December 22nd, 2011
Fairmount Water Works
The December 2011 issue is in your (real) mailbox — you are a member, aren’t you? Our cover photo was taken during the 2010 AWRA Annual Conference in Philadelphia. Fittingly, the Fairmount Water Works was the venue for the conference’s social evening.
Begun in 1812, the Fairmount Water Works is on the National Register of Historic Places. It no longer supplies water to Philadelphia, but it’s architectural beauty makes it a popular site for tourists. I took the photo from the gazebo extending out into the river. Behind the water works, up on the hill, is the Philadelphia Museum of Art.
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December 22nd, 2011
February 2012 Article (Early View): “Comparison of the Performance of Statistical Models in Forecasting Monthly Total Dissolved Solids in the Rio Grande,” by Shalamu Abudu1, J. Phillip King, and Zhuping Sheng.
Water quality modeling is a useful tool to evaluate the future state of river water in view of actual pollution loading or different management options. Prediction of the river water quality allows the adequate measurements to be taken to keep the pollutants within the permissible limits. This paper presents the application of autoregressive integrated moving average (ARIMA), transfer function-noise (TFN), and artificial neural networks (ANNs) modeling approaches in forecasting monthly total dissolved solids (TDS) of water in the Rio Grande at El Paso, Texas.
The performances of time series and ANN models in forecasting monthly total dissolved solids (TDS) concentration of the Rio Grande water were compared using one- to three-month-ahead forecasts of the developed models. The results suggested that simple deseasonalized ARIMA models could be used in one- to three-month-ahead TDS forecasting at the study site with a simple, explicit model structure and similar model performance as the TFN and ANN models for better water management in the Basin.
[Please note: I have quoted and paraphrased freely from the article, but the interpretation is my own.]
Tags: statistics, water quality
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December 21st, 2011
February 2012 article (Early View): “Glacier Variability (1967-2006) in the Teton Range, Wyoming, United States,” by Jake Edmunds, Glenn Tootle, Greg Kerr, Ramesh Sivanpillai, and Larry Pochop.
First of all, these folks have one of the most beautiful study areas in the world! I saw a poster on their work and was very tempted to volunteer for field verification. 
Wireframe depictions of glaciers
It’s also good science. The team quantified glacier area and volume changes through the use of historical aerial photographs in Wyoming’s Teton Range. Glacier area changes in the Teton Range were estimated for three glaciers using unrectified aerial photography from 1967 to 2006. Accurately comparing old and new materials can be challenging, and their work involves an extensive error analysis. They also examined temperature and snowpack data over the study period.
The total surface area of the three glaciers was 0.53 km2 in 1967 and 0.40 km2 in 2006, a decrease of 25% during the 39-year period. The smallest glacier, Teepe, experienced the greatest area loss (60 ± 3%), whereas the largest glacier, Teton Glacier, lost 17 ± 3% of the 1967 area. Volume loss for the three glaciers was estimated to be 3.20 ± 0.46 million cubic meters over the period of 1967 to 2002. Bottom line: The glaciers are shrinking.
One study alone does not prove world climate is changing, much less that people are causing a change. Nevertheless, glaciers are a long-term integrator of climate effects, a canary in the coal mine, so to speak. Book your reservations to hike the Tetons now.
[Please note: I have quoted and paraphrased freely from the article, but the interpretation is my own.]
Tags: climate change, GIS, glaciers
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December 7th, 2011
JAWRA Associate Editors (AE’s) serve as primary advisors to the JAWRA Editor. Responsibilities fall into two areas: reviews and subject development. The Water Quality Monitoring position handles between 15 and 20 papers per year. All manuscripts are handled through our ScholarOne Manuscripts™system, with the AE selecting reviewers and, when reviews return, making a recommendation to the Editor. AE’s are encouraged to seek out qualified authors in their subject areas and encourage them to submit papers to JAWRA. These could be individual submittals or as featured collections of related papers organized around an introduction.
The AE for Water Quality Monitoring sees a lot of interesting and sometimes controversial manuscripts. As mentioned in an earlier posting, Joe Delfino would like to help his replacement (such as Joe can be replaced!) ease into the position. So, the new AE will get a real running start on his or her responsibilities!
Associate editorship is a volunteer position earning our heartfelt thanks and an invitation to our annual AE luncheon. It also offers the opportunity to make a difference on the cutting edge of multidisciplinary water resources. The term of an AE is three years, but may be extended by mutual agreement.
Interested individuals should email the Editor at editor@awra.org. We are happy to answer any questions. We will hold this position open at a minimum until January 31, (update) February 29, 2012, but early application is encouraged.
Tags: associate editor, water quality
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December 5th, 2011
The Wall Street Journal this weekend carried an excellent article, “Citizen Scientists.” Covering the medical field, it described how ordinary citizens are beginning to conduct their own research into medical issues. Their techniques are becoming increasingly sophisticated, though they still often fall short of the “gold standard” of medical research.
The water field has its own version of citizen scientists in the many school and community sampling efforts to study local waters. Though techniques are not always state-of-the-art — flow-adjusted, cross-sectional water-quality sampling, for example, still is a rarity — they contribute valuable information at places not usually visited by government sampling programs.
The Wall Street Journal article mentioned the problem citizen scientists have in extracting data from professional medical research: Competition among researchers causes them to tightly hold onto their data. This is one aspect in which water resources differs from medicine, at least in the United States. Led by EPA and the USGS, virtually all major water-resources databases are freely available to the public. As I’ve said before, we’re lucky not to have the big bucks afflicting our field! 
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December 2nd, 2011
Joe Delfino
Associate Editor for Water Quality Monitoring Joe Delfino has served JAWRA for what seems like ages. AWRA recognized his accomplishments last year by conferring the honor of AWRA Fellow. What more can I say? Joe has been one of my most valued confidants in editing JAWRA. A large proportion of our articles are much the better for his input.
Joe and I talked in Albuquerque at last month’s Annual Conference. Joe indicated he is thinking about retirement and would like to wind down his involvement with JAWRA. Typical of Joe’s commitment, he’d like to help a replacement ease into the job. So, please watch for an announcement which will appear shortly.
Thank you, Joe, for all you have done. And, you’re not off the hook yet!
Tags: water quality
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December 2nd, 2011
This weekend, December 3-4, 2011, the Wiley Online Library will be pushing through a new release, and it will cause temporary interruptions in access to JAWRA. There will be a message posted on the website. We apologize for any inconvenience.
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December 2nd, 2011
December 2011 article (early view): “Water Quality Model Uncertainty Analysis of a Point-Point Source Phosphorus Trading Program,” by Josef S. Kardos and Christopher C. Obropta.
The study identified how water quality model uncertainty affects outcomes of potential trades of total phosphorus (TP) between wastewater treatment plants. The uncertainty analysis found no evidence to suggest that the outcome of trades between wastewater treatment plants, as compared with command and control regulation, will significantly increase uncertainty in the attainment of dissolved oxygen surface water quality standards, site-specific chlorophyll a criteria, and reduction targets for diverted TP load at potential hot spots in the watershed. Each simulated trading scenario demonstrated parity with or improvement from the command and control approach at the TMDL critical locations, and low risk of hot spots elsewhere.
In addition, the study produced an efficient uncer- tainty analysis whose LHS based method could be replicated by regulators charged with administer- ing a WQT program and assessing its various risks. The method’s efficiency and practicality directly address a main obstacle that has hindered a wider practice of uncertainty analyses of water quality models.
[Please note: I have quoted and paraphrased freely from the article, but the interpretation is my own!]
Tags: phosphorus, trading
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November 30th, 2011
December 2011 article (early view): “Threats to Riparian Ecosystems in Western North America: An Analysis of Existing Literature,” by Boris Poff, Karen A. Koestner, Daniel G. Neary, and Victoria Henderson
This literature review does more than simply list publications. Judging from topics of papers, it looks at how threats to riparian ecosystems have been perceived in the literature.
A total of 453 journal articles, reports, books, and book chapters addressing threats to riparian ecosystems in western North America were analyzed to identify, quantify, and qualify the major threats to these ecosystems as represented in the existing literature. Publications were identified either as research, policy, literature review, historical comparison, or management papers. While the types of threats vary on spatial and temporal scales, some persist through decades in western North America. This analysis shows that grazing has been perceived as a dominant threat since the 1980s, but has been diminishing in the past decade, while invasive species, dams and, in recent years, climate change are increasingly represented in the literature as threats to riparian ecosystems in western North America.
[Please note: I have quoted and paraphrased freely from the article, but the interpretation is my own!]
Tags: riparian ecology
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November 30th, 2011
If you’ve wondered why this blog has been a little quieter than usual, this photo explains why. I have been out in Oak Park, Illinois with James, our first grandchild. James was born November 7th, and is a delight. Just had to brag!
I can work on the road, but there are a lot of distractions. I’m back home now. A whole bunch of stuff has accumulated in my queue, which I will deal with starting tomorrow.
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