AMES, Iowa - Iowa State University and the Consortium of Universities for the Advancement of Hydrologic Science, Inc., will host a workshop, "Defining Key Scientific Questions on the Hydrology of Intensively Managed Landscapes in the Glaciated Midwest," Tuesday and Wednesday, June 15-16. About 45 invited participants will attend the workshop in the Mahlstede Horticulture Learning Center at Reiman Gardens.
Intensively managed landscapes control specific hydrologic processes for the benefit of farming. Featured workshop speakers will give short presentations on the most pivotal research challenges concerning these landscapes, focusing on topics such as stream hydrology, groundwater hydrology, hydropedology, atmospheric processes, aquatic ecology and economics. Speakers include researchers from Iowa State; the University of Missouri, Columbia; Pennsylvania State University, University Park; the University of Wisconsin-Madison, the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, La Jolla, Calif., and the U.S. Geological Survey Water Resources Division, Denver, Colo.
The workshop also will include field trips to intensively managed landscapes in the Walnut Creek watershed south of Ames, and the riparian management system (buffers) in the Bear Creek watershed near Roland.
"Land use has been altered significantly in the glaciated Midwest," said William Simpkins, associate professor of geological and atmospheric sciences and workshop coordinator. "In Iowa, for example, 70 percent of the state is under cultivation and almost 35 percent of that area is drained by a network of tiles and ditches."
Simpkins says that such land use changes have had consequences for the hydrology of both the immediate region and all of North America.
"The purpose of the workshop is to gather ideas from a diverse community of scientists that will help to direct the future of hydrologic research within these landscape systems," he said.