Water is a resource upon which we all depend, and increasing demands around the world are making the study of water an area of extreme importance. The Environmental Science Institute has taken the lead in water studies by creating a community of water professionals, researchers and students that brings a needed perspective to effort to create a society that uses water in a sustainable manner. We see this effort as leading towards the development of a center of water studies that includes work on every aspect of watershed processes, from the basic science up to the policy and planning.

The Watershed Initiative is our way to address the need for greater integration in water science, policy and management. Water issues are frequently very complex and can involve scientific questions and engineering problems, as well as having important social, legal and economic ramifications. The only way to deal with such complex problems is to bring people together from all the disciplines involved in a way that they can talk with each other and understand the assumptions and problems in each others’ fields.

Affiliated units: The College of Engineering’s Center for Research in Water Resources, the School of Architecture’s Community and Regional Planning and Landscape Architecture Programs, the LBJ School of Public Affairs, the Jackson School of Geosciences, the School of Biological Sciences, the Marine Science Institute, the McCombs School of Business, the School of Law, and the Center for Space Research.

Research

Watersheds Working Group
Watersheds are spatially organized, scale-dependent landscape units, and therefore represent ideal frameworks for the integrated study of hydrology, ecology, geomorphology, and the various ways in which humans have altered watershed processes. The Integrated Watershed Sciences Working Group serves to facilitate and coordinate collaborative multidisciplinary research projects among researchers at UT, other academic institutions, and government agencies. Faculty and students incorporate field, laboratory, and geographic information science approaches for monitoring and modeling a diverse array of watershed processes.

Integrated Watershed Sciences Symposium
The Integrated Watershed Sciences symposium, Bridging the Gap between Science and Application, strived to bring together academic researchers with representatives of government and non-government organizations to find areas of mutual interest and to highlight some of the critical issues confronting Texas' river systems. The symposium featured fourteen presentations involving researchers from UT, Texas A&M, and the U.S. Geological Survey, which highlighted state-of-the-art research in the watershed sciences. The presentations included a diverse array of topics, including vegetation and land use, infiltration and groundwater, pollutant modeling, streamflow and sediment transport, estuarine processes, as well as remote sensing applications.

The Honey Creek Watershed Project
A collaborative multidisciplinary and multiyear study of two adjacent karst watersheds at Honey Creek State Natural Area in central Texas was undertaken to evaluate the effects of shrub control on watershed hydrology by selective removal of juniper from the uplands of one watershed. Both watersheds have similar geologic and geomorphologic features, including springs discharging into Honey Creek. Spatial and temporal variations in the geochemistry of spring waters provide insight into watershed hydrology and regional hydrologic processes. While spring water geochemistry appears unaffected by juniper removal at the scale of the watershed, a geochemical evaluation of aquifer components such as soil water, cave dripwaters, spring waters, and phreatic groundwaters in the region reveal a continuum of fluid evolution processes.

Selected Watershed Research projects:
Richard Kiesling (Hydrologist & Water Quality Specialist, USGS): Dr. Richard L. Kiesling is an aquatic ecologist and limnologist specializing in the field of water quality assessment and research. He is currently a Hydrologist and Water Quality Specialist with the USGS in Austin, Texas, and a Research Fellow with the Environmental Science Institute. His current research includes studies of the effects of land use and hydrologic modifications on nutrient fate and transport in regional watershed-reservoir systems.

Zong-Liang Yang (Associate Professor): Yang's research interests include: 1) mathematical modeling of land-surface hydrology and its role in controlling weather and climate, 2) characterizing vegetation and snow cover including their influences on the surface energy and water balances using ground-based and remotely-sensed datasets, 3) quantifying the relative role of land versus oceans in determining rainfall in southwest and south central USA, 4) developing tools for assessing the potential impacts of heavy precipitation associated with severe weather on urban watersheds and flash flood prediction, and 5) investigating the impact of vegetation-derived chemicals on Texas air quality.

John C. Abbott (Lecturer; Research Associate with the Texas Memorial Museum; Curator of the Brackenridge Field Laboratory Insect Collection): Abbott's research focuses on the biodiversity, systematics, ecology and behavior of Odonata (dragonflies and damselflies). He also studies the population and evolutionary ecology of aquatic insects and their usefulness as biological indicators of stream and watershed health. Additional interests include the biodiversity and evolutionary ecology of lamellicorn beetles (Scarabaeoidea).

REU program
Students are trained in laboratory methods and work on independent projects under the supervision of a faculty mentor. Project areas are interdisciplinary and encompass the fields of chemistry, biology, toxicology, and geology. Students participate in a weekly research seminar series and professional development activities. Students also participate in scientific excursions related to field research. The summer program concludes with a poster session and open house hosted by the Environmental Science Institute.

Education

Bridging Disciplines Program
A BDP is an interdisciplinary certificate program that ties together the student's major, electives, and general education requirements. "The Environment" is being offered as one of the first BDP options. It will give students the opportunity to explore a variety of disciplinary approaches to environmental processes and contemporary environmental issues. By bringing together courses in Natural Science, Social Science, and the Humanities, this program allows students a complex understanding of how the diverse parts of earth's environment interact, as well as how human cultures understand and impact the environment.

Integrated Watershed Science Graduate Portfolio Program
The Integrated Watershed Science Graduate Portfolio Program seeks to create an interdisciplinary approach to the study and research of water issues by integrating already existing resources throughout UT-Austin through the creation of a certificate program designed to supplement existing degree programs from around the University of Texas. The goal of the program is to help students from a wide variety of disciplinary degree programs broaden their experience with respect to water studies and to create a campus-wide cohort of students and faculty focused on water issues.

Outreach

Hot Science - Cool Talks Outreach Lecture Series
ESI's Hot Science - Cool Talks provides a means for leading researchers from the University of Texas and other prominent universities to communicate their research to the public in general and the K-12 educational community in particular. The Hot Science - Cool Talks presentations are much more than lectures. They are educational experiences with pre-lecture activities, participation by the audience in lively discussions following the lectures, and an Live Internet broadcast for those who cannot attend. ESI has presented lectures in the area of water sciences including: The Edwards Aquifer: Will There Be Water For Texas?, What's in the Water? The History and Future of Barton Springs”, and Life on a Human-Dominated Earth: The Challenges Ahead.

GK-12 water related workshops
GK-12 teachers and fellows participated in a content enrichment workshop entitled Texas Waters Workshop that was a follow up to Dr. Sharp's Outreach lecture on the Edwards Aquifer. The purpose of the workshop was to enrich the teachers' knowledge about aquifers and to allow the teachers the opportunity to enhance their classroom activities. The Edwards Aquifer Field Workshop, that extended the content covered in the Texas Waters Workshop. The goals of the workshop were: to examine the strata and depositional environments of the Cretaceous carbonate rocks of central Texas and to examine the hydrogeologic characteristics of the strata that comprise part of the Edwards Aquifer.

Groundwater: The Lifeblood of Central Texas
Although the majority of the Earth’s surface is covered with oceans, seawater is salty and cannot be drunk by humans without extensive treatment. About a third of the freshwater on the planet is locked up in the form of ice, and freshwater in rivers and lakes is easily contaminated and greatly overused in many places. Further, some areas do not have rivers and lakes nearby. In areas such as San Antonio, nearly 100% of the water used is pumped from wells. Nationally, half of the population of the United States drinks groundwater, and most of the crops in the US are irrigated with groundwater. Groundwater supports a unique array of biota in the caves, springs, and lakes associated with aquifers. The Environmental Science Institute together with UTOPIA, UT's information gateway, used these facts as a base to provide scientific content for the public and for K-12 field trips.

Caves: A Window into the Edwards Aquifer
The Edwards Aquifer of central Texas is a critical resource that provides drinking water and recreation for residents.  Local caves in the aquifer are a common fieldtrip destination for K-12 classes. We augmented teaching materials and add creative, inquiry-based activities by utilizing the UT faculty’s long-term cave and karst research projects. There is a wealth of extensive knowledge about central Texas caves, karst, and the Edwards Aquifer. The Environmental Science Institute together with UTOPIA, UT's information gateway, used these studies to provide scientific content for the public and for K-12 field trips.

Contacts

Graduate Portfolio Plan coordinator: Nelson Guda, ESI Associate Director
ESI Director: Jay Banner, Geological Sciences
Watersheds Working Group leader: Paul Hudson, Geography and the Environment
Bridging Disciplines Program: Jeanette Herman, Program Coordinator
Outreach: Jessica Gordon, ESI Outreach Coordinator