The recent uproar over Neil Young’s comments about Alberta’s oilsands development got me thinking about energy and water. Water is used in many of our energy generation methods. Whether it’s hydro power, thermal generation, oil extraction, etc., water is vital to most current energy production methods. That might not be a problem except water is also vital for agriculture, industry, drinking water, domestic use, waste removal...
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I recently went in search of water quality data related to the chemical spill near Charleston West Virginia. As of today, 1/20/2014, there are serious questions being raised about the safety of the water and what chemical information is actually being used to communicate toxicity. After reading this…I opened the ol’ iPad and jumped on the internet. I am always curious about the water resources...
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The rate of downloads of the paper “5 Best Practices for Building Better Stage-Discharge Rating Curves” indicates a very high latent demand for guidance on how to develop rating curves. A stage-discharge rating curve represents the relation of water level at a given point in a stream to a corresponding volumetric rate of flow. The shape of a curve can be discovered by conducting synchronized measurements of...
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There is no shortage of differing opinions about the hydraulic fracturing ‘fracking’ technique for shale gas extraction. I am impressed at the influence of this technique on global geo-politics. Previously inaccessible hydrocarbon reserves are changing the global distribution of wealth. There is economic incentive to be an early adopter because there is risk that late adopters will have to develop infrastructure when prices are much lower...
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It has been an incredible year! Thank you for being part of the Hydrology Corner family in 2013. We appreciate your interest and it's been a pleasure discussing best practices, data management, water quality and trends in the water monitoring industry with you all. We would like to wish you all the best for the holiday season!...
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Aquatic Informatics is a software company. Software is a set of algorithms that take inputs and produce some sort of output based on encoded rules. In order to be most efficient the human machine interface needs to be designed along a work flow of ‘best practice’. The AI user group meeting is one of our primary methods for ensuring that our software both ‘does the right...
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Hello from AQUARIUS Insider Day 2! We have a full room of AQUARIUS Insiders and more than a few hundred people watching online. I hope that you found some useful tips and trick from my presentation this morning on using AQUARIUS for "Water Quality Management and TMDL Compliance". I have a bag full of Water Quality ideas for future webinars, so stay tuned. The more I watch...
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Scientific knowledge shapes many of our collective beliefs and decisions, but what of its integrity? It’s a question that’s receiving increasing attention, most recently because of a strategically orchestrated sting operation by Science Magazine’s John Bohannon involving the submission of intentionally flawed papers to over 300 open-access journals 1. It revealed a less than pretty picture of the state of the peer review and quality control...
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Clean, safe, water delivery to your home is a really good idea. Sanitary treatment of water waste from your home is a really good idea. Protecting valued assets from periodic destruction is a really good idea. These have always been good ideas but the Roman model of aqueducts languished for millennia. It is only in the past 50 to 100 years that engineering and technology have...
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I have just returned from a trip to India where I provided training to a group of hydrologists and water resource managers from the United Nations and from the Afghanistan Ministry of Energy and Water. This trip was enlightening, challenging, and perspective changing. I always thought of my work in the Arctic with Water Survey of Canada as some of the most challenging field work there was. The...
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