Journal of Contemporary Water Research & Education最新文献

Across the United States, groundwater springs adjacent to roadways have been developed as unregulated drinking water sources. We attempted to address two basic questions: 1) why do people collect water at these springs; and 2) is the water safe to drink? We conducted a study during 2015-2019 of seven springs in central New York State that included a survey of 199 users and analysis of the water for common dissolved constituents and bacteria. The survey of water users showed that over 70% of respondents use the springs at least multiple times per month for drinking water and the majority collect more than five gallons per visit. More than 80% of the users live farther than three miles from the springs and a recurring reason for drinking the spring water is that the taste is better than the water available at their homes. However, all the springs at some point tested positive for total coliform bacteria and all but one tested positive at least once for fecal coliform bacteria, meaning that 86% of the springs at some point did not meet U.S. municipal drinking water standards. None of the measured dissolved constituents exceeded drinking water standards, but one spring that exhibited elevated nitrate is downslope from a small cattle operation which may be affecting nutrient values in the water. Most of these springs appear to be fed by shallow, unconfined aquifers that are susceptible to contamination from nearby land uses that are not readily apparent from the roadside collection locations.

There are well-established methods for working in interdisciplinary natural resource management settings, but place-based cultural differences are often poorly integrated into interdisciplinary projects. Intercultural adequacy is necessary to ensure that water management strategies are acceptable within the local contexts of water users. In this study we followed four cohorts of graduate students from Canada, Chile, Cuba, and the United States that participated in an international graduate-level water resource management course hosted at the Universidad de Concepción in Chile. The North American students participated in post-experience surveys and interviews to assess changes in their interdisciplinary and intercultural comfort levels. The interviews and survey identified factors that enhanced or detracted from their progress towards integrating disciplinary and cultural differences into their work. Though course material promoted interdisciplinary collaborations across various disciplinary cultures, participants noted that traditional methods of integrating did not adequately bridge differences in place-based cultural worldviews. We propose a framework developed during the experience to integrate place-based cultural differences into all phases of the interdisciplinary research and natural resource management processes.

Building resilience to flooding is a commitment of several universities; however, student interest in flood education programs is unclear. The goals of this research are three-fold: 1) to determine the origin of flood messaging on the Old Dominion University (ODU) campus, 2) to assess on-campus flood awareness, and 3) to evaluate the interest in additional flood education. This study evaluates student awareness of flooding via a survey of ODU students and contextual analysis of University warning messages. Many students experienced reduced access to campus as a result of flooding and expressed an interest in additional flood information. Some students reported receiving flood-related information through in-class instruction or orientation-based programming. However, the content varies in detail, and ODU could formally integrate additional resources into outreach and flood education programming. These findings could support the development of a campus wide flood awareness program at ODU and other universities.

All 54 km of the West Fork of the White River (WFWR) were on Arkansas's 303(d) list of impaired waterbodies for turbidity, total dissolved solids (TDS), and sulfate for many years. This study identifies which river segments fail to meet applicable water quality standards (WQS) and investigates possible anthropogenic or natural sources of pollutants. We also evaluated a larger dataset of 119 sites in the Boston Mountains and Ozark Highlands ecoregions, compiled from the Arkansas Department of Environmental Quality online database. In the WFWR, water samples were collected once or twice a month at nine sites from June 2014 through June 2018. Median values for turbidity, TDS, sulfate, and chloride ranged from 1.8 to 10.8 NTU, 40.8 to 151.3 mg/L, 3.5 to 27.9 mg/L, and 3.2 to 5.5 mg/L, respectively, and generally increased from upstream to downstream (p < 0.05). Violations of the water quality standard for the parameters of interest varied by site, but generally occurred in the downstream portion of the WFWR, where land use, riparian soils, and underlying geology change. In the larger dataset, turbidity, TDS, sulfate, and chloride concentrations were all significantly greater in the Ozark Highlands than the Boston Mountains ecoregion (p < 0.05). Anthropogenic activities influence dissolved ion concentrations across these study sites, while geology and riparian soils may be important factors for differences in sulfate and turbidity.

Analysis of historic and contemporary high-resolution imagery can help to fill knowledge gaps in land cover and management history in locations where documentation is non-existent or records are difficult to access. Historic imagery dating back to the 1960s can be used to structure quantitative investigation and mapping of land use and land cover change across space and time to enhance earth science, policy, and social science research. Imagery can further inform municipal planning and implementation in areas of natural resource allocation, infrastructure, and hazard mitigation. For management and public education, historic imagery can help people to understand environmental processes and the impacts of human activity in the local environment. Here we emphasize the value of high-resolution historic satellite imagery from the Corona and Keyhole satellite programs to inform environmental research, public education, and environmental management. Within the Region of Arequipa in southern Peru we highlight examples of urban development, agricultural expansion, river channelization, and glacial retreat via comparison of historic and modern satellite imagery. By incorporating these types of historic imagery data in formats accessible to non-professionals, public engagement as well as research into human-environmental investigations will be greatly enhanced.

With growing developments in the technology of cloud storage and the Internet of Things, smart systems have become the latest trend in major agricultural regions of the world. The Arequipa and Caylloma provinces of Peru are highly productive agricultural areas that could benefit from these technologies. This region has low precipitation, generally less than 100 mm per year. Electricity is not available in most of the agricultural fields, limiting the types of irrigation methods and technologies that can be supported. Currently, 20 ponds supplied by water runoff from the Andean glaciers are used for irrigating approximately 545 hectares of land in the Majes district (Caylloma province). In order to develop optimal techniques for water irrigation in Arequipa and improve the infrastructure, there is a need for development of a smart water irrigation system applicable to the existing conditions in the region. The current study proposes a pilot smart water irrigation framework comprised of a drip irrigation module, wireless communication module, and a sensor network for intelligently regulating water flow from the cloud. In this study, a TEROS 12 soil moisture sensor is connected to a Digi XBee wireless module for collecting measurements of volumetric water content, temperature, and electrical conductivity, which are sent through a secure IP gateway to the cloud. A user-friendly web interface is available for end-users to access and analyze real-time data. The proposed framework is easily implementable, low-cost, and is predicted to conserve water through optimization of irrigation cycles based on a set moisture threshold.

In a globalized world, universities are forming partnerships to solve today's water-related challenges, such as increasing water scarcity and diminished water quality. Over the past 20 years, international university-led water research partnerships have been growing in number, including between the U.S. and countries in the Global South. While there are several examples of guidelines and best practices for executing collaborations, none focus on this type of partnership. Additionally, many international collaborations are formed between universities that have little previous experience in developing these types of partnerships. Often, critiques of partnerships happen after initiation and point to structural barriers and best practices for future collaborations, but few offer practical guidance on overcoming obstacles early on, amid an imperfect partnership. In this paper, we created a flexible collaboration framework which can be used as an evaluative tool. To model this, we conducted an internal evaluation of the Sustainable Water Management team of the Arequipa Nexus Institute, a collaboration designed to build research capacity at the Universidad Nacional de San Agustín to address local issues related to agriculture, natural resource management, and environmental change. Results highlighted project strengths and weaknesses and offered strategies to address challenges that many collaborations face. This strategy identification can serve as a guideline for improving the implementation of new or existing international university-led water research partnerships and help partners as they confront challenges at every stage of the partnership. The evaluation shows the effectiveness of using a collaboration framework as an assessment tool for international university-led water research partnerships.

Coproduction is a process that involves scientists and citizens engaging throughout the production of knowledge, decisions, and/or policies. This approach has been widely applied in an international context for addressing global environmental issues. It is customary for scientists to travel to rural communities, where both scientists and local knowledge holders work together and jointly design solutions to pressing problems. Such collaboration, however, often involves high costs for both residents and scientists, which can reduce project effectiveness. This study examines the challenges associated with coproduction in the context of changing rural livelihoods in beneficiary communities. We specifically conduct a self-analysis of the coproduction process led by our own university team, where scientists designed tools for water and crop management together with community members in Peru's Caylloma province. We collected qualitative data on the coproduction challenges in five local districts in Caylloma, using focus groups and semi-structured interviews. Our results indicate that changing socioeconomic conditions in rural communities undermined the long-term sustainability and effectiveness of the coproduction efforts and deliverables. These included increased migration, market integration, and reliance on regional institutions for water and crop management.