Public lectures at 3:30 pm
Location: Cape Cod Lounge, Student Union Building, UMass Amherst
Free and open to all.

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Monday, September 24

Emerging Contaminants and Water Quality
Endocrine Disruptors and Pharmaceuticals in the Environment

Shane Snyder, Research and Development Project Manager, Southern Nevada Water Authority

Dr. Shane Snyder is the Research & Development Project Manager for the Southern Nevada Water Authority (SNWA) in Las Vegas, Nevada, USA. He is also an Associate Adjunct Faculty Member in the Department of Chemistry at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. He obtained a PhD degree in Environmental Toxicology and Zoology from Michigan State University in 2000 and a BA degree in Chemistry from Thiel College in 1994. Dr. Snyder specializes in research related to the analysis and treatment of water contaminants in potable and reuse systems. Dr. Snyder has published more than 40 papers in peer-reviewed literature related to emerging contaminants. He is a Principal Investigator for several research projects investigating the impact of conventional and advanced water treatment processes removing organic contaminants. Additionally, he the Principal Investigator on two projects related to the human health relevance of trace endocrine disruptors and pharmaceuticals in drinking water. He has served on two US Federal Advisory Committees on endocrine disrupting chemicals. He is currently the Chairman of the American Water Works Association’s (AWWA) Organic Contaminants Research Committee and is the Vice-Chairman of the AWWA’s Surface Water Protection Committee. He has served on several project advisory committees for the Awwa Research Foundation (AwwaRF), the Water Reuse Foundation (WRF), and the Water Environment Research Foundation (WERF). He actively continues research on emerging contaminants, with a focus on trace analysis techniques and water treatment technologies.

Abstract
The ability for natural and synthetic chemicals to mimic endogenous hormones has been known since at least the 1930’s In 1965, natural estrogens were discovered in wastewater treatment plant outfalls in the United States.  In 1970, this work was expanded to include synthetic estrogens used as birth control pharmaceuticals.  In the mid-1970s, scientists in the United States also began to detect other pharmaceuticals near wastewater outfalls.  Although these initial reports from the US clearly demonstrated that estrogens and pharmaceuticals were contaminants of wastewater effluents, these data were largely ignored until the 1990s when reports of deformities in fish in the UK were linked to estrogens in wastewater effluents.  The link between estrogenicity of wastewater effluents and the presence of natural and synthetic estrogens has now been well established.  Furthermore, it is apparent that not only birth control, but also a plethora of pharmaceuticals are readily detectable in the environment.  Burgeoning human population growth and subsequent urban density increases are creating greatly elevated demands for fresh water.  This growth in population also results in proliferation of agricultural development and in escalated wastewater flows.  Without question, the propensity for the contamination of fresh water will rise as human population continues to grow.

Water treatment can reduce the concentrations of most contaminants.  Ozone was evaluated at pilot and full scale, and found to readily reduce the estrogenicity of wastewater effluent.  Free chlorine was found to be highly effective for the oxidation of phenolic steroids and acidic pharmaceuticals, while it was ineffective for ketone steroids (i.e., progesterone and testosterone).  UV at typical disinfection doses was largely ineffective for nearly all compounds evaluated.  Reverse osmosis and nanofiltration was able to efficiently remove all target analytes, while ultrafiltration and microfiltration were largely ineffective.  Activated carbon was selectively able to removal target compounds, with removal efficacy related to contaminant structure and carbon activation.  The use of advanced treatment technologies can undoubtedly remove the majority of emerging contaminants; however, the cost justification for additional treatment must be based on human and environmental health, not simply detection or absence. 

PDF of Complete Abstract

Co-Hosting Department: David Reckhow, Civil and Environmental Engineering

Monday, October 22

Governing Water: Understanding the Global Water Crisis

Ken Conca, Professor of Government and Politics, University of Maryland

Dr. Ken Conca is a professor of Government and Politics at the University of Maryland, where he directs the Harrison Program on the Future Global Agenda.  His research focuses on global environmental politics, political economy, peace and conflict studies, transnationalism, and social movements in world politics.  Professor Conca is the author/editor of several books on global environmental politics, technology, and international political economy. His latest book, Governing Water: Contentious Transnational Politics and Global Institution Building (MIT Press, 2006), was awarded two book awards by the International Studies Association: the Chadwick F. Alger Prize, for best book in the field of international organization, and the Harold and Margaret Sprout Award, for best book in the field of international environmental affairs.   Dr. Conca received the Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley in 1992.  He also holds a Master of Science degree from the University of Wisconsin’s Institute for Environmental Studies and a Bachelor of Science from Brown University in geological science. He has been a visiting scholar at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (USA) and the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (Brazil) and a visiting professor at Nankai University (People’s Republic of China) and Mount Holyoke College (USA).

Abstract
Global water challenges include addressing the unmet water needs of the world's poor, reversing the assault on critical freshwater ecosystems, and finding more efficient and equitable mechanisms for allocating water as a scarce resource. As water use intensifies and water scarcity increases for many of the world's people, finding effective ways to resolve water-related conflicts will be crucial to effective water governance. Particularly important sites for water conflict management include the governance of internationally shared river basins, the controversies surrounding large dams and water-infrastructure projects, and questions of pricing, ownership and access to municipal water supplies. A common theme in each of these cases is the need to deepen the participation of a wider array of actors in water governance and decision-making, and the need to acknowledge rather than suppress conflicting interests and dissenting views.

PowerPoint Presentation
Ken Conca's Web Page
Co-Hosting Department: John Hird, Political Science

Tuesday, November 6

Global Hydrology: Lessons from the U.S. Northeast Corridor

Charles Vörösmarty, Research Professor, Institute for the Study of Earth, Oceans, and Space, University of New Hampshire

Dr. Vörösmarty is a Research Full Professor at the Institute for the Study of Earth, Oceans, and Space at the University of New Hampshire. He serves as founder and Director of its Water Systems Analysis Group. His research interests focus on the development of computer models and geospatial data sets used in synthesis studies of the interactions among the water cycle, climate, biogeochemistry, and anthropogenic activities. His studies are built around local, regional, and continental to global-scale modeling of water balance, discharge, constituent fluxes in river systems, and the analysis of the impacts of large-scale water engineering on the terrestrial water cycle.

Abstract
The water cycle figures prominently in the study of global change and creates an important integrating theme for current and future studies of the Earth system. In addition to greenhouse warming and concerns about an accelerated hydrologic cycle, several other anthropogenic factors interact with the water cycle directly and modify the physics, chemistry, biology, and social systems associated with fresh water. Prominent among these factors are widespread land cover change, urbanization, industrial activities, plus a host of hydraulic engineering schemes that optimize water resource access and use, including dam and reservoir construction, irrigated agriculture, and interbasin transfers. These factors yield a broad spectrum of impact, distorting natural river flow and thermal regimes, polluting fresh water, destroying aquatic habitat, and creating substantial challenges to the sustainability of inland aquatic ecosystems. A rich history of research at the local scale already demonstrates these impacts clearly. Evidence now shows that humans are rapidly embedding themselves into the basic character of the water cycle over much broader domains, yet the collective significance of such a transformation of a basic building block in the Earth system remains an open question. This presentation will provide a broad overview of the nature of these new challenges, both from a scientific and technological point of view. A focus will be on the U.S. Northeast and how it is emblematic of changes that are taking place worldwide. The talk will offer a brief summary of two new efforts designed to monitor and assess the state of regional hydro-systems, and linked upland and coastal ecosystems - the UNH Earth Systems Data Collaborative and CUAHSI Pilot Hydrologic Synthesis Studies.

Charles Vörösmarty's Web Page
Co-Hosting Department: Craig Nicolson, Natural Resources Conservation
Charles Vörösmarty's Power Point Presentation

Tuesday, December 4

Offshore Freshwater: A Potential Resource for Coastal Areas
Pleistocene Hydrogeology of the Atlantic Continental Shelf in New England

Mark Person, Professor of Hydrology, New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology

For the past decade, Mark Person has studied crustal-scale groundwater flow systems using high performance computing. Computational models developed in Dr. Person's lab have been used to gain insights into the role of crustal fluid circulation in a wide variety of geologic processes including petroleum and metal ore formation, contact metamorphism, and ice sheet-aquifer interactions. He is a fellow of the Geological Society of America. He served as the Birdsall-Driess Distinguish Lecturer for the Geological Society of America in 1997. Dr. Person received his bachelors degree in geology from Franklin and Marshall College in 1980. He was awarded a masters degree in hydrology from the New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology in 1983. In 1990, he received a doctoral degree in geology from The Johns Hopkins University. He completed postdoctoral training in hydrology at the Ecole des Mines de Paris in 1990. Prior to coming to Indiana University, Dr. Person held faculty positions at the University of New Hampshire and the University of Minnesota. He joined the faculty of Indiana University in 2001.

Abstract
Offshore freshwater represents an important potential resource for large urban population centers located in coastal areas. Scientific drilling during the 1970’s revealed that total dissolved solids concentrations on the Atlantic continental shelf extends far off shore and displays significant lateral variability. Off Long Island and New Jersey, for example, relatively low salinity groundwater (less than 5000 ppm) extends over 130 km offshore but is restricted to a few tens of km from the modern coastline further to the south. We estimate that up to 2800 cubic kilometers of freshwater are sequestered in Cretaceous, Tertiary, and Pleistocene sands below sea level in New England.  In this study, we tested two mechanisms that have been proposed to explain the occurrence of offshore freshwater in New England: 1) direct infiltration of meteoric water during sea-level low stands and 2) sub-ice sheet recharge in regions where the Laurentide ice sheet extended out onto the shelf.

We have recently developed a new, parallel paleohydrogeologic model (PGEOFE) capable of representing Pleistocene sea level fluctuations, the waxing and waning of ice sheets, lithosphere flexure, permafrost generation, variable-density groundwater flow, heat, and solute transport. To honor the geology and morphology of the continental shelf, we have constructed a numerical model which extends from Maine to New Jersey using 5.8 million tetrahedral elements. To reconstruct millions of years of the hydrologic system, this parallel code was run on 256 processors using the NSF Teragrid supercomputer network. We found that meteoric recharge associated with sea level low stands were incapable of driving saltwater far offshore due to their associated low hydraulic gradients. Ice sheet loading was a far more effective mechanism in driving freshwater seaward. However, this mechanism is limited to relatively short time periods (about 4000 years) when ice sheets overrun the continental shelf. We found that the presence of Hudson submarine canyon, a site where Pliocene sands crop out on the continental slope, played an important role in focusing groundwater discharge. This goes a long way towards explaining why New Jersey and Long Island have so much freshwater so far offshore.

Mark Person's Presentation Slides in PDF Format
Mark Person's Webpage

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