ICIWaRM Hosts Ecohydrology Symposium
ALEXANDRIA, VIRGINIA – November 29, 2012. IWR’s International Center for Integrated Water Resources Management (ICIWaRM), under the auspices of UNESCO, recently hosted an Ecohydrology Symposium at IWR. Professor Maciej Zalewski, Director of the European Regional Center for Ecohydrology (ERCE), located in Lodz, Poland, attended and spoke. Prof. Zalewski also represents the Polish Academy of Sciences. ERCE is a sister center to ICIWaRM, as both are UNESCO water centers under the United Nation’s International Hydrological Programme.
Prof. Zalewski presented on “Ecohydrology for the Enhancement of Resilience and Ecosystem Services of River Basins.” He spoke about his center’s framework of ecohydrology projects in the European Union. One key question that he posed was “Why does the world become dry and water ecosystems polluted?” He then went on to examine key relationships that affect water systems and presented a deductive background of ecohydrology theory. He also spoke about mitigation, regulation and urban ecohydrology.
At the symposium, Will Logan, Deputy Director, IWR-ICIWaRM, provided an overview of ICIWaRM. IWR and ICIWaRM Director Bob Pietrowsky provided an overview of IWR and the USACE Civil Works Program. John Hickey from IWR’s Hydrologic Engineering Center presented on the USACE Sustainable Rivers Partnership with The Nature Conservancy. Other presentations included the HEC-EFM (Ecosystems Function Model), SimSuite and other AIS-related watershed-scale tools. Concluding discussions focused on potential collaborative endeavors, such as USACE technology transfer efforts regarding integrated water resources management and watershed investment decision models.
Other participants included Bob Brumbaugh, Hal Cardwell, Janet Cushing, and Aaron Willis from IWR; Sarah Sieloff from United States Agency for International Development (USAID); Eileen Takata from the USACE Los Angeles District (currently on assignment at IWR); and Verne Schneider from the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS).