the Pathfinder Fellowship Program, please visit our Pathfinder page.

This coming year promises to be an eventful one for water science community workshops and meetings as CUAHSI expands on the experiences of previous hands-on instrumentation workshops and continues the tradition started in 2008 of conducting a Biennial Science Meeting centered around a unifying theme—this year's them being Fusing Science and Solutions.

• Joint USGS-CUAHSI Workshop on Sediment Hydroacoustics - March 20-22, 2012 - National Conservation Training Center - Shepherdstown, West Virginia
  This workshop will convene scientists, engineers, manufacturers, and managers interested in hydroacoustic technology applications for measuring/monitoring suspended load, bed load, bed material, and related hydrodynamic characteristics in rivers and streams. The workshop foci will include: technological advances, calibration and uncertainty issues, applications, and potential opportunities to use the technology to address new research questions. The gathering will provide the opportunity for those working in different environments and disciplines to share information and to evaluate opportunities to advance the technology and its broad-scale operational use. Registration opens in January 2012. [Read more]


• Techniques to Quantify Stream-Groundwater Exchange and Shallow Transport - A Hands-on Workshop - June 12-15, 2012 - Penn State University
  This Hands-on workshop will introduce and train new users to novel techniques (conservative solute tracers, smart tracers, distributed temperature sensing, and electrical resistivity imaging) that can be used to investigate stream-groundwater interactions. Participants will learn to apply four techniques and learn related experimental design, data acquisition, data processing, and analysis issues for stream-groundwater interaction studies. The workshop also aims to stimulate discussion about how to appropriately apply these techniques and from where the next breakthroughs in quantifying stream-groundwater dynamics will come. Registration opens in March 2012. [Read more]


• CUAHSI Third Biennial Science Meeting - Fusing Science and Solutions - July 16-18, 2012 - Boulder, CO
  Responsible living within our water environment on a changing planet is predicated upon fusing advanced scientific knowledge with new simulation tools and strategies to manage this resource. New simulation approaches must overcome the growing problem of non-stationarity we are facing as climate, land cover, and land use change. However, a delay often exists before advances in research are incorporated into prediction approaches. Even within the academic research community, divisions often exist between experimentalists and modelers in all water related disciplines including hydrology, geomorphology, and biogeochemistry. The delays are even longer from research to practice, and practice to policy. In recent years several long term environmental observatory initiatives have been established that can provide the integrated hydrological, ecological and geological information necessary to advance solutions to these problems. The intent of this CUAHSI 2012 Biennial Meeting is to continue the dialogue on how to bridge gaps between science and solutions, and how to best use environmental observatories in this effort. Abstract submission opens March 23; registration opens April 2, 2012. [Read more]

Mark your calendars to save the dates for these important water science community workshops and meetings.

CUAHSI HIS data and open source hydrologic data tools are freely available to the water science community, and are being accessed by a growing community of users. As of December 15, 2011, there were 79 registered data services—including three new services registered this month—representing over 5 billion data values, available through HIS Central, our web-based data service repository. HIS Central provides a central location where users can search across and directly download data from all registered providers. Users can access HIS Central through our data access client, HydroDesktop, available at hydrodesktop.codeplex.com and his.cuahsi.org/hydrodesktop.html. The CodePlex site reports over 390 downloads of HydroDesktop between November 15 and December 15, 2011. A new release (HydroDesktop 1.3) is currently in beta-testing, so look for a new recommended release soon with new features. Users can also access data through HIS Central using other clients, including HydroExcel, (his.cuahsi.org/hydroexcel.html). Because this is an open source project, users and developers are encouraged to write their own clients and tools for the HIS system. More information is available at his.cuahsi.org/developers.html.

In addition to data access, HIS can help researchers publish their data using HydroServer (his.cuahsi.org/hydroserver.html ) and register it with HIS Central to make it available to the wider research community. HIS Central is maintained by the San Diego Supercomputer Center (SDSC) and SDSC tracks and provides usage statistics and information to data providers. Individual data providers can track how and when their data are being downloaded. In November and December 2011, SDSC reports that HIS Central has received on average over 12,000 "get values" requests per day to retrieve time series data.

The following new Directors were elected at CUAHSI's annual membership meeting on November 29, 2011:

• Diogo Bolster, University of Notre Dame
• Peter Troch, The University of Arizona
• Scott Tyler, University of Nevada - Reno (returning for second term)
• Denice Wardrop, Pennsylvania State University
• David S. White, Murray State University

Congratulations to the new Board members. And thanks to those who also participated in the elections and to those whose terms are ending:

• Larry Band, University of North Carolina - Chapel Hill
• Jay Famiglietti, University of California - Irvine
• Tissa Illangasekare, Colorado School of Mines
• Jennifer Jacobs, University of New Hampshire

We appreciate all your time, effort, and support.

Continuing as Officers are:

• Secretary: Chris Graham — Boise State University
• Treasurer: Rina Schumer — Desert Research Institute

For additional information about CUAHSI governance in general, please go to the Board of Directors page.

Yoori Choi will be leaving CUAHSI; her last day with us is December 15. We wish Yoori the best of luck in her new endeavors and thank her for all her hard work here at CUAHSI.

Consequently, we are seeking to fill the HIS User Support Specialist position. The incumbent will assist users in deploying CUAHSI Hydrologic Information System (HIS), a service-oriented architecture for publishing time series data using web services. More information on CUAHSI HIS is available at his.cuahsi.org. Extensive interactions with data publishers and data analysts who seek to discover data using these services will be required, both in a one-on-one support mode and in formal training settings. The incumbent will also gather information on bugs, feature requests, and other modifications required to HIS and communicate these requests to the Hydrologic Information Systems development team. The incumbent will advise the CUAHSI Senior Program Manager on the performance of CUAHSI HIS, assist in prioritizing revision requirements, and assist the Senior Program Manager in support of the HIS Standing Committee, which oversees CUAHSI HIS. [Additional information]

The staff at CUAHSI wishes you a
Happy Holiday season and a
peaceful & prosperous New Year 2012.

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