College Station, Texas The Texas Water Resources Institute (TWRI) has announced that it will award 10 research grants to graduate students at universities throughout Texas during 2002-3. The grant competition is conducted annually by TWRI and is funded by the U.S. Geological Survey and the National Institutes for Water Research.
Projects awarded for 2002-03 will be carried out by graduate students and faculty advisors at West Texas A&M University, Rice University, Baylor University, Texas Tech University, the University of Texas at Austin, and Texas A&M University. Several of this year's projects deal with water quality issues, including the impacts of nutrients on streams and rivers and ways to better treat dairy wastes. Other topics being addressed include the use of geographic information systems, flood protection, the fate of antibiotics on aquatic organisms, and agricultural irrigation.
The proposals submitted by these graduate students can be viewed at the TWRI website, http://twri.tamu.edu/projects/00-04/researchProjects/index.html. In the future, TWRI will publicize work done in these projects in Institute-produced newsletters and websites.
TWRI uses this annual competition to foster graduate student research and the development of future scientists at universities throughout Texas. All of the grants began April 1, 2002, and run through March 28, 2003. In each instance, graduate students were awarded $5,000 to begin, expand, or extend research projects. To be eligible for a $5,000 award from TWRI, each student had to provide evidence of $10,000 in matching funds. TWRI received more than 75 proposals for this year's competition. A TWRI advisory team ranked these proposals, which were selected as the projects to be funded.
Research Projects TWRI Will Fund in 2002-03
1. "Enhanced Flood Warnings for the Texas Medical Center: A Second Generation Flood Alert System (FAS2) Graduate Student: Jude Benavides, Rice University, Faculty advisor, Philip B. Bedient, Dept. of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Rice University.
2. "Reduced Phosphorus Pollution from Dairies by Removal of Phosphorus from Wastewater through Precipitation of Struvite." Graduate Student: Amanda Bragg, TAMU Soil and Crop Sciences Department, TAMU, Faculty Advisor: Kevin McInnes.
3. "Higher-Order Statistics in Transport and Evolution of Algae Blooms." Graduate Student: Jordan Furnans, Civil Engineering Department, University of Texas at Austin, Faculty Advisor: Ben R. Hodges.
4. "Real-Time Distributed Runoff Estimation Using NEXRAD Precipitation Data." Graduate Student: Jennifer Hadley, TAMU Department of Forest Science and Spatial Sciences Laboratory, Faculty Advisor: R. Srinivasan.
5. "Reduced Phosphorus Concentrations in Feedlot Manure and Runoff." Graduate Student: Kevin Heflin, West Texas A&M University and TAMU Agricultural Research Center at Amarillo, Faculty Advisor: Brent Auvermann.
6. "Relationship Between Charcoal Rot, Crop Water Use Efficiency, and Irrigation Management In Grain Sorghum. " Graduate Student: Mandy G. Burgess, West Texas A&M University, Faculty Advisor: Charlie Rush.
7. "Fate of a representative pharmaceutical in the environment." Graduate Student: Audra N. Morse, Faculty Advisor: Andrew Jackson.
8. "Urban Forested Wetland Restoration." Graduate Student: Matthew Simmons, TAMU Rangeland Ecology and Management Department, Faculty Advisor: Steven Whisenant.
9. "Adsorption and Desorption of Atrazine on Selected Lake Sediments in Texas," Graduate Student: Judy Vader, Faculty Advisor: Scott Senseman.
10. "The Role of Suspended Clays in Phosphorus Processing by Lotic Periphyton." Graduate Student: June Wolfe, Baylor University and TAMU Blackland Center, Faculty Advisor: Owen Lind, Baylor University.
More information about the Texas Water Resources Institute can be found at its web site: http://twri.tamu.edu.
