The Water Center has selected five Water Research Teams and two Water Faculty Fellows as recipients of funding for 2018-2019. These projects catalyze water research, education, and engagement through interdisciplinary collaboration and creative scholarship among CSU faculty and students. Congratulations to these research teams and faculty members.
WATER RESEARCH TEAMS
Measuring impacts of forest disturbance on streamflow
This research team seeks to better understand the impacts of forest disturbance on Northern Colorado’s water supply by bridging the divide between forest ecologists, remote sensing scientists, hydrologists, and political scientists. The research will advance methods for monitoring forest disturbance and for connecting forest and hydrological processes.
Team Investigators:
- Paul Evangelista, Natural Resource Ecology Laboratory
- Tony Cheng, Department of Forest and Rangeland Stewardship and the Colorado Forest Restoration Institute
Next generation soil moisture measurement technology for research, water management, and environmental monitoring
This research team will develop new soil moisture measurement technology that can provide real-time water content data for a broad range of research and applied applications.
Team Investigators:
- Jay Ham, Department of Soil and Crop Sciences
- Allan Andales, Department of Soil and Crop Sciences
- Maria Capurro, Department of Soil and Crop Sciences
- Russ Schumacher, Department of Atmospheric Science and the Colorado Climate Center
- Peter Goble, Department of Atmospheric Science and the Colorado Climate Center
- Tom Sale, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering
Who changes the rain? Linking the social dynamics of pastoralism and atmospheric water recycling to enable Sustainable Development Goal achievement
This research team seeks to develop a first-of-its-kind modeling system linking household-scale behavior to regional-scale moisture recycling. The research will provide an understanding of how humans interact with the atmospheric water cycle and could reveal leverage points for sustainable management.
Team Investigators:
- Pat Keys, School of Global and Environmental Sustainability
- Kathleen Galvin, Department of Anthropology and the Africa Center
- Randall Boone, Department of Ecosystem Science and Sustainability
Food-Energy-Water Systems (FEWS) justice: urban and rural corridors in the Rio Grande-Bravo Basin (RGB)
This research team seeks to identify critical environmental justice issues and opportunities for just transitions in the Rio-Grande Basin, a transboundary watershed. The project will examine the issues of interlinked food, energy, and water systems through an environmental justice lens and will help bring FEWS justice to the forefront of water governance in the RGB Basin states and Mexico.
Team Investigators:
- Stephanie Malin, Department of Sociology
- Melinda Laituri, Department of Ecosystem Science and Sustainability
- Constance DeVereaux, LEAP Institute for the Arts
- Steve Mumme, Department of Political Science
- Josh Sbicca, Department of Sociology
- Sybil Sharvelle, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering
- Faith Sternlieb, Department of Ecosystem Science and Sustainability
Development of a novel framework for estimating moisture susceptibility attributable to natural flood hazards in the U.S.
This research team will implement a combination of three fields of inquiry—hydrologic sciences, air quality in the built environment, and mesoscale meteorology—to develop a conceptual framework to estimate residential housing moisture susceptibility in homes following large-scale flooding.
Team Investigators:
- Ryan Morrison, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering
- Ellison Carter, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering
- Kristen Rasmussen, Department of Atmospheric Science
WATER FACULTY FELLOWS
Melinda Laituri, Professor in the Department of Ecosystem Science and Sustainability
Dr. Laituri will build upon her U.S. State Department work on the Secondary Cities Initiative. Her project, Examining Extreme Cities: Seeking Solutions for Water Management in the 21st Century, will assess the state of water solutions for extreme cities, provide linkages with CSU’s international research activities, and engage students to raise awareness and understanding today’s critical water challenges.
Chris Myrick, Professor in the Department of Fish, Wildlife, and Conservation Biology
Dr. Myrick will further research that is focused on fish passage challenges and solutions in the U.S. Great Plains region and Australia’s Murray-Darling Basin. He will help increase CSU’s capacity and foster international collaborations in the area of fish passage and managing ecological connectivity of rivers.