Jay Janner/AMERICAN-STATESMAN.

Five Key Lessons (and Challenges) from the Great Texas Drought

"Perhaps the only positive thing about the 2011 drought in Texas, the state’s worst single-year drought in history, is that it ended up being the mother of all teaching moments."

http://www.utexas.edu/know/2012/09/10/great-texas-drought/

"Scientists at The University of Texas at Austin are at the forefront of research to make the state better prepared for future water shortages. So what have we learned from the 2011 drought? Here are five key lessons."

-Marc Airhart, Jackson School of Geosciences

Jack Cook, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (©) Howard Perlman, USGS.

How much water is there in the world? 

Most people would say that ther is a lot of water on Earth, after all about 3/4 of the surface is covered by oceans. But if you put all this water into one big ball, it looks pretty small.  This graphic from the USGS shows this clearly

http://ga.water.usgs.gov/edu/2010/gallery/global-water-volume.html

Data for this illustration comes from Igor Shiklomanov's chapter "World fresh water resources" in P. H. Gleick (editor), 1993, Water in Crisis: A Guide to the World's Fresh Water Resources (Oxford University Press, NY).

Historical flood lines on the door of an old brewery on the Guadalupe River.  (Slade and Chow, 2011).

How El Niño, La Niña and Hurricanes Fill Texas Streams

In a new paper in the Texas Water Journal, Raymond Slade Jr. and T. Edwin Chow describe how El Niño and La Niña climatic conditions affect seasonal streamflow in Texas and emphasize the importance of hurricanes in Texas floods. They present historical precipitation data that, "... reveal that greater rainfall generally occurs during La Niña periods for summer months but greater rainfall typically occurs during El Niño periods for other months. Annual streamflow peaks cannot be attributed to El Niño or La Niña conditions, but typically occur during the hurricane season (June through November), especially for the largest peaks."

ESI focuses much of its effort on explaining the scienc underlying issues such as climate change and water to the public.

ESI researchers have been at the forefront of exploring Texas's water future, including the impacts of climate change on that future.  For example, together with other ESI-affilated faculty and graduate students, Dr. Jay Banner, Director of ESI and Professor at the Jackson School of Geosciences recently published a white paper on Climate Change Impacts on Texas Water, with recommendations for the future.  This paper was featured in the inaugural issue of the Texas Water Journal.

For more about ESI faculty and their research, visit ESI's affiliated faculty page.

Tyrone Hayes' science and activism has encouraged people to ask "just what is in my water?"

Educating the public about the importance of biodiversity is imperative to our global future. For example, Dr. Tyone B. Hayes wowed hundreds of Hot Science - Cool Talks participants by presenting (and rapping about) the impact of atrazine in water soures on the reproductive development of frogs.

For more information on Hot Science – Cool Talks, visit the series' website at www.hotsciencecooltalks.org

With resources like MSI and the Mission-Aransas NERR, UT-Austin leads the way in water science and education.

Situated on the Edwards Aquifer, students at UT-Austin have a unique natural laboratory through which they can explore water issues.  For example, this spring in Marine Ecology (MNS 320), Professor Deana Erdner from UT's Department of Marine Science and its Marine Science Institute, is introducing more than 50 undergraduate students, including participants in the EVS Program, about ecological processes at different levels of integration in marine ecosystems

For more environmental science courses being offered, visit ESI's featured courses page.