Overview

The Center for Urban Waters was pleased to host the 2011 UW Water Symposium, held on Monday, 18 April in Kane Hall on the UW Seattle campus. This event continued the long UW tradition of bringing together regional water scientists and engineers for a day of learning, discussions, and fun.

The 2011 UW Water Symposium (formerly the Water Center Annual Review of Research) brought together regional water professionals with UW faculty, students, and staff to explore and discuss the latest advances in aquatic sciences, including hydrology, water quality, stormwater, and Puget Sound regional ecology. The program included excellent keynote speakers as well as opportunities for faculty and students to present their work in platform and poster sessions. Thank you to all who attended!

Best Poster Award

Congratulations to UW graduate student Julie Vano, winner of the Best Poster Award for her poster, "Hydrologic Sensitivities to Warming Temperature and Precipitation Change in the Colorado River Basin".

Archive of Presentations

  • Derek Booth: Treating the symptoms or curing the disease? Stormwater management in the 21st century (PDF)
  • Mike Brett: Fate and transport of nitrogen discharged from onsite septic systems to the immediate shoreline of Hood Canal (PDF)
  • John Lenth: Evaluation of a compost-amended biofiltration swale for dissolved metals removal from highway stormwater runoff (PDF)
  • John Philips and Patty Buchanan: Green stormwater infrastructure (PDF)
  • Joan Wu: WEPP: a Physically-Oriented Hydrology and Erosion Model for Watershed Assessment, Management, and Conservation (PDF)

The archive of presentations from past years (Annual Review of Research) can be found on the UW Water Center archival website.

Schedule and Program

Keynote Speakers

Dr. Usha Varanashi


Dr. Varanasi recently retired as director of the Northwest Fisheries Science Center (NWFSC) in Seattle, WA, part of the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS). The NWFSC conducts basic and applied research to support the management and conservation of the Pacific Northwest region's anadromous and marine fishery resources and their habitats. Dr. Varanasi's leadership and management have resulted in increased communication and partnerships with constituents, and new research programs that address current and future science and management needs, including the Cumulative Risk Initiative, and the marine groundfish research program, which is dramatically improving stock assessments and resource surveys in the Pacific Northwest. For her achievements, she was awarded the prestigious 2000 Presidential Rank Award for Meritorious Service, the Department of Commerce Gold Medal, the NOAA Distinguished Career Award, and an honorable mention as one of NOAA's History Makers.


Dr. Derek Booth


Dr. Booth is an Affiliate Professor at the University of Washington and the Senior Geologist of Stillwater Sciences, a 60-person environmental consulting firm in California, Oregon, and Washington. He has studied geomorphology, hydrology, and watershed management for the past 30 years, first with the US Geological Survey and then with the Basin Planning Program for King County (Washington), as a full-time University of Washington research professor as the director of the Center for Urban Water Resources Management and it successor, the Center for Water and Watershed Management, and now in private practice.


Dr. Steven Chapra


Dr. Chapra teaches at Tufts University, where he holds the Louis Berger Chair in Computing and Engineering. Dr. Chapra worked for EPA, NOAA, Texas A&M and the University of Colorado. He has also served as the Associate Director of the Center for Advanced Decision Support in Water and Environmental Systems (CADSWES), and has been a visiting professor at Duke University and the University of Washington. His general research interests focus on surface water-quality modeling and advanced computer applications in environmental engineering. He has authored five textbooks including Numerical Methods for Engineers, which has been used at over 150 universities since it was first published in 1985.