Many of the most pressing issues facing the western United States hinge on the fate and transport of water and its response to diverse disturbances, including climate change, bark beetle infestations, and energy extraction. A grand challenge for water resources management is to optimize water allocation among stakeholders whose needs include crop water, fossil fuel extraction, and safe drinking water for downstream communities. Scientific advances that reduce longstanding uncertainties in understanding water pathways will lead to improved water resource management. In 2012, the University of Wyoming was awarded an NSF EPSCoR Track-1 Research Infrastructure Improvement Award titled “Water in a Changing West: The Wyoming Center for Environmental Hydrology and Geophysics”. WyCEHG has integrated cutting-edge hydrological and geophysical techniques to transform watershed management in the public and private sectors. The multidisciplinary center encompasses new physical and intellectual infrastructure that has enabled a comprehensive research program linking surface and subsurface watershed hydrology, geophysics, remote sensing, ecology, and computational modeling.

The overall mission of WyCEHG is to 1) establish and maintain a state-of-the-art research center to support transformative research; 2) provide interdisciplinary learning opportunities and increase workforce capacity in the STEM fields; and 3) provide stakeholders across the state with tools, training, and expertise to address issues in water resource management. These stakeholders include researchers, educators, state policy makers, natural resource managers, industry, and the public. The major entities that have been involved with the WyCEHG project are the University of Wyoming, the Wyoming Community Colleges, the sovereign nations of the Wind River Indian Reservation (WRIR) and the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR).

The WyCEHG research program focused on four themes: Water Balance in Mountain Watersheds, Snow Hydrology, Surface Groundwater Interactions, and Critical Zone Processes.

Each theme feeds a state-of-the-art data discovery tool that provides data from WyCEHG to the public and a platform for many other disciplines to disseminate their data. Funding from this project has supported 61 PhD students, 69 Masters students, and 279 undergraduate students. As a result of this project, 131 publications have been produced, including one featured in Science: “Geophysical Imaging Reveals Topographic Stress Control of Bedrock Weathering” (St. Clair et al, 2015). WyCEHG investigators have obtained 44 successful external awards totaling over $18 million. There have been four new faculty hires at the University of Wyoming. The award established two permanent research facilities:  FINSE (Facility  for  Imaging  the  Near  and  Sub-surface Environment)  and SSHL (Surface  and  Sub-surface  Hydrology  Lab), providing state-of-the-art equipment for surface and subsurface geophysical imaging and hydrology, both managed by leaders in their fields.

Education, outreach, and diversity activities were structured to bring WyCEHG science to the state and beyond. Project highlights include Wyoming Water in the Classroom; Water Interest Group meetings with government, industry, and private stakeholders; a new ecohydrogeophysics course for undergraduate and graduate students co-taught with four HBCUs; and a long-term hydrology education project based on the Wind River Indian Reservation. These initiatives succeeded because of relationships established through WyCEHG across both geographies and areas of expertise. Partnerships will continue and benefit Wyoming EPSCoR in future projects.

Over one hundred educators participated in Wyoming Water in the Classroom, a collaboration with the Science Math Teaching Center and Teton Science School, where they developed curricular materials, student presentations, and a deeper understanding of the scientific and cultural role of water. Almost 200 federal, tribal, state, industry, and private interest stakeholders participated in Water Interest Group meetings with WyCEHG faculty and staff. These exchanges brought together practitioners and researchers to interact and discuss water management strategies, future water budgets, and data driven decision-making.

Undergraduate and graduate students from the University of Wyoming and four HBCUs participated in a new ecohydrogeophysics field course. The goal was to combine hydrology, geophysics, and ecology to better understand and map surface and subsurface water distribution on-site, both in Wyoming and Mississippi.  The course ran for three years and graduated 53 students.

The Northern Arapaho and Eastern Shoshone tribes directed WyCEHG activities on the Wind River Indian Reservation, who requested capacity building for STEM education, water-related community outreach, and data generation and analysis. Collected data is owned by the tribes and will guide future work.

Last Modified: 07/02/2018
Modified by: Brent Ewers