CI-WATER's Teaching Toolbox in Action

Retta Hudlow, a sixth grade science teacher in Pinedale, Wyoming was one of the first teachers to use the CI-WATER Teaching Toolbox in her classroom.

Hydropoly game

The toolbox includes a manual with multiple lesson plans for various age groups and the equipment needed to conduct lessons and experiments in the manual.  There are games, books, models and more to help students learn about everything from water modeling to human use and impact on water.

The toolbox is designed for Utah and Wyoming K-12 teachers, students and community groups. The experiments and lessons provided in the toolbox meet state education standards.

“The Next Generation Science Standards include standards on the water cycle, groundwater resources, human impact, modeling particle motion in different states, along with scientific and engineering processes,” says Retta. “The toolbox addresses many parts of these standards.”

The toolbox gave Retta an opportunity to add to the curriculum she was already teaching.

“I already had a unit on water and weather,” says Retta. “But this added more lessons on the properties of water, which were powerful teaching tools.”

Retta has enjoyed using the toolbox and knows that her students have learned a lot with their time using the toolbox.

“They have learned a great deal about water. Their pre- and post-test scores were impressive,” she says.

For more information about the toolbox, please visit the CI-WATER website or contact Beth Cable at bcable@uwyo.edu or 307-766-3544. 

By Robin Rasmussen
Photos by Kali McCrackin

ADHydro: Up and Running

For Bob Steinke and the rest of the CI-WATER researchers working on a sophisticated water model called ADHydro, their hard work and dedication has culminated into the completion of the model.

“We have the code running, with groundwater, surface water, infiltration and channels, rivers, and lakes,” says Bob Steinke, a software engineer at the University of Wyoming. “It’s running, it’s not crashing, and we get results out, but now we have to make sure those results are right.”

ADHydro is a new hydrology model that will allow researchers in the field to better understand water processes, including how fast water soaks through the soil, how fast water flows over land, and more.

Now that ADHydro is running, researchers will continue to work on the model and build on it, making it faster and more powerful.

“The next step is really performance improvement,” says Bob. “We’ve got a lot of ways that we can improve the performance just in the serial code itself, and then we want to parallelize it so that it can run on the supercomputer and run faster.”

For the whole team working on ADHydro, getting it up and running is a huge success, and something they’re proud of.

“We’re happy with our progress,” Bob says. 

By Robin Rasmussen

New Educational Resources Available for Wyoming Teachers

Hydropoly, a board game included in the toolbox

Wyoming EPSCoR’s Track 2 grant, CI-WATER, has developed teaching toolboxes for teachers to check-out and use with their students.

“The toolboxes have tools in them that simulate water modeling and water resources,” says Beth Cable, the Education, Outreach and Diversity Coordinator for CI-WATER.

The teaching toolboxes come equipped with numerous lesson plans and educational resources necessary for carrying them out.

“The toolboxes provide ideas and opportunities for both indoor and outdoor classroom use,” says Beth. “And they certainly apply many different subjects, including math, science, English, art, creative writing, and more.”

Trying out different items in the toolbox

All of the lesson plans provided with the toolbox meet Wyoming teaching standards for grades K-12, and cover a variety of hands-on, interactive and inquiry-based experiments and activities.

 “Students can conduct experiments on water, they can do outdoor water sampling, they can do art and advocacy projects, there are water mediation role plays, they can play games,” says Beth. “They can really do a lot.”

Students benefit from learning from the toolboxes, by learning important concepts about water, science, and real world applications.

“I would cheer teachers on to use it because of the fact that it provides real life science,” says Beth. “It really allows students to interact with their teachers, scientists, the natural world, and each other.”

For more information about the teaching toolbox, contact Beth Cable at bcable@uwyo.edu

By Robin Rasmussen

Photos courtesy of Beth Cable

CI-WATER Project Insights: ADHydro

When it comes to water management, knowing how water moves and where it ends up is crucial. That’s why a team of CI-WATER researchers are working on a new model, called ADHydro.

ADHydro will be the most robust model of its kind, presenting high-resolution detail for a broad geographical area. It will enable researchers to more accurately measure how fast water soaks through the soil, how fast the water flows over land and more. With these calculations, researchers can determine where the water goes and how it gets there.

“ADHydro is physics-based, meaning that it simulates specific physical processes as opposed to a curve-fitting model that can be calibrated to match historical data, but doesn’t simulate specific physics processes,” says Dr. Robert Steinke, a software engineer on the interdisciplinary team developing the model.

“It’s important to CI-WATER because one of the goals of CI-WATER is to allow watershed managers in the field access to high performance computing resources,” says Robert.

The ADHydro model is set for initial deployment next year. The completed model will give researchers the tools they need to study water movement in the field, ultimately helping water managers better understand this essential resource. 

By Robin E. Rasmussen

Science: Becoming the Messenger Workshop a Huge Success

Dr. Scott Miller meets with workshop mentor Dan Agan to discuss his mock presentation

Last week, Wyoming EPSCoR and the National Science Foundation hosted the “Science: Becoming the Messenger” workshop. The workshop taught participants valuable communication skills, including interview techniques, social media tools, and presentation tips.

The workshop emphasized the importance of effective communication across a wide variety of platforms, including Twitter, blogs, and presentations.
“No matter what we do, we want to know where communication comes from, how it is used, and how it lets us do what we value,” said Elizabeth Traver, SSHL Manager.
For the participants, learning how to better their communication skills was a major benefit.
“The workshop was fantastic,” said Dr. Steve Holbrook. “Even for those of us who might have thought we were already pretty good communicators.”


Members of the WyCEHG and CI-WATER teams prepare for their presentations

The workshop took place over two days at the Wildcatter Suites in War Memorial Stadium at the University of Wyoming. During day one, participants received an intensive course in interview etiquette, what and what not to do during presentations, and the power of effective communication. The smaller group of participants in day two had the chance to use the skills they gained in day one to create and deliver mock presentations, practice interviews with journalists, and focus on developing strong communication foundations.




By Robin E. Rasmussen
Photos by Kali S. McCrackin

Research Experience for Undergraduates Leads Into Semester-Long Project

Sometimes, one positive experience is all it takes to decide on a future career path. For three students, the Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU) at the University of Wyoming (UWY) was that experience.

The CI-WATER program, which ran through July and August, enticed Noll Roberts, a senior at UW, to contemplate a change of major. “My major is Molecular Biology, but now I’m switching to Mathematics,” he says.

This year’s REU focused on computer modeling, coding and hydrology.  For a month, Noll, Jingyu Li and Troy Axthelm collaborated on various aspects of modeling.

“Jingyu and I have been working on a project that’s been modeling the shade on a certain land plot,” says Troy, a senior at UW.

For Jingyu Li, a Laramie High School senior, the REU has given her a lot to think about.  “I’m not entirely sure what I want to do yet, but probably computer science and math,” she says.

Along with developing their coding and mathematical skills, the REU taught the importance of strong communication skills.

“I liked learning about how to interact with people in other departments," says Noll. "I think this REU was really good for that.”

While the REU has come the end, their work has not. Over the course of the next semester, Noll, Troy and Jingyu will receive upper division credit to continue their projects.

“We’re going to keep working on it so that it can work with the high performance computer and be efficient,” says Troy.

 

By Robin E. Rasmussen

Collaboration and the CI-WATER Hydrologic Modeling Workshop

In science, collaboration takes a variety of forms through partnerships, information sharing and cooperative projects. The CI-WATER Hydrologic Modeling Workshop, held July 22-26 at the University of Wyoming (UW), tapped into all of these forms of collaboration, through the building of new partnerships, the utilization of collaboratively created modeling systems, and the application of new information into group projects.

“We had five students from JSU, one from Utah State University and three from here, at UW,” says Dr. Fred Ogden, the lead principal investigator for UW on the CI-WATER project, who facilitated the workshop.

CI-WATER is a collaborative grant between UW, Utah StateUniversity (USU), Brigham Young University (BYU) and University of Utah (UU). During the workshop, partnerships and friendship between the universities began to develop as participants learned how to use spatial hydrologic tools.

“The CI-WATER high performance computer model is still under development, so we decided to use GSSHA, which is the model I helped develop with the Army Corps of Engineers based in Vicksburg, Mississippi,” Dr. Ogden says.

GSSHA, the Gridded Surface Subsurface Hydrologic Analysis Model, is similar to the model CI-WATER is developing. Spatial hydrologic tools, like the GSSHA model, can be used to mitigate flooding and understand the impacts of changes in land use.

“We’re teaching them how to run a state of the art hydrologic model,” says Dr. Ogden.

Participants started out learning the model in small group projects.

“We started out with a little watershed,” says Sam Rhoads, a civil engineering major from JSU. “Then we added in residential land-use, industrial land-use and learned how to add different hydrologic structures so we could get a feel for everything to do with the model.”

After learning the basics of the tool, Dr. Ogden decided to introduce a bit of what he calls ‘reality’ to their projects by taking them out of the computer lab and into the field to use a rainfall simulator.

“Basically it can simulate rainfall on a plot of land,” says Sam. “From that, you can measure a lot more accurately than just taking numbers from a table. You can get actual data for the soil property, like the infiltration of the soil, the hydraulic conductivity and how the water is going to flow through the soil so you can use that in the model. That way, you get more accurate output.”

“I think the rain simulator was probably an eye opener,” says Dr. Ogden.

The field day definitely made an impression on one of the participants.

“I liked going to the field,” says Jeremiah Lewis, an industrial engineering major from JSU. Seeing water in action made a clearer connection between the workshop projects and reality.

For another participant, Ashlee Ingram, applying real data to the model and learning about the water aspect of civil engineering were invaluable.

“I like learning different aspects of civil engineering,” she says. “It is good to know different programs. It kind of puts you ahead of other people.”

For the participants in the workshop, knowing GSSHA may do just that.

“The Army Corps in Vicksburg, Mississippi are eager to interact with these students,” Dr. Ogden says. “They asked me to have the students contact them when they’re done because we’re training them on GSSHA and that’s a skill they are always looking for people to have.”

As the workshop came to a close, participants headed home not only with new skills in watershed modeling, but also with more insight into working on group projects and the value of collaboration in science.

By: Kali S. McCrackin

Research Experience for Undergrads: How much water enters the ground?

At first glance, it’s easy to see that the students participating in the Research Experience for Undergrads at the University ofWyoming have all become good friends. Laughing and joking with each other, it’s a fun environment.
For the last month, seven students from Wyoming and one student from Utah have been writing programs to model the impact of sunlight and shade on the water infiltration into the soil in the Colorado River basin.


REU Students learning about the NCAR-Wyoming
Supercomputing Center in Cheyenne, WY

“The goal of this project is to measure the sunlight that’s coming into the Earth and we’re going to be basing that on a snowmelt model and then we’re going to calculate how much water is going into the ground, which in the long run, will let us know how much water is going into the river basin so we can model that further,” says Troy Axthelm, a computer science undergraduate student from the University of Wyoming.
To help students better understand how much water is going into the ground, the program was split into four projects. For the first project, students worked on creating a program that would allow them to measure the amount of sunlight hitting the Earth. The second project included students creating a program to figure out how much energy was needed to melt snow on the ground. For the third project, students created a program that could help them figure out how the water moved into the soil and down to the water table. Finally, students created a program to learn how heat moves into and throughout the soil.
Students participating in the REU course each gained something different, and look forward to being able to apply these new skills in their future.
Geoff Foster, a Utah State University undergraduate majoring in civil engineering is proud of the skills he has learned.


Mookwan Seo, Noll Roberts, and Dylan Sheehy learn
about how the NCAR-Wyoming Supercomputer is powered.

“I used to be afraid of the computer age, but because of the REU course I now have a background in computers and I can apply it to my studies,” he says.
Noll Roberts, a molecular biology student at the University of Wyoming, learned the importance of being able to work with people with diverse backgrounds.
 “One of things that’s different about this program is that you’re working with many different types of people, so trying to learn how to bridge those gaps quicker is a really useful skill,” he says.
Jingyu Li, a student at Laramie High School learned the importance planning when it came to coding.
“I definitely learned to plan before I code,” she says. “Figure out what you’re doing by splitting up what you’re doing and figuring out the structure.”Now that students have created computer programs and models to understand how water enters the ground, the will spend the next month working on a CI-WATER project, using the knowledge they gained from the REU course.

 By Robin E. Rasmussen
 Photos by Robin E. Rasmussen and Kali S. McCrackin

Expanding Water Resource Knowledge: The CI-WATER Summer Institute for Teachers

Teachers from Wyoming and Utah start a game of Hydropoly

 “Did you just give us the five minute warning?”
The incredulity in Nick Kiriazis’ voice is likely to be repeated by students this year as CI-WATER concepts and toolboxes are brought to Wyoming and Utah schools. As teachers from the two states, including Nick, discovered during the CI-WATER Water Resources Modeling Summer Institute, water science is a blast, especially with the resources CI-WATER has curated. From June 24^th-28^th, eleven teachers from Utah and Wyoming gathered in Salt Lake City, UT to learn about CI-WATER and develop curricula to bring back to their classrooms.
“I learned so many new things about using models,” says Bonnie Bourgeous, a 9^th grade teacher at North Layton Jr. High in Layton UT. “I teach both science and math, and have many students for both subjects. It is great when you can make clear connections between content areas and involve students in real world projects. The use of models in predicting future events was especially informative and useful.”
The week started out with expert talks by CI-WATER researchers and the exploration of the CI-WATER toolboxes. After these informative sessions, teachers generated lists of key concepts, which were displayed in the classroom. These sticky-notes of ideas became the basis for developing new curricula.


A Utah science teacher studies hydrophobic sand

“During the last three days of the workshop the teachers collaborated in small groups to develop ideas for curricula that address important concepts for students from the CI-Water expert talks,” says Molly, the coordinator for the institute. “The groups generated excellent ides for interactive online and multimedia activities and paper-based lessons that explore the limitations and capabilities of water modeling, the complexity of the water cycle, and uses of models in the decision-making process.”
All eleven teachers came from different schools and different teaching environments. Some work in more urban schools while others work in very rural settings, necessitating a flexible set of curricula. The teachers were up for the challenge.
“This was a very mindful and creative group who clearly considered what would engage students and best convey important concepts about models and water decision-making in the inter-mountain west,” says Molly.
This workshop not only provided teachers with a chance for professional development, but also helped to emphasize the importance of engaging today’s students in science. Teachers and CI-WATER researchers agree that the future of water in the west is dependent not only on today’s research, but more so on tomorrow’s scientists.

 

By Kali S. McCrackin

Photos by Kali S. McCrackin

Research Experience for Undergraduate Students Begins

The western United States is rampant with water issues, especially as wildfires dominate most of the summer months. To help understand water systems and ensure strong water-management plans, CI-WATER researchers are developing models. On Monday, some of these researchers will begin a month-long course with undergraduate students to teach them the importance of modeling and how models can make a difference in the future of water in the West.

The Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU) begins June 17 at the University of Wyoming (UW) and will focus on high performance computing and watershed modeling. Through lectures and hands-on research students will solve complex computational science problems, learn to work in team research situations and improve programming skills. An optional, week-long course on watershed modeling systems will follow REU.

This year, REU is being led by Dr. Fred Ogden, a professor in Civil Engineering at UW, and Dr. Craig Douglas, a professor of Mathematics at the UW. Both Dr. Ogden and Dr. Douglas are researchers on the CI-WATER grant.

By Kali S. McCrackin 

A time for collaboration and discussion: The Second Annual CI-WATER Symposium

Utah science fair winners present their research at the Symposium

"How do we interact? How do we collaborate and support each other?"

These questions were among the most important asked this week at the Second Annual CI-WATER Symposium. 

With over 40 researchers working at four universities in two different states, the CI-WATER project sometimes feels disjointed. The four teams, Cyberinfrastructure, Data and Modeling Services, Watershed Modeling and Education & Outreach,  work on various parts of the project and use virtual meeting spaces for collaboration. While these virtual spaces are essential for working together from the various universities, the flow of conversation is not quite the same as in face-to-face interactions. 

The Symposium brought together the scattered partners and allowed them much-needed discussion through face time.

Dr. Miriah Meyer talks to an audience at the Symposium

The Symposium, held in Salt Lake City at the Natural History Museum of Utah’s Rio Tinto Center, focused on the idea of modeling a sustainable future. Researchers from the four CI-WATER teams presented their research and work from the last few months including projects that have been completed and where they see the next steps for their work going. Discussions about models, cyberinfrastructure and the digital divide filled the two days. Among these highly technical discussions however, presenters and team leaders returned time and again to the necessity of presenting a more unified front through a concise, clear vision statement.

Dr. Fred Ogden preps for filming

“You never know when you are going to be asked what you are studying,” said Dr. David Tarboton of Utah State University, when stressing the importance of all CI-WATER partners knowing the vision statement. 

By presenting a more unified face, collaborative efforts can be increased and our researchers can work more definitely towards the ultimate goal of the project: helping plan for the future through a better understanding of water systems and water management in the western United States. 

This year’s CI-WATER Symposium was a great success in the conversations it generated among the CI-WATER researchers, the new partnership that formed between team members, the film footage we gathered for videos that will come out later this summer, and the public event featuring Dr. Miriah Meyer. Next week we will share more from Dr. Miriah Meyer’s talk. 

By Kali S. McCrackin 

Photos by Kali S. McCrackin

The Essentials for Modeling a Sustainable Future

Tim Brewer, a consultant, shows EPSCoR intern Robin Rasmussen Mt. Moran

How do you model a sustainable future?

This is part of what CI-WATER collaborators will be discussing at the Second Annual CI-WATER Symposium next week, and the answer, in part, lies within racks of black, plastic, electronic boxes, called nodes. These boxes, complete with rows of blinking lights, may not look impressive on the outside, but they make up the supercomputers housed in Wyoming and Utah, which are vital to CI-WATER research.

A supercomputer is a collection of normal computers which operates faster and allows for higher quality computational research. One such supercomputer used by CI-WATER is Mt. Moran, housed at the University of Wyoming. Mt. Moran, which was put into production in February 2013, is an important addition to research resources at UW, because it is the first supercomputer available solely to UW researchers and their collaborators. It has opened up research capabilities and is changing the way researchers do computational research at UW.

The storage space called Bighorn

“Before, what people were doing was running computational analysis at their workstations at their desks or making small clusters,” says Timothy Kuhfuss, the director of the Advanced Research Computing Center (ARCC).

Computational analysis on these systems was slow and often required graduate students on big research projects to manage these systems when their time and skills may have been better used elsewhere. These graduate students can now work on Mt. Moran, along with their faculty advisers and UW collaborators, such as CI-WATER partners in Utah. Without this resource, researchers on the CI-WATER grant would have a harder time developing the models which will help them better understand water resources in the western United States.

Mt. Moran’s location on the UW campus is just as important as its capabilities because it adds to the environment ARCC strives for in assisting its users.

Mt. Moran

“People like someone local to work with,” says Kuhfuss. “Rather than work with someone across the country, they can literally walk into the office down the hall here and talk with one of our consultants.”

Working one on one with consultants is part of the process when using Mt. Moran and allows for more personalized use of the computing capabilities.

“We want to make it real simple,” says Kuhfuss. “Once researchers apply for an account and have one on the machine, we set up a project space for them. Then, they can look at the ‘how-to’ documentation on the webpage that we point them to. Or, if they’re not the type who wants to use those resources, they can come to our offices and sit down with a consultant who will just get them going.”

Mt. Moran requires far more power than normal computing systems

To date, Mt. Moran is at 98% of its capacity and is used by 115 researchers. CI-WATER researchers at UW rely on this resource to do the base work for their models, which they then move to the bigger NCAR-Wyoming Supercomputing Center (NWSC) outside of Cheyenne, WY. These supercomputers allow for all CI-WATER researchers to examine and evaluate the future of water in the west, through the creation of models for a sustainable future.

By Kali S. McCrackin

Photos by Kali S. McCrackin

Seeing the big picture on Big Data

Dr. Meyer is a computer scientist at the University of Utah

How much water will the west have in the future? This is just one of the questions CI-WATER is trying to answer, and it’s a big one. Big questions in science usually yield important answers, but first and foremost, they produce data, and lots of it. This Big Data, which is difficult to analyze and sort through, is important, but before it can be useful, it must first be understood.

This is where computer scientists, like Dr. Miriah Meyer come in.

“I create interactive visualization tools to help scientists understand their data,” says Dr. Meyer, who will be presenting “Visualizing Data: Why an Interactive Picture is Worth 1,000 Numbers” on May 29^th at the Natural History Museum of Utah at the Rio Tinto Center, in conjunction with the Second Annual  CI-WATER Symposium.

Dr. Meyer became interested in visualization systems while working at a software engineering company after earning her bachelor’s degree in astronomy.

“I love the thought process of computer science,” Dr. Meyer says. “I like to build things as opposed to study them.”

Dr. Meyer’s work isn’t all building however. In order to understand her clients’ needs for a visualization system, she must first understand them, their project and the need for the data. So, she studies them and in doing so, she determines where the visualization tool will be useful, then matches the data type with the visual technique, or creates a new technique, if necessary. These visualization tools, in the form of charts and graphs, are more useful than lengthy spreadsheets, and help researches get a stronger grasp on the outcomes of their work.

Visualization tools, however, aren’t only used by scientists.

“Every aspect of our lives now uses computer science,” Dr. Meyer explains. “The reason I like computer science is that I get to work in just about any field I’d like.”

Currently, Dr. Meyer is working on a tool for a poetry project, a finance project and several scientific projects. Because of the variability of the projects, Dr. Meyer encourages all students to explore this field.

“I think computer science is something everyone should try,” she says. “And, anyone can do it with some degree of work.”

Computer science is a growing field, and one in need of more diversity, Dr. Meyer says. The less diversity there is in the field, the less innovation, because not all technology needs are being recognized. As the STEM fields become more team driven, Dr. Meyer sees an even greater need for diversity in computer science.

“The future of STEM isn’t just about raw analytic skills anymore,” Dr. Meyer says. “Other skills, such as empathy and compassion are just as important.”

Dr. Meyer’s talk on May 29th will examine how interactive visualization systems support people working with Big Data and how these systems are an essential component in research today. While she is not working directly on the CI-WATER project, her message on visualization tools is important to the project because it offers scientists new ways of interpreting research.

“Scientific data often has a large amount of complexity, so using visual channels helps create better representations,” Dr. Meyer says. “Prototypes of these tools often lead to new questions scientists have never asked.”

More information about Dr. Meyer’s work can be found at: http://www.cs.utah.edu/~miriah/.

To register for Dr. Meyer’s talk, please visit the CI-WATER website.

By Kali S. McCrackin

Photo courtesy of Utah Education Network