2009-04-23_AgendaPacket - Laserfiche WebLink

Home

, ~ ~ ~.. r ;/ a ~`~ ~ ri ~~~ 2 ~ ~~ r ~ sy ~,~. P,~ ~'~' r ~~ ~ ~~ ~ ; '~ -.,. - ~ +~~/ ~ ~ ~ .-~-;: } j ~~# '=1 February ended with prospective graduate'studentsspenthng time on the St. Paul and Duluth campuseslearning about the Water Resources Science (WRS) program. Prospective students met with faculty who share: their research interests, attended formal meetings on the program's features and requirements, and spent time with current WRS students to hear about life in the program from the students' perspective. It was a time of excitement and high energy. One young woman told me that she has applied to three graduate programs across the country, but that the WRS program is her first choice because it is broad and deep and has a sound track record. Her comment made me reflect on what makes this program so special, and I have to conclude that its success is multi-faceted. The young woman I spoke to mentioned that our program was one of the earliest graduate programs to focus on water resources. Thanks to the foresight of several faculty over ten years ago, we have a robust graduate program that is training our future professors, researchers, policy makers and practi- tioners. The WRS program is an interdisciplinary program that draws from two campuses and multiple colleges. The faculty is well respected and represents the breadth of disciplines that touch water resources. Students are exposed to local, state and national experts, such as Dr. Pai-Yei Whung, the chief scientist at the US Environmental Protection Agency, who visited the Wa- ter Resources Center in January. That same day, students had the opportunity to hear from an official from the US Department of Agriculture.. Many of you water resources partners in the public and private spheres are also responsible for helping to make this graduate program attractive to many top-notch students. Directly and indirectly, you provide opportunities for students to engage in and research water chemistry, policy, hydrology, new technolo- giesfor urban and rural settings, and many other types of work. Those of you who come to lecture, or invite students to learn more about water resources in your sector, add to the rich experience of our students. Many times when I am at off-campus meetings, I am aware that various initiatives being discussed include research by WRS students and faculty. The fact the Min- nesota has a strong reputation in managing its water resources increases students' desire to come to Minnesota to study. So as students consider applying to the WRS program, they clearly take into account the high quality of faculty and research facilities. They also know they are coming to a program strength- ened by sound partnerships in the greater Minnesota water resources community. _ ~ `~1~2// Faye Sleeper ~~~G ~. WRC co-director U WRC Grants, continued from page 1 receives direct wastewater discharge. PIs Matt Simcik (Environmen- tal Health Sciences) and John Gulliver (Civil Engineering) hypoth- esize that a significant sow-ce of PFCs to surface waters is m-ban stormwater, which receives PFCs from commercial, industriat and residential sources within the watershed. They propose to sample temporal composites of urban stormwater integrated over storm events and analyze the samples for a suite of PFCs. These PFC con- centrations will be combined with detailed land-use information for the watershed to model the source apportionment of PFCs to urban stormwater. Objectives of this study are to quantify the magnitude of PFCs loading from urban stormwater, to identify unique land-use characteristics that lead to PFC contamination, and to determine the efficacy of suspended sediment removal as a technique for removing PFCs from storm-eater. Reductive degradation of pesticides: Solid-state and solution-phase dynamics Groundwater is contaminated by many human activities, including intentional and accidental releases of pesticides and leaching of pesti- cides from sites of application into subsurface soils. Many pesticides are amenable to degradation by way of abiotic reductive degradation, and many degradation reactions occur at the mineral-water inter- face. William Arnold (Civil Engineering) and Lee Penn (Chemistry) propose to quantify the changes in mineralogy of sediment samples caused by reductive transformation of selected pesticides and quan- titatively link these solid-state changes to the evoh~ing kinetics of contaminant degradation. They hypothesize that natural sediments under reducing conditions continuously exposed to oxidized con- taminants develop apseudo-steady-state reactivity. The study uses a combination of batch and column experiments in which the kinetics of pesticide reduction are quantified and changes in mineralogy are also quantified using a variety of solid-state characterization tech- niques. Quantifying pseudo-steady-state reactivity will determine potential for long-term contaminant attenuation. Fate and bioavailability of litter mercury in Minnesota streams and rivers Mercury (Hg) contamination is found in many aquatic habitats worldwide. Com•ersion of inorganic Hg to monomethyhnercury (MeHg) represents the most important process in regulating the bioavailability of Hg and subsequent Hg concentrations found in top predators within food webs. The majority of previous research on environmental regulation of Hg bioavailability focused on the methylation of Hg in sediments. New evidence shows that non-sed- imentary compartments, such as periphyton and leaf litter, function as important sites for MeHg production in aquatic ecosystems. Leaf litter from riparian zones may play an important role in stream Hg dynamics because leaf litter is a primary source of energy and nutrients to river food webs in the temperate region. Litter is also an important source of Hg derived fi-om the atmosphere during the growing phase. Hg deposits on leaves during the growing season, and then leaf litter delivers Hg to the forest floor. PIs Jacques Finlay (Ecology Evolution and Behavior) and Edward Nater (Soil, Water, and Climate) recently demonstrated that stream water chemistry and litter species can influence Hg release and subsequent methyla- tion of Hg in litter in laboratory incubation experiments. These results suggest that water quality variation as well as riparian tree species within and among streams and rivers may influence the Continued on page 3 -_ _- -- _ -` -- -- d~ ~ ~ Y'd1Y1 _- - ____ ~''