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August 30th, 2011

Volume I, Issue 1

A word from the Director:
This is the first installment in a series of bimonthly newsletters from the UF Water Institute to reach colleagues, students, affiliate faculty and our extended network of interested parties to keep you informed about exciting and critical water-related topics with which the WI community is engaged. I encourage WI faculty, students and partners to contact us with water-related news items that you would like to share for future editions of the WI newsletter.

Sincerely,
Wendy Graham, Ph.D.
Water Institute Director

Water Institute Graduate Fellows program established, welcomes new fellows
On August 15th, the 2011 Water Institute Graduate Fellows (WIGF) program kicked off as seven Fellows reported to the University of Florida to begin an interdisciplinary research program to develop new science, management and policy needed to establish and implement Numeric Nutrient Criteria for Florida waters. The UF Water Institute, with support from the Colleges of Agricultural and Life Sciences, Liberal Arts and Sciences, School of Natural Resources and the Environment, the Department of Environmental Engineering Sciences and the Swisher Foundation, announced the opportunity for the innovative educational program in October 2010 and requested proposals from WI Affiliate Faculty teams for the first cohort theme. A team led by Dr. Mark Brown (Environmental Engineering) submitted the winning proposal for the first cohort. Each of the Fellows, working with faculty from different departments, will craft a dissertation around a topic based on his or her discipline, while corresponding to the team’s overall theme of nutrient dynamics, management and policy. The Water Institute will again seek proposals from Faculty to support a second cohort of Fellows to be recruited in 2013. For more information on the WIGF program visit http://waterinstitute.ufl.edu/WIGF/index.html.

NOAA awards grant to Water Institute for collaboration on climate and public water supply
A NOAA-CSI Water grant awarded to the Water Institute, Florida Climate Institute and Center for Public Issues Education in August will focus on increasing the relevance and use of climate variability, climate change and sea level rise data and models for Florida Water Utilities. The 2-year project will build on a collaborative working group that partners a multidisciplinary team of faculty from UF and FSU with six major public water supply utilities and three Water Management Districts in Florida. Workshops will bring researchers, water suppliers, resource managers, planners and decision makers across Florida together to assess and evaluate the applicability of currently available climate data and models from multiple perspectives. The grant provides a unique opportunity for the collaborative development of new industry-relevant tools that have been vetted through the academic, public water supply and regulatory communities in Florida. For more information about the Public Water Supply Utilities Climate Impacts Working Group, our partners and activities to date go to http://waterinstitute.ufl.edu/workshops_panels/PWSU-CIWG.html.

Water Institute Director appointed to serve on National Academy Numeric Nutrient Criteria Panel
Dr. Wendy Graham has been appointed to serve on the National Academy of Sciences Committee on Review of EPA's Economic Analysis of Final Water Quality Standards for Nutrients for Lakes and Flowing Waters in Florida. The Committee is comprised of 14 national experts in science, engineering, economics and law. The committee's review will focus on key assumptions and methods within EPA’s economic analysis, which may account for discrepancies between EPA’s analysis and the economic analyses of several stakeholder groups. The Committee held its first meeting in Orlando on July 25-26, 2011, and will meet three more times before issuing its report in February 2012. For information on the committee see http://dels.nas.edu/Committee/Committee-Economic-Analysis-Final/DELS-WSTB-11-01.