Nevada hydrologist appointed to a national panel on water research

By Stephanie Tavares

Wednesday, Feb. 24, 2010 | 10:49 a.m.

A Nevada hydrologist has been appointed to a select National Academy of Sciences panel on water research and hydrology funding, the Academy announced today.

UNR professor Scott Tyler will join a 14 member panel of nationally and internationally recognized scientists charged with analyzing and identifying new research opportunities in hydrology. The panel will be meet over the next two years to formulate the strategies for improving water resource management and environmental engineering across the U.S.

Professor and hydrologist Scott Tyler of the University of Nevada, Reno has been appointed to a select National Academy of Sciences panel to help chart future directions of hydrological research and funding for the United States, an especially important task in the arid West as Nevada faces the impacts of climate change.

Tyler is an expert in desert hydrology, groundwater and hydraulic instrumentation and teaches geological sciences and engineering in the College of Science’s Mackay School of Earth Sciences and Engineering and is an adjunct faculty member in Civil and Environmental Engineering. He also participates in the University’s Interdisciplinary Graduate Program of Hydrologic Sciences, one of the top programs of its kind in the nation.

It is critical to reassess water resource in the country as drought continues in the west and other areas are experiences dangerous increases precipitation, Taylor said in a statement. Climate change is expected to exacerbate these problems as precipitation comes in different forms or at different times of year. It is a key time to re-evaluate water resources and management, Tyler said, noting that much of the water management in the inter-mountain west is based on weather data from unusually wet periods in the 19th and early 20th centuries.

“The direction of hydrological research and new technologies will be important in the 21st century, especially in Nevada,” Tyler said in a statement. “For the future, our drinking water and irrigation systems must be capable of handling both larger floods, as well as longer and deeper droughts. "

Other members of the panel include: George M. Hornberger, Vanderbilt University; Emily S. Bernhardt, Duke University; William E. Dietrich, University of California, Berkeley; Dara Entekhabi, Massachusetts Institute of Technology; Graham E. Fogg, University of California, Davis; Efi Foufoula-Georgiou, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis; W. Berry Lyons, The Ohio State University; Kenneth W. Potter, University of Wisconsin-Madison; Henry J. Vaux, Jr., University of California, Berkeley; Claire Welty, University of Maryland Baltimore County; Connie A. Woodhouse, University of Arizona; and Chunmiao Zheng, University of Alabama.