The Alaska Section of the American Water Resources Association (AWRA) is a professional organization focused on advancing and communicating water science in our state. We typically hold in-person science meetings on an annual basis, as well as brownbag webinars in our regions. The 2019 meeting was held in Juneau with support from the Southeast Alaska Fish Habitat Partnership. This year, sessions focused on weather and water extremes (including drought), water rights and reservations, fish habitat, hazards including glacier dammed lake floods and avalanches, permafrost hydrology, and water quality. If you would like to be added to the AWRA mailing list or otherwise get involved, please contact awra.alaska@gmail.com.
See below for links to AWRA resources and 2019 meeting materials, including the meeting agenda, presentation abstracts and direct links to pdf copies of presentation materials, resources shared for rapid talk sections of the meeting, and links to posters shared during the poster session.
AWRA Web Resources:
https://www.ak-awra.org/ameetings/2019am/
2019 Meeting Materials and Presentations
Aaron Jacobs with the National Weather Service shares a presentation on drought conditions taking place in southeast Alaska
Presentations
September 17, 2019: Big Picture Water Issues and Southeast Examples
Keynote Speaker: Jules Tileston (retired BLM, DNR) on Wild and Scenic Rivers Act, Water Rights in Alaska, Fortymile River
Carl Reese (DNR): Regulatory and Hydrologic Considerations for Water Right Applications
Ann Marie Larquier (ADFG): Protecting Fish and Wildlife Habitat: Alaska’s Instream Flow Reservations Program
Jennifer Hamblen (Takshanuk Watershed Council): Water Quality Monitoring in the Chilkat Watershed, Haines, Alaska
Jennifer Hanlon (Yakutat Tlingit Tribe): Baseline Water Quality in Yakutat Foreland
Sonia Nagorski (UAS): Spawning Salmon Deliver Marine-derived Contaminants to Southeast Alaskan Streams
Angie Mendbayar (Juneau District Heating): Heating Buildings with Warmed Seawater
September 18, 2019: Statewide and Regional Hydrology
Chris Arp (UAF): Hydrological System Regime Change from the Fish Creek Watershed Observatory in northern Alaska
Bob Bolton (UAF): Permafrost, Snow, and Vegetation Interactions on the Seward Peninsula
Terry Schwarz (DNR): Alaska Groundwater Monitoring Program
Aaron Jacobs (NWS): Atmospheric Rivers in Alaska
Carl Dierking (UAF): Polar Satellite Data for Hydrologic Applications in Alaska
Luca Adelfio (USFS): Streamflow data collected for instream water reservations at Bering River, Alaska
Christian Kienholz (UAS): Monitoring the 2018 and 2019 outburst floods at Juneau’s Mendenhall Glacier
Dina Abdel-Fattah (UAF): The role of stakeholder feedback in glacial lake outburst flood monitoring tools – Mendenhall and Snow Glaciers
Eran Hood (UAS): Using Dendrochronology to Reconstruct Juneau’s Avalanche History
Rapid talks / Visualization Gallery
Luca Adelfio (USFS) – PWS Temperatures
Chris Arp (UAF) – Consequences of Catastrophic Lake Drainage – Will Ghost Lakes increasingly Haunt the New Arctic during Snowmelt?
Samia Savell (NRCS) – Hydrography Mapping Using LiDAR (aka Building Better Blue Lines)
Snowlake Drainage August 8-25, 2019
September 19, 2019: Water, Fish, and Habitat
Aaron Jacobs (NWS): Drought in a Rainforest
Katherine Prussian (USDA): Large Wood Stream Restoration Using Hand Methods
Bernard Romey (Romey Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences): Landscape- level Model for Predicting Juvenile Coho Salmon Rearing Habitat in Southeast Alaska
Hal Shepard (Water Policy Consulting): Salmon Die-off and the Changing Landscape in the Norton Sound Region
Katherine Prussian (USDA): Promoting Natural Resource Jobs with Local Youth and Real Projects
Posters
Chris Arp (UAF), Fresh Eyes on Ice: Connecting Arctic Communities through a Revitalized and Modernized Freshwater Ice Observation Network
Uyanda Mendbayar (UAF), Investigation and Quantification of Water Track Networks in Boreal Regions Using Remote Sensing and Geophysical Data