Bear River Watershed Information System

2004 Research Initiation Award Report

Investigator

Jeff Horsburgh—Research Engineer, Environmental Management Research Group, Utah Water Research Laboratory, Utah State University

Summary

Using funding from the USU Water Initiative, we developed a prototype Internet based laboratory watershed information system (WIS) for the Bear River Basin. The Laboratory WIS laid the foundation for a successful interdisciplinary proposal to the EPA Targeted Watersheds Program that resulted in a $700,000 grant to build a full scale Watershed Information System for the Bear River Basin (http://www.bearriverinfo.org) as well as supporting water quality modeling and water quality trading studies. The Targeted Watersheds grant involves individuals from the Colleges of Natural Resources, Engineering, and Business. The Bear River WIS is designed to become a central repository for data and information related to the Bear River Basin, where sharing of data and information has historically been difficult due to the transboundary nature of the river and the resulting multiple regulatory jurisdictions. The Bear River WIS is a website that contains informational content, data visualization and analysis capabilities, and an interactive Internet map server with GIS capabilities. Additional notable outcomes from these activities include the Internet based Time Series Analyst application (http://water.usu.edu/analyst/), which was created as part of this project, and the Great Salt Lake Basin Proposed Hydrologic Observatory website (http://greatsaltlake.utah.edu), which was another direct outgrowth of this project. The Bear River WIS demonstrates some of the components and capabilities of a broader Hydrologic Information System (HIS), as described by the Consortium of Universities for the Advancement of Hydrologic Science, Inc. (CUAHSI), and it served as the beginnings for software development and expertise that led in part to a successful proposal to NSF for work in the Little Bear watershed, and the continued involvement of USU in the NSF funded CUAHSI Hydrologic Information Systems (HIS) project. Finally, the work done on the Laboratory WIS supported a successful proposal to the USDA Conservation Effects Assessment Program that resulted in a $650,000 grant awarded to an interdisciplinary team at USU, including individuals from the Colleges of Natural Resources, Engineering, and Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences, to study the effects of agricultural best management practices in the Little Bear River.

Funding resulting from this work:

• Bear River EPA Targeted Watershed Grant, $700,000 (Stevens, Mesner, Horsburgh, Glover).
• USDA Conservation Effects Assessment Program Grant $650,000 (Horsburgh, Stevens, Mesner, Jackson-Smith, Sorensen).
• Prototype of time series analyst and information system database that contributed to CUAHSI Hydrologic Information System Award, $86,325 Phase I, $80,000 year 1 of 5 year Phase II (Tarboton, Horsburgh).
• NSF WATERS Test Bed Grant for Little Bear River, $350,000 (Stevens, Tarboton, Horsburgh, Mesner).

Papers resulting from this work:

• Goodall, J.L., Horsburgh, J.S., Whiteaker, T.L., Maidment, D.R., and I. Zaslavsky. 2007. A first approach to web services for the National Water Information System. Environmental Modeling & Software. doi:10.1016/jenvsoft.2007.01.005. In Press.
• Horsburgh, J.S., Stevens, D.K., and J. Goodall. 2006. Time Series Analyst – An Internet Based Application for Analyzing Environmental Time Series. Presented at the AWRA Spring Specialty Conference – GIS in Water Resources, Houston, TX.
• Horsburgh, J.S., Stevens, D.K., Sorenson, D.L., Mesner, N.O., Jackson-Smith, D., and R. Ryel. 2006. A Real-Time Water Quality Monitoring Network for Investigating the Strengths and Weaknesses of Existing Monitoring Techniques. Presented at the Water Environment Association of Utah 2006 Annual Conference.
• Stevens, D.K., and J.S. Horsburgh. 2006. A Real-Time Water Quality Monitoring Network for Investigating the Strengths and Weaknesses of Existing Monitoring Techniques. Presented at the National Water Quality Monitoring Council 2006 Conference.

Students supported through this work:

• Amber Spackman (Environmental Engineering - Undergraduate)
• Rick Satterfield (Business Information Systems - Graduate)

Contact Information

Jeff Horsburgh
jeff.horsburgh‹at›usu.edu