James S. (Jay) Famiglietti has been selected as the 2012 Birdsall Dreiss Distinguished Lecturer. The lectureship is made to one person annually by the GSA Hydrogeology Division; Famiglietti is the 34rd GSA Birdsall-Dreiss Lecturer and is Professor in Earth System Science and Civil & Environmental Engineering and Director of the UC Center for Hydrologic Modeling.

He is offering two talks:

1. Water cycle change and the human fingerprint on the water landscape of the 21st Century: Observations from a decade of GRACE (Click for abstract),

and

2. A strategy for accelerating the development of hydrological models: Societal needs, observational requirements and public communication (Click for abstract).

At the request of interested institutions and pending availability, Jay will present one of the two lectures listed above.

A lecture request form is available here. For more information about the Birdsall-Dreiss Lectureship, please click here.

WATER 50/50 Blog Launched

November 2011

In 2012 Professor James S. (Jay) Famiglietti is serving as the Birdsall-Dreiss Distinguished Lecturer of the Geological Society of America, when he will lecture internationally on global water cycle change and freshwater availability. The Water 50/50 Blog will cover his journey as he will hold fifty lectures in fifty weeks, giving a global lecture tour. The posts published will primarily be a journal of Jay’s thoughts and experiences during the lectureship.

For more information and to follow the blog, please go to blog.ucchm.org.

 ECOCENTRIC A Blog About Food, Water, and Energy
Visualizing Respect for Groundwater
 November 4, 2011

Like Rodney Dangerfield, groundwater gets no respect. So says Michael ‘Aquadoc’ Campana. Groundwater is being depleted at an unsustainable rate and since many people don’t know where their water comes from they’re not aware that this is a problem. Visualizing.org wants to change that with its latest data visualization contest, called HeadsUP... Contestant modelers can use data from either Leonard Konikow of the United States Geological Survey and/or James Famiglietti of the University of California Center for Hydrologic Modeling. Famiglietti’s research was recently featured in a NYTimes article and he’s a featured speaker in the forthcoming documentary about water, Last Call at the Oasis, produced by Participant Media. You might remember the production company from such films as An Inconvenient Truth, Food, Inc. and Waiting for Superman. It’s a good time to be Famiglietti. Read more

 HEADS UP! Times Square Global Design Visualization Competition
 in collaboration with VISUALIZATION.ORG 
Competition open September 29, 2011- November 14, 2011

  Groundwater is an important but often overlooked natural resource. Flowing in vast aquifers beneath the surface of the earth, it is a major source of fresh water for drinking, agriculture and industry, as well as a critical component in the ecosystem's water cycle. Under natural conditions it is a renewable resource, but groundwater reserves are currently threatened by our over use. As Payal Sampat of the World Watch Institute notes, "On nearly every continent, groundwater in aquifers is being drained faster than the natural rate of recharge." While there is ample data monitoring groundwater levels, from local sensors to satellite data, it is formatted for expert hydrologists rather than concerned citizenry. Underground, out of sight and encoded, the public lacks a clear and credible indicator of changing groundwater levels.

HeadsUp! and Visualizing.org challenge you to design an animated, data-driven indicator that alerts the public to current groundwater trends and conditions and brings this issue into focus.

See your work across 19,000 square feet of signboard in Times Square. The venue for the winning visualization is a 30 second motion graphic on the TS2 signs in NYC's Times Square. The spot will premiere on World Water Day, March 22, 2012, and run for one month. Your visualization must be appropriately legible, striking, and contextualized to impact a casual pedestrian on the ground. Your challenge submission should be a functioning version of the data visualization or indicator, supplemented by storyboards of the motion graphic spot (see details below).

UCCHM’s GRACE data on groundwater depletion is one of the two data sets to choose from.

For more information, please go to http://www.visualizing.org/Contests/Groundwater.

The HeadsUP! challenge on TakePart.com and on Flickr.

LAST CALL AT THE OASIS

Water Documentary premieres at Toronto International Film Festival

September 2011

Last Call Banner

Participant Media, the company that has illuminated such issues as climate change, the industrialization of food and the state of public education in the U.S. with its ground-breaking documentaries An Inconvenient Truth, Food, Inc., and Waiting for “Superman,” turns its attention to the global water crisis in LAST CALL AT THE OASIS. With Academy Award-winning director Jessica Yu (Breathing Lessons: The Life and Work of Mark O’Brien) and Academy Award-nominated producer Elise Pearlstein (Food, Inc.), LAST CALL AT THE OASIS sheds light on the vital role water plays in our lives, exposes the defects in the current system, shows communities already struggling with its ill-effects and introduces us to individuals who are championing revolutionary solutions. It also presents a convincing argument for why the global water crisis will be the central issue facing our world this century.

The filmmakers explore the issue from the standpoint of both quantity and quality, with insight from University of California, Irvine earth science professor Jay Famiglietti, University of Arizona law professor Robert Glennon, author of Unquenchable, Scripps Institute researcher Tim Barnett, the Pacific Institute’s Peter Gleick, and writer Alex Prud’homme, whose manuscript for the book The Ripple Effect served as an early resource. We see how because of overuse, population burdens and climate change, our water supplies are no longer being replenished. It is also revealed how the issue of water cannot be approached without understanding its connection to everything else, from the food we eat to the clothes we wear to the electricity we depend on.

UCCHM is excited to be part of this production. The documentary features Professor Jay Famiglietti as one of the water experts and appearances of UCCHM researchers and students.

Watch the trailer:

LAST CALL AT THE OASIS will be in select theaters on May 4, 2012.

May 4 - New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Washington, D.C.

May 11 - Phoenix, Chicago, Austin, Boston, Las Vegas, San Diego, Seattle, Denver

May 18 - Dallas, Portland, Minneapolis, Atlanta, Houston, Philadelphia

May 25 - Detroit, Sacramento

LINKS

PARTICIPANT MEDIA - LAST CALL AT THE OASIS

Although it covers 70 percent of the earth’s surface, there is a very real possibility that in the near future, there won’t be enough water to sustain life on the planet.

Official Social Action Site on TakePart.com

TORONTO INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL (TIFF)

This shocking investigation into the world's water crisis, draws upon the work of scientists and activists including the real Erin Brockovich, from Academy Award-winning director Jessica Yu and the producer's of "Food, Inc." Read more

News Release

For more information about the movie, please click here.

The New York Times

Science

Groundwater Depletion Is Detected From Space

May 30, 2011

Scientists have been using small variations in the Earth’s gravity to identify trouble spots around the globe where people are making unsustainable demands on groundwater, one of the planet’s main sources of fresh water. Read more

Los Angeles Times

Environment

Global warming: a rise in river flows raises alarm

October 5, 2010

The volume of fresh water pouring from the world’s rivers has risen rapidly since 1994, in what researchers say is further evidence of global warming. The study, led by a team at UC Irvine, is the first to estimate global fresh-water flow into the world’s oceans using observations from new satellite technology rather than through computer or hydrological models. Read more

Thank you, Global Warming: UCI-Led Study Shows Sea Levels Steadily Rising
OC Weekly - Blogs
October 5, 2010

Frequent and extreme storms tied to global warming are causing more freshwater to flow into the Earth's oceans and sea levels to rise, concludes a team of researchers led by Jay Famiglietti, a UC Irvine Earth system science professor. Read more

San Francisco Chronicle

Environment

Pumping depletes Central Valley water, data show

December 15, 2009

Drought, curtailed water exports from the delta and overzealous well pumping during the past six years have depleted Central Valley aquifers by enough to fill Lake Mead, the largest reservoir in the nation, according to new satellite data from NASA. Read more

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