2009 Major Sponsored Programs and Faculty Awards for Research and Creative Activity

From discoveries in nanoscience, nutrigenomics and software engineering to innovative initiatives in math achievement, child welfare, water and climate change, UNL faculty are engaged in meeting the challenges of a changing world. This eighth annual “Major Sponsored Programs and Faculty Awards for Research and Creative Activity” booklet highlights the successes of University of Nebraska–Lincoln faculty during 2009. It lists the funding sources, projects and investigators on major grants and sponsored program awards received during the year; published books and scholarship; fellowships and other recognitions; start-ups and intellectual property licenses; and performances and exhibitions in the fine and performing arts. This impressive list grows each year and I am pleased to present evidence of our faculty’s accomplishments. Large grants in fields ranging from rural and math education to water and renewable energy to virology, redox biology and nanomaterials enable UNL faculty to address important challenges facing Nebraska, our nation and the world. Our external research funding reflects their achievements, reaching a new record total of $122 million in fiscal year 2009, marking a 13 percent increase over last year. We are harnessing this momentum to advance new initiatives with an innovative perspective and research that responds to a changing world. We are reaching beyond our institutional, state and national borders to build partnerships that seek solutions to global challenges, provide our students with an interdisciplinary, international perspective, and enhance our state’s economy. As you read the accomplishments in this booklet, I invite you to imagine how the innovative and collaborative research, scholarship and creative activity of our faculty is changing our world and meeting the complex global challenges that lie before us

Global groundwater modeling and monitoring: opportunities and challenges

Groundwater is by far the largest unfrozen freshwater resource on the planet. It plays a critical role as the bottom of the hydrologic cycle, redistributing water in the subsurface and supporting plants and surface water bodies. However, groundwater has historically been excluded or greatly simplified in global models. In recent years, there has been an international push to develop global scale groundwater modeling and analysis. This progress has provided some critical first steps. Still, much additional work will be needed to achieve a consistent global groundwater framework that interacts seamlessly with observational datasets and other earth system and global circulation models. Here we outline a vision for a global groundwater platform for groundwater monitoring and prediction and identify the key technological and data challenges that are currently limiting progress. Any global platform of this type must be interdisciplinary and cannot be achieved by the groundwater modeling community in isolation. Therefore, we also provide a high-level overview of the groundwater system, approaches to groundwater modeling and the current state of global groundwater representations, such that readers of all backgrounds can engage in this challenge

IIHR Currents Winter 2011-12

https://ir.uiowa.edu/iihrcurrents/1005/thumbnail.jp

The History of the UNL Water Center from 1964

Water is an integral part of Nebraska’s economy and well being in a state that depends on an adequate supply for all uses, including agricultural, municipal, industrial, recreational and wildlife habitat. Nebraska is fortunate with regard to its water supply, having tremendous groundwater reserves which are estimated to be in excess of two billion acrefeet (an acre-foot being enough water to cover one acre of land with a foot of water, or approximately 325,000 gallons), combined with an estimated annual precipitation of 86 million acre-feet and annual average surface water inflows of 1.7 million acre-feet, give the state adequate supplies of water. Nebraska has enough groundwater to cover the state to a depth of nearly 40 feet. However, the distribution of these waters as well as economic and other constraints of water utilization, often leave Nebraskans with challenges that make planning and management decisions difficult. Within this background, the University of Nebraska—Lincoln (UNL) Water Center has facilitated water-related research, trained the next generation of water scientists, lawyers, engineers, economists and managers and assisted in applying research to Nebraska’s and the nation’s water problems. A primary goal has been to use federal and state resources to coordinate and administer water-related activities within existing units of Nebraska’s entire post-secondary educational system. It has been said that we can’t know where we’re going until we understand where we’ve been, so as the Water Center looks to the future and observes its 40th anniversary, it is appropriate to review our beginnings. This report highlights the Water Center’s contributions to Nebraska and the nation. It documents why the network of state water resources research institutes was created and reports on some major accomplishments and programs of the Water Center over the past 40 years. One note: Because the Water Center has had many different names over the years, it will be referred to as the “Water Center” throughout this publication, no matter what its official name was at the time