October 01, 2008 –
Oladele Ogunseitan tumbles ground-up cell phones in acidic solutions. By measuring the chemicals that have leached into the water, he can identify which are the worst culprits in various conditions.
Like a pebble that forms concentric rings when dropped into a pond, water itself generates a profound ripple effect. A product of nature, it cascades into often-contentious issues of supply and demand, contamination and regulation.
From the California Delta to the Colorado River, from bustling cities to squalid slums, from amber waves of grain to arid Sub-Saharan wheat fields, the need for water connects all living things while cruelly dividing the “haves” from the “have-nots.”
Water’s accessibility and affordability have created a false sense of entitlement for many. Turn on the tap or the garden hose or the irrigation system, and out it pours.
But water arrives without a guarantee. More than one billion people in the world – one in six – who lack access to safe drinking water can attest to that. Eighty-eight percent of all disease is caused by unsafe drinking water, inadequate sanitation and poor hygiene. And water-related diseases kill more children age 5 and younger than any other cause; every six seconds a child dies due to lack of clean water.
Water crises are not the exclusive domain of third-world countries, either. Global warming, aging infrastructures, industrial toxins and unchecked population growth threaten water supplies in even the most sophisticated locales.
Scientists are hoping their work can avert the looming catastrophe. “The sustained availability of adequate clean water will increasingly depend on advances made by water professionals,” says Bill Cooper, UC Irvine professor of civil and environmental engineering, and director of the university’s Urban Water Research Center.
More and more, those advances rely on information technology. Experts agree that ready access to data is vital to maintaining water quality and increasing the odds of its sustainability.
Sensing Sources
High above the earth, NASA and NOAA satellites circle the planet. Onboard sensor arrays receive and record signals emitted by clouds and objects on the ground, such as foliage and soil. This electromagnetic, near real-time information is relayed to receivers, where it can be accessed by hydrometeorologists like Soroosh Sorooshian, Bisher Imam, Kuo-lin Hsu and Rafael L. Bras.
The four researchers are affiliated with UCI’s Center for Hydrometeorology and Remote Sensing (CHRS), a CALIT2 partner. The center specializes in using remote-sensing information and computer models to improve understanding of the land-surface hydrologic process.
Sorooshian, distinguished professor of civil and environmental engineering, and director of CHRS, compares the remote sensors to MRIs used in diagnostic medicine. “The doctor can see what’s happening on the surface, but there are other things he won’t know until he gets in there. An MRI penetrates and gives the doctor information in three dimensions.” In the same way, he explains, remote sensors pick up signals along the electromagnetic spectrum that the human eye cannot discern.
Remote sensing aids Bras’ research efforts to determine how deforestation affects the exchange of energy and water between the atmosphere and the Earth’s surface. The new Henry Samueli School of Engineering dean, who came to UCI as a distinguished professor in September from MIT, has studied the Amazon extensively. “It’s a question of understanding what impacts result from the massive land changes related to deforestation, and understanding changes on the energy balance, the water supply and the viability of the forest itself,” he explains.
He credits remote sensors for providing accuracy and depth of information to his research. “[Before sensors] we depended on point observations that were few and far between, mostly from accessible populated regions,” he says. “Now we have unprecedented observations of the whole earth because satellites allow us to look where we couldn’t look before.”
Researchers are also combining remote data with information from other sources – for example, giant snow pillows that continuously measure the weight of the snowpack in the Sierra Nevada. Their goal is to develop models that can interpret the satellite signals and improve hydrologic predictions – where will water originate, what path will it take and how much will ultimately find its way into aquifers and reservoirs?
Sorooshian focuses on surface hydrology, mainly rainfall-runoff modeling. The mathematical modeling tools he and his research team developed are used by hydrologic services worldwide for flood forecasting.
Experts agree that flooding will continue to worsen as wetlands are drained for farming, and new highways, housing and shopping centers are built on river flood plains.
In addition, many scientists view climate change as a catalyst that increases the occurrence and severity of storms and droughts, which in combination can increase the likelihood of flooding.
Rainfall observation traditionally has relied on ground gauges and radar systems, but the limitations of those systems hamper the flow of data. “If a thunderstorm produces a flood but there are no gauges in that location, the storm is not even observed,” Sorooshian says. “And radar has its own limitations; it can’t penetrate mountains or tall structures, so you can’t get good measurements. The alternative is to look from space.”
But how do you use this constant flow of data to increase understanding?
“We’re working on merging the information we get from the satellites with the information we get from gauges. Each of them has different characteristics,” Imam explains.
Diego Rosso checks the aeration efficiency of his oxygen diffuser. The faster oxygen dissolves into the water, the more efficient a treatment process is.
Forecasting Supply
A project called “Califorecast” mathematically combines once-daily microwave data from satellite sensors with hourly, real-time data from snowpack ground gauges. With that information, researchers devise a current-condition report and a six-month water-supply forecast for various sites around the state.
“We are focusing our modeling studies on California, but whatever techniques we develop can be implemented globally,” Imam says.
The center is making satellite precipitation data accessible to users worldwide through a combination data-access and visualization tool researchers call G-WADI. In cooperation with UNESCO’s International Hydrologic Programme, the CALIT2 researchers developed a site that characterizes global precipitation by depicting satellite data in 250-meter x 250-meter pixels. The high-resolution precipitation information and estimates can be retrieved from any desktop or laptop computer. (http://hydis.eng.uci.edu/gwadi/)
Click on a specific country, city, political region or watershed and the site accesses rainfall data in three-hour, six-hour or daily increments during the most-recent 72-hour period, as well as monthly averages. Moreover, clicking an individual pixel on the map yields the value of rainfall from a 100-kilometer-square area, making available longitude, latitude, average elevation, distribution of aridity and land type. According to Imam, future applications will include cloud-tracking algorithms that will speed rainfall prediction.
The site garnered international recognition last year for UCI, winning the prestigious Great Man-Made River Prize from UNESCO; CHRS researchers shared the honors with the University of Arizona. The award recognizes outstanding achievement in water-resource research and has only been awarded two other times: in 2001 and 2005; last year was the first time U.S. institutions were recognized.
Running Dry
One-third of the water used by 25 million Southern Californians is transported from the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, over the Tehachapi Mountains, through the 444-mile-long California Aqueduct. Another third flows to the southland from the Colorado River, and the rest is obtained from local sources.
The delta, which also irrigates hundreds of thousands of acres of Central Valley farmland, is on “the brink of disaster,” according to U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein. Rising sea levels threaten the freshwater estuary; a levee break could disrupt delivery for up to two years; and a large earthquake could destroy the system entirely. In addition, the delta smelt, a tiny fish that makes its home in the 16,000 square miles of wetland and open water, is a federal- and state-designated threatened species, a distinction that is reducing the amount of water pumped from the area.
The Colorado River system has problems of its own. A report issued by the Scripps Institution of Oceanography last February cautioned that human demand, natural phenomena and man-made climate change are creating a deficit of almost one million acre-feet of water per year from the system, an amount that could supply 8 million people. In March 2007, Lake Mead was at 46 percent of capacity – approximately 118 feet below normal. The report warned of a 50 percent chance it could dry up completely by 2021 if consumers don’t change their behaviors.
“When this water was allocated to seven Western states in the 1920s – Arizona, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah, Wyoming, and California – it was based on high flow rates. Now it’s oversubscribed,” says Cooper. “If [all of the subscribers] took all of their water at the same time, they’d be taking out more than is going in. That’s scary.”
There is another problem with importing water: as it journeys through the aqueducts, it consumes the largest single chunk of California’s available electricity.
Treating water so consumers can use it gobbles up energy, too. In research funded by the California Energy Commission, Diego Rosso, assistant professor of civil and environmental engineering, seeks to reduce the carbon footprint of water and wastewater treatment processes. He compares the energy consumed and the amount of greenhouse gas emitted when different approaches are used.
“We are really scarce in water resources and it requires very energy-intensive processes to reclaim water from wastewater or out of seawater. We are trying to evaluate different scenarios to provide decision-makers with something tangible, so they’ll know the carbon footprint of their decisions.”
Sometimes the results are surprising. Improving the quality of a lagoon or wetland so it discharges cleaner water sounds like a good idea, when in some cases, the improvement process could release more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere than using a different process to clean the water downstream.
“Engineers used to think only in terms of dollars,” he says. “Now we have a new paradigm. Instead of dollars, let’s use a different currency – carbon emissions.”
Controlling Contaminants
Then there’s the third source of Southern California’s supply: groundwater. Purification systems keep disease-causing organisms at bay, but industrial toxins, lead, pharmaceutical compounds and pesticides from agricultural runoff are polluting rivers and streams, finding their way into the water supply and the oceans.
Oladele Ogunseitan, UCI professor of public health, is finding ways to eliminate them.
A new $1.62 million multi-campus University of California Green Materials Program that Ogunseitan directs seeks to develop nontoxic alternatives to everyday products, such as electronics, plastics and pesticides.
Until new materials are developed and implemented, however, the toxins from today’s products leach into the groundwater when they are discarded. Ogunseitan is trying to determine whether there are acceptable levels for these toxins that don’t impair human health and if so, what those levels are for each chemical.
Researchers use certain micro-organisms as sensors. Hemoglobin, a protein in human blood that readily attaches to lead, resembles proteins that are also present in these micro-organisms. Because the bacteria’s responses to lead in water are similar to those of humans, researchers can determine how much lead is potentially dangerous to people. “We try to simulate how things really are so we can improve the standards,” Ogunseitan says.
His research also focuses on learning where contaminants in runoff originate and how best to keep them out of the groundwater. A recent project used GIS maps of an Orange County city to identify the location of 600 storm drains. By measuring the types and levels of pollutants flowing into the drains, the research team was able to test 10 different filters on different contaminants, determining the most effective way to remove each.
Some pollutants do make their way into the open ocean, potentially affecting water quality at one or more of California’s 400 beaches. Stanley Grant, professor and chair of chemical engineering and materials science, uses sensors to measure temperature, salinity and turbidity in water at local beaches, correlating that data to changes in water quality. His research team determined that changes in water quality can be indicated by changes in the sensor data. This near-real-time detection ability allows authorities to post warnings or close beaches much more quickly than they otherwise could.
Water policy expert David Feldman believes IT can help make data more understandable.
Paying the Price
Investment bank Goldman Sachs held a “Top Five Risks” conference in London last June. A panel of international experts discussing resource scarcity predicted that a catastrophic water shortage could be an even bigger threat to mankind this century than soaring food prices and the depletion of energy reserves.
Nicholas Stern, author and former chief economist of the World Bank, said governments have been slow to accept the reality that usable water is running out. “Water is not a renewable resource. People have been mining it without restraint because it has not been priced properly,” he said.
Americans are prodigious consumers. The average American uses 100 to 176 gallons of water at home each day, while the average African family uses five gallons a day.
After California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger declared a statewide drought in June, Los Angeles implemented restrictions for residents watering their lawns, hosing down paved surfaces and washing their cars. There is already discussion of government-mandated rationing next year if conditions don’t improve.
Add to that the ongoing battles – intensified when water is scarce – between agriculture and urbanization, Northern California and Southern, the environment and industrialization. About 75 percent of California’s water is used for agriculture, while 90 percent of its population lives in cities. Likewise, about 2/3 of California’s rainfall occurs in the north, while 2/3 of its population lives in the more arid south.
How does a shrinking commodity stretch to meet the needs of all constituents?
Enabling Reform
UCI political scientist and water policy expert David Feldman studies the ways in which communities and jurisdictions deal with conflicts over water use and allocation. “If we’re going to sustainably manage the resource, we’ve got to figure out a way to meet the needs of the environment at the same time we meet human demand,” he states.
“You have to involve the public – lots of stakeholder groups. There has to be a lot of negotiation, a lot of bargaining and a lot of compromise. It can’t be done top-down; it has to be done bottom-up.”
Feldman sees information technology as a means to that end, both in educating policy-makers and in obtaining public cooperation. “Water policy increasingly relies on very accurate ways of depicting information to decision-makers at all levels,” he says. “Ways of graphically presenting information, layering it and mapping it are very important.
A report he recently co-authored for NOAA’s Climate Change Science Program examines how water managers use graphically-depicted climate models for making better decisions in such areas as abating flood hazards and ensuring public supply.
He advocates engaging the public in the same way. One approach is to develop platforms on which students, homeowners and community groups could participate in behavior-and-consequence-type games based on real information.
“It would be really useful for schools and communities to look at these things modeled out in such a way that they can generate scenarios, in essence create their own endings. The challenge is to get people to become more cognizant of where their water comes from, how it gets to their communities and the pressures upon the resource.”
Cooper envisions public seminars utilizing the power of high-resolution visualization walls like HIPerWall. “You could show people the big picture of how water works,” he says. “Creating interactive dialogue with the public helps get their buy-in.”
Drawing on a seemingly endless supply of energy, Cooper works tirelessly to raise awareness of the complex issues surrounding the pure liquid that’s earned the nickname “the new oil.” He networks day and night with public agencies, water researchers, politicians, citizens and anyone else willing to lend an ear.
“The statistics are just horrible,” he says. “To think that a billion people around the world don’t have access to clean water …” he shakes his head in disbelief, “and we take it for granted, at $2 per thousand gallons. That is appalling in this day and age.”
— Anna Lynn Spitzer
