- Author: Katherine Markovich
We've had several weeks now to fully recover from the most recent American Geophysical Union (AGU) Fall Meeting, which takes place in San Francisco each December. The AGU Fall Meeting is the largest geoscience-centric conference in the world, bringing together nearly 20,000 attendees in 2014. This was my second time attending; the first time was several years ago when I was still a wee undergrad from UT Austin presenting the fruits of my Honors Thesis. It was during that 2011 AGU Fall Meeting that I stumbled upon the CCWAS booth, and having never heard of IGERT traineeships, was immediately intrigued by the opportunity.
Three years and three cohorts later, the CCWAS booth still had a strong presence in the exhibitor hall, but we also had an incredible showing in the form of oral, poster, and pop-up talk presentations. Here's a brief recap.
CCWAS Principal Investigators
Reed Maxwell gave an invited talk on hyperresolution integrated modeling of groundwater and surface water scaling over the continental US as part of an all-star session with other hydrology big hitters such as Dennis Lettenmaier,
Bridget Scanlon, and Jay Famiglietti. Graham Fogg spoke about his work with the connected network paradigm, which is a potential solution to the observation bias in hydraulic conductivity measurements for regional groundwater flow and transport modeling.
2012 Cohort
Alison Whipple, who recently advanced to PhD candidacy, gave a poster on characterizing past and future flood regimes of the Cosumnes River. Her work moves beyond the traditional flood frequency methodology with novel statistical cluster analysis and ecologically relevant metrics. Posters also included Alan Rhoades with a poster on his work with variable resolution modeling of Sierra Nevada snowpack. He developed a 25-year ensemble climatology for the region within the Community Earth System model (a global climate model), which provided an exciting case study for the variable resolution approach.
2013 Cohort
Laura Condon gave an invited talk on the spatial patterns gleaned from her work on the high-resolution integrated hydrologic model of the Continental US. She found that topography as opposed to recharge controls the water table in the arid West at the regional scale, but that subsurface heterogeneity complicates those patterns at the local scale. James Gilbert gave a poster presentation on his modeling research, which focuses on the impacts of climate change on the San Joaquin basin—arguably ground zero for the clash between agricultural production and groundwater overdraft in California. Lauren Adams' poster had such a clever title that I dare not paraphrase it: “Better Redd than Dead: Optimizing Reservoir Operations for Wild Fish Survival During Drought.” Katie Markovich gave a poster presentation on her work using integrated hydrologic models to characterize the relative impacts of future climate scenarios on alpine hydrology, as well as the hydrogeologic controls on feedbacks to warming and drought. Jorge Guerra's poster focused on Tempest, a modeling framework he is developing that allows for investigation and intercomparison of high-order numerical methods, and improves atmospheric dynamics in the vertical direction where existing methods are deficient.
2014 Cohort
Stephen Maples used his work with the USGS Nevada Water Science Center for his poster, which identified plant-produced organic compounds as pathways and reservoirs for tritium transport in the Amargosa Desert. Alejo Kraus-Polk gave an engaging pop-up talk on reconciling human needs with hydroecological health of the San Joaquin River. The pop-up sessions are a new addition to the AGU Fall Meeting, where early career students can gain experience communicating their research in a creative yet concise format.
Ultimately, we socialized, we talked about research, we exchanged business cards, and we all had a great time. Looking forward to seeing what CCWAS brings next year!