The Annual Newsletter of the Tufts University

Graduate Education and Research Program in

Water: Systems, Science and Society
In This Issue

Letter from the Faculty Steering Committee 3

WSSS in the Middle East: Faculty and Student Research 5

Second Annual WSSS Symposium 8

Tufts Announces Water Diplomacy Workshop and PhD Program 10

WSSS Practicum 2011 12

WSSS in the Field 13

Alumni Update 14

2010-2011 WSSS Fellow Profiles 16

WSSS Fellow Spotlight 19

Water and Global Health 20

Student and Faculty Publications 21

Support WSSS
Interested in supporting the WSSS program? You can now donate directly
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For more information, visit www.tufts.edu/water/Giving_to_WSSS.html

Water: Systems, Science and Society is a graduate research

and education program that provides Tufts students with
interdisciplinary perspectives and tools to manage
water-related problems around the world.

Water: Systems, Science and Society Page 2

Letter from the Faculty Steering Committee

Dear WSSS Alumni, Faculty, Students & Colleagues,

Welcome to the second annual WSSS newsletter. Water problems abound globally,
nationally, regionally and even locally. It takes a university (this year’s WSSS motto)
to address many interdisciplinary water issues. Here we describe several new WSSS
initiatives in the areas of (1) water diplomacy, (2) water and health, (3) integrated
water resources planning and management, and (4) a new practicum project in the
Mystic River watershed. These initiatives are in addition to numerous other ongoing
programs outlined on our website.
Richard
We are very excited to announce our new Interdisciplinary Graduate Education Vogel
and Research Training (IGERT) grant in the area of water diplomacy. Over the next
5 years, this $4.2 million grant from the National Science Foundation will support
25 PhD students as they train to be the next generation of water diplomats. WSSS
participating faculty member Shafiqul Islam, the principal investigator of this grant,
is also working with faculty from Harvard, MIT and colleagues at Tufts to organize a
water diplomacy workshop for international water professionals to be held at Tufts
this June. This new field, pioneered by Professor Islam, blends two areas of true
excellence at Tufts: water and diplomacy. No other university has such strength in
both areas.

One of our most exciting water diplomacy initiatives, led by visiting scholar
Annette Huber-Lee, is titled, “Collaborating Versus Competing for Survival: Water Tim Griffin
and Livelihood Security in the Middle East.” Dr. Huber-Lee’s joint research with
economist Franklin Fischer at MIT has shown that three-way cooperative water
management among Jordan, Palestine and Israel would generate enormous monetary
benefits for all; however, it takes a university to figure out how to implement this
cooperative strategy. Participants in this effort include faculty from Fletcher,
Engineering, Biology, Anthropology, Economics, Nutrition, and Biomedical Sciences,
as well as colleagues from the Stockholm Environment Institute and the Tufts
Positive Deviance Institute.

Second-year WSSS students are charged with organizing our annual symposium.
This year’s symposium, “Water in 2050: The Infrastructure to Get There,” took
place on April 1st. With keynote lectures by Gene Stakhiv, the senior international Rusty
water advisor for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, and Dan Sheer, the founder Russell
and president of Hydrologics, the symposium advanced our understanding of a
central challenge of water management and environmental policy. The symposium
featured three panels with faculty from Harvard, MIT, Tufts, and the University of
Massachusetts, as well as colleagues from Massachusetts Water Resources Authority
(MWRA), Geosyntec, the Cadmus Group and Oxfam International. (continued on page 4)
Annual Newsletter: May 2011 Page 3
Graduate students from Tufts, Harvard and Boston College had an opportunity to present their
research at a lunchtime poster session and network with representatives from symposium
sponsors Geosyntec, CDM, AECOM, the Cadmus Group, and the Stockholm Environment Institute
(SEI).

In another WSSS initiative, newly appointed Professor in Civil and Environmental Engineering
Elena Naumova is leading a group of faculty from the Schools of Engineering and Medicine and
colleagues from the Consortium of Universities for the Advancement of the Hydrologic Sciences
(CUAHSI) in an effort to develop a framework for securing funding for training grants in the area of
water and health.

WSSS students in the Practicum Track are working on a stormwater management initiative with
the Mystic River Watershed Association (MyRWA), a regional advocacy group, on the Alewife
River sub-watershed adjacent to the Medford campus. This project was developed through a
Participatory Impact Pathways Analysis (PIPA) exercise in the WSSS course “Integrated Water
Resources Management” taught by Dr. Huber-Lee in fall 2010. PIPA is a relatively young approach
that draws from program theory evaluation, social network analysis and research to facilitate
organizational development and foster innovation.

“It Takes a
University”
You’ll find descriptions of these and many other exciting developments in this newsletter.
As we grow, the vision and mission of the WSSS program remains unchanged: We continue
to educate and nurture Tufts graduate students to be attentive to the issues affecting water
resources management and to create a thriving intellectual community dedicated to addressing
interdisciplinary water issues.

In closing, we wish to give a special thanks to John Foster, former CEO of Malcolm Pirnie and a
Tufts alumnus (CEE ’52), for his the long-term and continuing generosity. Along with the Tufts
administration, John is the single biggest supporter of our WSSS programs.

Thanks for your support and interest in WSSS!

The WSSS Faculty Steering Committee

Rich Vogel (Director), Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering
Tim Griffin, Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy
Rusty Russell, Department of Urban and Environmental Policy and Planning

Water: Systems, Science and Society Page 4

WSSS in the Middle East: Faculty and Student Research

Annette Huber-Lee Studies Conflict and Cooperation

Annette Huber-Lee is a visiting scholar in Engineering. She spoke with TIE
intern Libby Mahaffy G’11 in March about her research and vision for
the future of interdisciplinary work and water.

You’re an engineer by training who works with economic

models. What is it about economics that seems especially
suited to the interdisciplinary work you do?
What really drew me to economics – when I was absolutely
sure I needed to study economics and not just engineering –
was coming back from the Peace Corps in northern Thailand
and working for the US EPA in Washington, DC, doing risk
Annette Huber-Lee in her office at Tufts
assessments. The most compelling way to persuade decision-
makers is to have dollar signs associated with your proposal. So I realized I’d better understand
these dollar signs to influence policy. It’s still a very pragmatic engineering approach: I want to
make a difference in the world and simply understanding technology and people is insufficient – I
need to understand the economics, politics and the greater systems that we’re all a part of.

What attracted you to working with the WSSS program?

It’s very unique. I don’t know of another program like it in any university. It’s sweeping: six
different schools are involved; the opportunity and the challenge that it gives students who are in
the social sciences to take engineering courses and vice versa; and the faculty that are willing to go
the extra mile to help students who are taking classes that they wouldn’t otherwise take. I think it’s
a fantastic program. I would love to replicate WSSS in Africa and Asia – to work with universities to
create this kind of program all over the world. This is exactly what we need to tackle global water
issues and climate change.

You taught a course in Integrated Water Resources Management (IWRM) at Tufts last fall, and
are now teaching a course in Water and Environmental Resource Systems Analysis. Why did you
choose to teach those courses? What do you enjoy most about teaching them?
I really enjoy teaching both of them partly because they’re so challenging. I’m drawn to complex
problems, and using IWRM and systems analysis tools to try to unravel some of that complexity.
These are messy problems; in the IWRM course, we are really focused on tools that help integrate
the quantitative with the qualitative.

I love teaching partly because I’ve learned so much in the process. The thrill of watching the
students make progress over the course of the semester in appreciating the complexity of these
problems, being exposed to problems from all over the world, and then seeing where they take all
of that. It’s been a really gratifying experience.
(continued on page 6)

Annual Newsletter: May 2011 Page 5

Tufts in the Middle East: Faculty and Student Research

You’ve shown that cooperative water resource management among the countries of Israel,
Palestine and Jordan would lead to enormous benefits for all three countries. What will it take
to make this happen? How can your research be used to facilitate cooperation in the Middle
East?
The economic value for Israel, Palestine and Jordan to collaborate or coordinate or cooperate is
on the order of hundreds of millions of dollars per year -- so there’s no obstacle from an economic
standpoint. What are the obstacles? One that comes to mind is trust. You can’t have collaboration
or coordination or cooperation without a foundation of trust. How do you go about building trust?
As Richard Vogel puts it, “It takes a university.” My hope would be to
create a true interdisciplinary program of research at Tufts where we “In the end, it’s
would have faculty and students working jointly to try to address these not going to be
issues. It would be a joint Water Economics Project and Tufts University one single thing;
[effort] and then, ideally, it would join with universities in the Middle it really does take
East. For example, the Arava Institute in Israel is unique in that it has the university.”
Jordanian, Palestinian, and Israeli faculty and students. Partnership at
the university level is, in some form, a trust-building activity.

We’ve put together an internal proposal at Tufts that would use concepts from the Positive
Deviance Initiative. The idea is to find a deviant (in a positive way) example of a behavior,
and then see how you can replicate it. For example, in border towns that are typically West
Bank and Israel – would there be some degree of cooperation [between the two parts of these
communities]? Are there examples at the national scale where we see cooperation working?

Simcha Levental Studies Wastewater Treatment Solutions

Simcha Levental G’11 focuses on the Middle East, using his GIS and remote sensing
expertise to research the urban aspects of water management, poverty and conflict.

WSSS student Simcha Levental, a Master’s student in Urban and

Environmental Policy and Planning, received a WSSS research fellowship to
travel last summer to the Middle East, where he conducted a pre-feasibility
study for a wastewater solution in the town of Battir in the West Bank.

Over 8 weeks, Levental interviewed local stake holders and interviewed

families. The goal of the field work in Battir was to map a protection area around the spring and
study its pollutants with the goal of lowering the risk to human health from the spring’s water.
Levental collaborated with the Arava Institute for Environmental Studies and with Palestinian
Wastewater Engineers Group to gather data for this project. In a manner similar to the WSSS

Water: Systems, Science and Society Page 6

Could we find, at multiple scales, positive deviance? I am very interested in looking at this
scale issue and how we can build from there; understanding the ecology, the anthropology, the
economics, to try to get an inroad into what seems, economically, to be in everyone’s best interest
but doesn’t happen. Every little inroad we can make, let’s make. In the end, it’s not going to be one
single thing; it really does take the university.

What do you see as the future of interdisciplinary work?

The role of this first wave of WSSS students will be to break new ground, to gain access to
decision-makers, and to advocate for other disciplines in government ministries, in consulting
firms; creating opportunities to work in an interdisciplinary or trans-disciplinary way. Those
opportunities aren’t sitting out there right now; we need to create them. Because the need is
growing – seven billion people on the earth, limited resources, climate change, globalization,
rapid change – we need people who can look at the multidimensional aspects of problems.
Tufts is definitely on the cutting edge in terms of really encouraging this kind of interdisciplinary
work. My wish would be to see more of it – there’s still a lot of room for us to improve in terms of
actually carrying out interdisciplinary work.

What will be the issue that puts water on the forefront of people’s minds? Climate change?
The increase in food prices may be more of a trigger in the short term than climate change. Water
is connected to energy via biofuels; by growing more biofuels, we’re growing less food, and that’s
having ripple effects. In Tunisia and Egypt, one of the underlying causes of discontent may have
been high food prices, though it’s hard to place attribution.

Bahamas project, Levental developed a community based water monitoring program for the
regional council of Bethlehem.

“After doing calculations, modeling, and creating a water budget, we learned that, contrary to
popular belief, only a small percentage of the water coming out of the Battir spring is groundwater.
Most of the water is coming from the black- and graywater leaching through the limestone from
residents’ boreholes, so the levels of pathogens in the spring are really high,” he says.

In his final report, The Battir Spring: The Road to a Safe Water Resource (available at www.tufts.
edu/water/pdf/SimchaLevental_Paper.pdf ), Levental details the extent of human influence on the
spring and offers precautions for future development of the area.

“A localized solution,” he concludes, “doesn’t solve the problem.” Rather, regional cooperation is the
key to a successful, healthy water system.

Annual Newsletter: May 2011 Page 7

Second Annual WSSS Symposium Highlights Infrastructure
By Ellen Parry Tyler F’11
Building upon the success of last year’s efforts, the second annual WSSS symposium brought over
150 students, faculty and water professionals from 10 universities, including Cornell, George
Washington University, MIT, Harvard, UMass Amherst and Boston, NYU, Clark University, Sienna
College, and the University of Maine, as well as representatives of various public and private
organizations, to Tufts on April 1st to discuss the future of water infrastructure.

The symposium opened with a keynote address

questioning the relative importance of climate
change in relation to other pressing water-
related challenges in the near future. WSSS
faculty director Rich Vogel commented, “For me,
the WSSS symposium was a resounding success
because it stimulated and even initiated an
extremely important debate, which I hope we
will continue.”

The day’s agenda included panel discussions,

keynote speeches, poster presentations and
networking sessions. Panelists provided diverse
perspectives from a wide range of academic
disciplines and professional fields. A lunchtime
networking reception and closing cocktail hour
gave students an opportunity to present their
research posters and to meet representatives
from the symposium’s sponsoring organizations,
including Geosyntec Consultants, AECOM, the
Stockholm Environment Institute, CDM and the
Cadmus Group.

The conference sessions addressed many impending

challenges including the appropriate scale of water and
sanitation infrastructure, water scarcity, flooding, aging
infrastructure and securing safe and sufficient water in
the US and in developing countries. “I was pleasantly
surprised to find out that the panel topics were broad
enough to apply to many disciplines, even outside
of water,” said one attendee. “Water was, of course,
the theme that tied everything together, but I really
appreciated that many of the larger concepts could be
related to other areas, and fit into a big picture.”
Water: Systems, Science and Society Page 8
2011 WSSS Symposium Agenda

Keynote Address by Gene Stakhiv

Does National Security Depend on Environmental and Water
Security?

Panel 1: Scaling and Infrastructure: How big is too big?

Panelists: John Briscoe, Paul Kirshen, Susan Murcott
Moderator: William Moomaw
This panel focused on the role of scale in infrastructure development. Panelists
discussed the benefits and limitations of large-scale versus smaller, modular-style infrastructure development. In light
of the pressing infrastructure needs in developing countries and their emerging economies, it can be argued that
large-scale solutions are advantageous due to economies of scale. However, many large-scale infrastructure projects
have failed in the past and are increasingly difficult to implement. Panelists were asked: Locally-adapted, smaller-scale,
community-level solutions may be an effective alternative, but at what cost?

Panel 2: Aging Infrastructure in the United States

Panelists: Stephen Estes-Smargiassi, Richard Palmer, Marcus Quigley, Chi Ho Sham
Moderator: David Gute
A 2009 report by the American Society of Civil Engineers assigned an overall D grade to America’s infrastructure.
Replacing and repairing aging infrastructure is a daunting challenge for the United States. Panelists were asked: What
strategies should be used to address this issue? What approach can be leveraged from recent advancements and
research?
Lunchtime Networking Reception

Student Poster Session

Second Keynote Address by Dan Sheer

Designing and Implementing Water Management Strategies:
Understanding Values, Changing Perceptions, Changing Behavior

Panel 3: Meeting the Growing Needs of Developing Countries

Panelists: John Ambler, Jeffrey Griffiths, Casey Brown, Kenneth Strzepek
Moderator: Annette Huber-Lee
Developing countries have pressing needs for water infrastructure
that will only increase with population growth, urbanization, and
climate change. Domestic, industrial, and agricultural sectors
will all face increasing demand and potentially less supply.Yet
access to water has the potential to improve livelihoods for the
bottom billion(s). Panelists were asked: How can these needs and
opportunities be met without compromising ecological integrity in a
resource- and finance-constrained world? What role does infrastructure play?

Annual Newsletter: May 2011 Page 9

The Confluence of Water and Diplomacy
By Libby Mahaffy G’11
In a warming world with an uncertain climate and growing population, water is a hot-button issue.
A vital but limited resource, water can cross physical and political boundaries, leaving division in
its wake. Water diplomacy, a burgeoning field being pioneered at Tufts University, is poised to deal
with the increasing conflicts surrounding our water resources. “Our goal is to create actionable
knowledge,” says Dr. Shafiqul Islam, Bernard M. Gordon Senior Faculty Fellow in Engineering
and Professor of Water Diplomacy at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, the principal
investigator of a new $4.2 million grant awarded by the National Science Foundation to create an
Integrative Graduate Education and Research Traineeship (IGERT) doctoral program at Tufts.

This “Water Diplomacy” program will admit its first

cohort of PhD students this fall. Students may come from “The goal is to create a unique
either the “natural” domain – e.g., biology, chemistry, blend of Tufts water scholars
engineering – or the “societal” domain – e.g., economics, who are well-versed in the
law, international relations, political science, urban natural, societal and political
planning, anthropology. The goal is to produce students dimensions of water issues.”
that are “deeply grounded in a particular discipline,”
Islam says, but with a thorough understanding of other
domains, as well as the political context in which they interact. The goal is to create a unique blend
of Tufts water scholars who are well-versed in the natural, societal and political dimensions of
water issues.

This effort has already germinated inter-

disciplinary cooperation at Tufts. The IGERT
proposal was conceived by a team of 17
faculty members from three schools at Tufts
and benefited from the contributions of
over 15 national and international partners.
But why haven’t these contributors worked
together before? According to Islam, it’s the
notion of “Adjacent Possible”: this program
is the realization of potential that existed
previously but lacked the creative synthesis
and enabling infrastructure to make it real.
There has always been “water, arts and
The “societal” and “natural” domains intersect to explain the
sciences, engineering and diplomacy,” he says.
context of water diplomacy issues.
“[But] with the IGERT we have brought them
together. Now it’s unstoppable.”

Water: Systems, Science and Society Page 10

Tufts’ Role in the Future of a Flexible Resource

But Tufts’ Water Diplomacy efforts will extend beyond the IGERT program. This June, Tufts will
team up with Harvard and MIT to host a Water Diplomacy Workshop to be held at Tufts. “You think
and then you do,” Islam says. “The IGERT is the thinking and the Water Diplomacy Workshop is the
doing.” The goal of the workshop is to “train the trainers” to think water as a flexible resource and
synthesize explicit and tacit information to create actionable knowledge. Co-taught with Professor
Lawrence Susskind of the Program on Negotiation at Harvard University and MIT, this workshop is
the first of its kind. Framing water science, policy, and politics as networks of relationships allows
them to be managed through mutual gains negotiations. In this inaugural venture, participants
will spend five days participating in interactive lectures, problem-solving clinics, and role-play
simulations in order to integrate learning into practice.

“In 20 years, we will create The overwhelming response – the workshop has already
several thousand reflective received many more applications than the 35 available
spaces – is a testament to the need for this type of
water professionals who’ll
knowledge and training. Participants will be mid-to
think like this. We are in the senior-level water professionals from around the globe.
game of changing the way we Representatives from the United States, Israel, Palestine,
think about water.” Mexico, Malaysia, Bangladesh, Peru, Pakistan and Russia
have already committed to attending. Islam takes the
long view, imagining each participant teaching 20 others: “In 20 years, we will create several
thousand reflective water professionals who’ll think like this. We are in the game of changing the
way we think about water.”

Shafiqul (“Shafik”) Islam is the first Bernard M. Gordon Senior Faculty Fellow in Engineering and
Professor of Water Diplomacy at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University. He
is the Director of the Water Diplomacy Program at Tufts University that involves over twenty faculty
and fifteen national and international partners and is sponsored by the National Science Foundation.
Dr. Islam’s interdisciplinary research and educational interests are to understand, characterize,
measure, and model water issues ranging from climate to cholera to water diplomacy with a focus on
scale issues and remote sensing. His research group, WE REASoN, integrates theory and practice to
create actionable knowledge.

Annual Newsletter: May 2011 Page 11

WSSS Practicum Team Makes a Splash in the Mystic
By Julia Ledewitz G’12
The 2011 WSSS Practicum team has just completed a set of projects designed to address water
quality and related health concerns in the Alewife Brook and surrounding communities. The
Alewife is part of Tufts University’s home watershed, the Mystic River. The inter-disciplinary
practicum team has undertaken this research in collaboration with the Mystic River Watershed
Association (MyRWA), a regional advocacy organization. The focus of their efforts includes the
water quality challenges posed by the continuing combined sewer overflows (CSOs) that afflict the
Alewife, and efforts by adjacent communities - Somerville, Arlington, Cambridge and Belmont - to
implement a complex set of stormwater remediation measures that are mandated by the federal
Clean Water Act. Eight combined sewer overflow outfalls remain along Alewife Brook, and during
moderate to heavy rainfalls these CSOs release raw sewage into the brook and then into the Mystic.

MyRWA has asked the four-student WSSS

practicum team to analyze the impact of the
water body classification variance under
which the CSO reduction projects have been
completed and to examine how future reduction
projects would be affected if current water
quality standards were downgraded. The
WSSS team has also been asked to identify best
management practices (BMPs) for decreasing
the overall amount of stormwater feeding the
sewer system. To do that, team members are
reviewing stormwater BMPs from across the
state and country, examining their relative costs
and benefits, and identifying practices that The WSSS Practicum team takes a chilly February tour of
would be most effective in the Alewife Brook the Alewife Brook, led by MyRWA stormwater guru Roger
and its adjacent municipalities. Frymire (second from left). Others, from left, are Practicum
team member Maggie Holmes, Tufts instructor Rusty Russell,
MyRWA Assistant Watershed Scientist Katrina Sukola,
This year, the Practicum team consists of four Practicum participant Julia Ledewitz, MyRWA’s Mystic
graduate students from across the University: Monitoring Network Director Patrick Herron, Ph.D., and
Practicum participants Sara Blankenship and Samantha
Samantha Weaver and Julia Ledewitz from the Weaver.
Department of Urban and Environmental Policy
and Planning (UEP); Sara Blankenship from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy; and Maggie
Holmes from the Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy and the Public Health Program
at Tufts Medical School. Each student brings a different knowledge base and set of skills to the
projects, which has helped to broaden the initial scope of the work and allowed the projects to be
fashioned around individual and group interests. The practicum, which carries course credit, is
taught by Rusty Russell, J.D., a faculty member at UEP.

Water: Systems, Science and Society Page 12

WSSS in the Field

Student Field Study

During his summer internship at the U.S. EPA in the Ocean
and Coastal Protection Unit, Peter Kelly-Joseph served as
a scientist on the EPA Ocean Survey Vessel Bold for a six-
day coastal nutrient survey in the Gulf of Maine. The water
quality data collected during the survey will help the
New England states develop numeric nutrient criteria for
estuarine and marine waters. In the fall he was awarded
an EPA/Department of Energy fellowship to continue
his internship during the year where he has worked on
coastal and marine spatial planning in New England;
climate adaptation in the EPA Office of Water; and nutrient
criteria development in New England. Peter Kelly-Joseph aboard the Bold.

WSSS Field Trip to the Mystic

Officer Patrick Johnston of the Everett

Police Department gives a tour of the
Mystic River for a WSSS student/faculty
field trip on October 16, 2010.

Annual Newsletter: May 2011 Page 13

WSSS Alumni: Farming and International Development

In November 2010, WSSS graduate Racey Bingham F’07, N’07 spoke with TIE intern Libby Mahaffy G’11 from the
Central African Republic (CAR), where she’s living and doing development work on a contract with the World Bank.

What have you been up to since graduating from Tufts and finishing the WSSS program?
Two years ago, I realized that the more I advanced in my career in development, the farther away I
got from the farmers and producers that I loved working with. I’m not somebody who likes to sit in
the office all day long – I was really getting frustrated – so when my job finished I decided to take a
break and try actually farming myself. I moved to the town in upstate New York where my dad and
step-mother had retired to and started working for a local farm called Essex Farm. I loved it, and
decided to try and juggle farming for 8 months of the year and work in Africa doing international
development work during the winters when there’s less activity on the farm. I may want to come
back to work full-time in Africa, so I’m keeping my international development resume current as a
mid-level consultant.
How are you using what you
learned in WSSS in your current
job?
My first winter in CAR (2009-
2010), I worked on an urban
water and sanitation project that
dealt with drainage and water
systems. I definitely used my
WSSS knowledge working on
that project in terms of water
systems and GIS. There was a
lot of flooding here in Bangui
in 2009, and I was researching
flood risk and preparedness, so
it helped to have a basic sense of
the engineering and the different
kinds of water systems.
Racey Bingham on the New York farm, spring 2011

I was more able to use my WSSS background in Mali, where I worked for two years after Tufts on
a large-scale irrigation project. Here (in CAR) I’m more focused on agriculture products, and CAR
has abundant rainfall, so it’s all rain-fed agriculture. There is no lack of water, but there is a lack of
infrastructure to ensure the right quantities of water consistently over time. Both the World Bank
and the International Fund for Agricultural Development are preparing projects in CAR that are
likely to fund small dams and infrastructure improvements to support to small rural farmers.

WSSS helped me to look at agricultural systems from a broader perspective, both understanding
and keeping in mind the engineering side of these systems: How do you grow the food? What’s the
Water: Systems, Science and Society Page 14
water system? Is there a way to better manage the rainfall and waste? I look at problems from a
very holistic perspective even though I am dealing just with agriculture projects right now.

What were your expectations coming into the WSSS program?

When I started WSSS, I was looking for a more practical program. Fletcher was focused on
agriculture and rural development policy and I had not yet started the Friedman nutrition
degree. Water became the linking factor between policy, agriculture and nutrition. Holistic water
management that took into consideration people’s domestic and productive needs was relevant to
both the nutrition and the agriculture parts of my studies. It’s a nexus that I wish I could find in my
work in the field, but I have yet to. Essentially, most organizations do not have the programmatic
mechanisms, the expertise, or the money to design projects that prioritize the connection between
agriculture and nutrition.

Was interconnection a priority in the WSSS program?

That is the core of WSSS: six schools are involved, so you get a global sense of how water is an
interconnecting factor across different disciplines. As a WSSS student, you take it for granted that
everyone is on the same page because you’re self-selecting -- you all think it’s important to learn
about water from all angles -- but when you leave, you realize that other people don’t think like
that.

If WSSS were a Jelly Belly, what flavor would it be?

I’ve been overseas too long to know what flavors even exist! Well, wouldn’t it be the whole box?
There are hundreds of different kinds – you can’t just pick one because it’s multidisciplinary.

Racey Bingham, left, is a Mickey Leland International

Hunger Fellow, providing technical assistance to a
Malian team implementing an irrigated agricultural
project under a grant from the Millennium Challenge
Corporation, a U.S. government agency.

Annual Newsletter: May 2011 Page 15

Meet the 2010-2011 WSSS Fellows

WSSS Fellowships provide financial support to students to encourage and foster interdisciplinary water-related
research; to provide financial support to WSSS students for research that will produce scholarship; and to increase
participation of WSSS faculty in research projects related to WSSS objectives.

Amanda Beal and Ellen Parry Tyler N’11: “By Land and By Sea: Connecting Maine’s
Farming and Fishing Communities”
Building off shared input from farmers, fishermen and
representative organizations throughout the state of
Maine, we presented results from a series of statewide
forums we convened in early 2010. By Land and By
Sea project stakeholders, including representatives of
state agencies, organizations and community members
brainstormed cross-cutting challenges and formed a
sub-committee to draft and distribute a policy brief to
gubernatorial candidates. This document, “Maine Food
Security, Jobs and the Environment,” outlined a list of
action steps and recommendations to the next governor.
Member organizations of the Eat Local Foods Coalition
also met with candidates to discuss the By Land and By Sea project. Both of these documents can
be found at: http://www.eatmainefoods.org/forum/topics/elfc-releases-by-land-by-sea

John Parker F’12, N’12: “The Adoption and Diffusion of Soil and Water Management
Innovations: A Case Study of the Quesungual Slash-and-Mulch Agroforestry System”
With rising food demand and mounting constraints on
water resources and arable land, how can the resilience
of agricultural systems be strengthened to produce
more food while using less water under increasingly
uncertain conditions? Recent studies have highlighted
the potential to achieve significant gains in crop yields
and water productivity through improved soil moisture
or “green water” management. Achieving these gains
requires the widespread adoption of on-farm soil and
water management innovations by smallholder farmers,
which has been limited in many of the regions where
the greatest potential lies. My research examines the
Quesungal Slash-and-Mulch Agroforestry System in southwestern Honduras to better understand
the factors that influence farmer adoption of soil and water management innovations and the
determinants of how local innovations are catalyzed and scaled-out to achieve large-scale impact.
My preliminary results indicate that secure land tenure, participation in community groups and
collective action by heterogeneous actors significantly influence the rate of generation, adoption
and diffusion of soil and water management innovations among smallholder farmers.
Water: Systems, Science and Society Page 16
Jeff Cegan E’11: “Resilient Water Resource Systems: Managing Surprise”
Environmental surprises are bound to occur. Surprise is induced by
uncertainty and chaos in environmental systems and exacerbated
by anthropogenic attempts to gain control over these systems. In
my thesis, I review the concept of surprise and its role in ecosystem
management and financial markets. In particular, I focus on the
connection between surprise and resiliency. I explore methods in
which integrated adaptive management and critical thinking embrace
uncertainty and absorb surprise impacts, and I explain how regional
preparedness is critical to mitigate adverse effects of climate-induced
surprises. Lastly, I review the quantification of surprise and its applications to water resource
management, while stressing the importance of integrating non-quantifiable notions of surprise
into decision-making for a more sustainable approach to management.

Gogi Grewal G’11, N’11: “Assessing the Short-Term Impact of School-Based Safe Water
Points on Childhood Diarrheal Disease and School Attendance in Somali Region, Ethiopia”
My interest in water is primarily related to how access to safe
and sufficient quantities of it intersects with health in developing
countries where infrastructure tends to be lacking, and determining
what technologies are best-suited to particular settings. With
the help of funding from the WSSS Fellowship, I was able to
spend a semester in Ethiopia researching barriers to the use and
sustainability of school-based water and sanitation facilities. This
involved a mixture of qualitative methods to examine experiences
with use and maintenance of different types of water points, ranging
from roof water catchments to pipe extensions from municipal
supplies. Speaking with students, schools staff, and government health and water officials from 6
different regions of Ethiopia and examining drinking, handwashing and latrine facilities first-hand
was a valuable insight into what is and is not working in schools.

Lauren Caputo E’11: “Use of a Decision Support System for Stormwater Management
Planning”
My research project examines stormwater management strategies
under a changing climate. With the acceptance that precipitation
patterns change over time comes the reality that the “static design
problem” no longer holds. How should we design stormwater
management practices under a dynamic climate? Or more
importantly, how should we retrofit stormwater management systems
in urban areas that are already prone to flooding or have combined
sewer overflows? I use the combined sewer system in Somerville, Massachusetts as a case study to
explore the possibilities of LID control under different climate scenarios using EPA’s SWMM software.

Annual Newsletter: May 2011 Page 17

Laura Kuhl F’11: “A Comparative Study of Adaptation to Coastal Flooding and Sea Level
Rise in La Ceiba, Honduras and Boston, MA”
My research examined disaster management, flooding
and climate change on the northern coast of Honduras.
In collaboration with a local environmental NGO,
Fundación Cuero y Salado, I conducted in-depth
interviews with over 100 stakeholders including
government officials, NGOs, donors, community leaders
and residents. Through these interviews I sought to understand the current system of disaster
management, as well as local coping strategies for flooding and local knowledge of climate
change. Based on my research, I examine the question: how can Honduras transition from a
culture of disaster response to a culture of adaptation? Recognizing that moving from a reactive
to a proactive preventive approach to disasters is quite challenging, I identity potential leverage
points and opportunities in the current system, as well as challenges for this transition. I highlight
the importance on working across scales, and argue that by utilizing a disaster risk reduction
framework, it is possible to begin this transition and develop a robust adaptation framework.

Jack Melcher E’11, G’11: “Systems Approaches to Stormwater Management Planning”

I am researching “systems approaches” to urban stormwater management.
Stormwater impacts like pollution and flooding result from complex
interactions between the hydrologic cycle and the built environment. I want to
learn more about systems approaches that offer holistic approaches to problem
identification and policy making. I have been reading literature on decision
support systems, public participation, clean water policy, and systems science
in support of this interdisciplinary thesis. I recently presented a poster on this
work at the 2011 WSSS Symposium at Tufts and at the 2011 WRRC Conference at UMass, Amherst.

Karen Claire Kosinski E’11: “Diagnostic Test Accuracy and Spatial Heterogeneity of
Urinary Schistosomiasis in the Eastern Region, Ghana”
My research focuses on the primary prevention of infections and
diseases related to water, sanitation, and hygiene. Specifically,
I work with the organism Schistosoma haematobium and
conduct fieldwork in five communities in Ghana, West Africa.
S. haematobium is transmitted via skin contact with surface
water contaminated with human waste. In 2008 and 2009,
my research team and I designed and constructed a water
recreation area to reduce contact with contaminated water in
one of our partnering communities, Adasawase. School-aged children are particularly at risk of
infection. In 2010, we collected data about the efficacy of the structure in preventing reinfection
with S. haematobium. Currently, we are analyzing the data via a logistic regression model.

Water: Systems, Science and Society Page 18

WSSS Fellow Spotlight: Eric Vaughan

Civil and Environmental Engineering Master’s candidate and WSSS student Eric Vaughan E’11 completed WSSS-funded
research on agricultural demand for water in the West Bank in summer 2010.

Eric Vaughan: I came to Tufts to explore issues related to water use

in developing countries where it is often limited not by quantity, but
by lack of infrastructure, limited economic development, and poor
governance. My advisor, Rich Vogel, recommended I read Liquid Assets
by Franklin Fisher (economics professor at MIT) and WSSS participating
faculty member Annette Huber-Lee. I read the book and was blown
away because it demonstrated such a strong link between economics
and water use; a link I had witnessed firsthand in my time working in
Africa! I wanted to be involved with their research, and it happened to be in the Middle East, which
was exciting! My research supports Annette’s work, which seeks to improve the understanding of
tradeoffs in water allocation, taking into account social and economic objectives. We use systems
analysis tools to help guide water allocation decisions that stimulate cooperation and development
in the Middle East.

I just submitted a conference paper based on this research for the ASCE World Environmental
and Water Resources Congress, 2011. My research focuses on characterizing uncertainty in the
agricultural demand for water in the West Bank, Palestine. Understanding demand for water is a
critical first step in guiding socially beneficial water allocations, infrastructure development, and
cooperation between Palestine, Israel, Jordan, and even Lebanon and Syria.

The focus of my research emerged while I was

“Interdisciplinarity is critical collecting data for my agricultural water demand
to my research; it could not be model in the West Bank. I noticed there was a lot
done by a specialist from any one of fluctuation and uncertainty in the agricultural
field.” and economic influences on irrigation water use.
When I returned to Tufts, we reformulated the
model to characterize this uncertainty and explore its effects on agricultural water use. I gathered
data through statistics published by the Palestinian government and focus groups with farmers
in different regions in the West Bank. Data collection was an amazing collaboration between
the Palestinian Water Authority, the Palestinian Ministry of Agriculture and myself facilitated
by Annette’s contacts. It was a fabulous experience working with experts in the field; people
dedicated to solving very complex problems under very difficult conditions.

I’m not a research or teaching assistant here at Tufts, which means my research is unfunded. There
are two aspects to research: advancing the techniques and characterization of a place. In order to
do the second part effectively, you really have to go directly to the field. I applied for and won a
WSSS research fellowship in order to do this fieldwork in the Middle East last summer. It wouldn’t
have been possible without WSSS financial support.
(continued on page 20)

Annual Newsletter: May 2011 Page 19

Data collection was a very enriching experience. Personally, I’m driven by problems in the
developing world. I’m interested in going to places, interacting with people, and learning about
the issues firsthand. As an American, I was unprepared for how welcoming and social the Middle
East was to me. That experience was such an amazing part of my education at Tufts. I hope other
students take similar opportunities to connect their work with the world.

Interdisciplinarity is critical to my research; it could not be done by a specialist from any one field.
My research committee includes Richard Vogel, who has a background in statistics, hydrology
and systems, Timothy Griffin, an agronomist, and Annette Huber-Lee, who has background in
economics, water resources management, and mathematical programming and understands
the context of our work in the Middle-East. Each committee member has made substantial and
necessary contributions to this work. There are so many problems that require this type of multi-
disciplinary approach and this is why WSSS is so important! As told to Libby Mahaffy G’11

Elena Naumova Studies Water and Health Internationally

By Libby Mahaffy G’11
Elena Naumova, a faculty director of the Tufts Institute of the Environment and director of the
Tufts Initiative for the Forecasting and Modeling of Infectious Diseases at the Friedman School
of Nutrition, recently moved from the medical campus to Medford to begin an appointment with
the School of Engineering. A mathematician and statistician by training, Dr. Naumova is hoping
to develop a “more sophisticated analytical methodology” to uncover the “intrinsic relationships
between health and the environment.”

With projects running in both India and Siberia, Naumova,

who is Russian-born, quips, “One is too hot for me and one
is too cold for others!” But these two seemingly disparate
places are related: they have a striking resemblance in
the seasonality of their infectious disease outbreaks. The
Siberian project, with funding from the U.S. EPA, involves
collecting longitudinal data on environmental contributors
such as water quality and water availability associated
with drinking water in the larger cities of Siberia. At a
very different scale, the India project requires collecting
data from individual households in the city of Vellore to
understand factors that can contribute to waterborne
diseases: “personal hygiene, water usage, water quality,
Elena Naumova, right, with members of the
water availability and water scarcity” among them.
Vellore research team
These projects are funded and ongoing, and Naumova is looking for students to join the research
team. There are also internship opportunities with the World Health Organization and the United
Nations Group of Earth Observation in interdisciplinary research where, according to Naumova,
“students from the engineering school and the medical school can cooperate very effectively.” For
more information or to apply to join the research team, contact her at Elena.Naumova@tufts.edu.

Water: Systems, Science and Society Page 20

Selected WSSS Student and Alumni Publications

Akanda, A.S., Jutla, A.S., Siddique, A.K., Alam, M., Sack, R., Huq, A., Colwell, R. and Islam, S. 2011. Hydroclimatic Influences on Seasonal and Spatial
Cholera Transmission Cycles: Implications for Public Health Intervention in the Bengal Delta, Water Resources Research (Paper in Press)
Akanda, A. S., Jutla, A.S. and Islam, S. 2009. Dual peak cholera transmission in Bengal Delta: A hydroclimatological explanation, Geophysical
Research Letters, 36, L19401, doi:10.1029/2009GL039312.
Akanda, A.S, Jutla, A.S., Eltahir, E. and Islam, S. 2011. Hydroepidemiology of Cholera Transmission in Bangladesh: A Spatially Explicit and
Seasonally Varying Cholera Prevalence Model. General Assembly of the EGU, Vienna, Austria, April 3-8. (Accepted)
Akanda, A. S., Jutla, A. S., Huq, A., Colwell, R. and Islam, S. 2010. From Fall to Spring, or Spring to Fall? Seasonal Cholera Transmission Cycles and
Implications for Climate Change. Proceedings of AGU, Fall Meeting 2010, San Francisco, CA. December 13-17.
Akanda, A.S., Jutla, A.S., and Islam, S. 2010. Climate Change, Hydrologic Extremes and Cholera Dynamics. Water, and Health: Where Science Meets
Policy, Chappel Hill, NC, October 25-26.
Akanda, A.S., Jutla, A.S., and Islam, S. 2010. Remote Sensing Based Forecasting of Cholera Outbreaks, Remote Sensing and Hydrology Symposium,
September 27-30, Jackson, Wyoming.
Akanda, A.S., Jutla, A.S., and Islam, S. 2009. Rivers as Corridors of Diarrheal Disease Transmission: Role of Coastal and Terrestrial
Hydroclimatology. Proceedings of the AGU Americas Meeting, Foz do Iguacu, Brazil. August 8-12.
Akanda, A. S., Jutla, A.S., and Islam, S. 2010. Hydrology, Climate and Human Health: a hydroclimatological approach to understand cholera
transmission in South Asia and sub Saharan Africa. Proceedings of the UNESCO Xth Kovacs Colloquium, Paris, France, July 3-4.
Akanda, A.S., Jutla, A.S., and Islam, S. 2010. Hydroclimatic Extremes and Cholera Dynamics in the 21st Century. Steve Burges Retirement
Symposium, University of Washington, Seattle, WA March 24-26
Akanda, A.S., Jutla, A.S., and Islam, S. 2009. Dual Peak Cholera transmission in South Asia: A Hydroclimatological explanation. Proceedings of the
AGU, San Francisco, CA, December 14-18.
Akanda, S., Jutla, A.S., and Islam, S. 2009. Climate Extremes and Infectious Diseases: Large Scale Hydroclimatic Controls in Forecasting Cholera
Epidemics. Research Day on Global Health and Infectious Disease, Tufts University, USA. October 5.
Akanda, A. S., Jutla, A. S., and Islam, S. 2009. Bimodal Explanation of Cholera in Bangladesh: A hydroclimatological explanation. General Assembly
of the EGU, Vienna, Austria, April 19-24.
Blankenship, Sara. “Georgia’s Red Clay: A Scientific and Regulatory Overview.” Perspectives on Georgia’s Environment. State Bar of Georgia
Environmental Law Section. Winter 2011. 8-15.
Cegan, Jeff. “Estimating Regions’ Relative Vulnerability to Climate Damages in the CRED Model”. Stockholm Environment Institute. Working Paper
WP-US-1103
Islam, S., Jutla, A. S., Akanda, A. 2011. Hydroepidemiology: A Synthesis of Micro- and Macro-Scale Processes For Predicting Cholera Outbreaks in
South Asia and Africa. NSF Ecology of Marine Infectious Disease Workshop, San Juan, PR, February 11-13.
Islam, S., Akanda, A. S., Jutla, A.S., Lin, C. and Gao, Y. 2009. AquaPedia: Building Intellectual Capacity through Shared Learning and Open Access
Platform to Resolve Water Conflicts. General Assembly of the EGU, Vienna, Austria, April 19-24.
Islam, S., Gao, Y. and Akanda, A.S. 2010. Water 2100: A synthesis of natural and societal domains to create actionable knowledge through
AquaPedia and water diplomacy Pp 193-197; Proceedings of the UNESCO Xth Kovacs Colloquium, Paris, France, July 3-4.
Islam, S., Jutla, A.S., Akanda, S. and Islam, S. 2009. Integrating Terrestrial Hydrology and Coastal Ecology: Understanding Cholera Dynamics using
Remote Sensing Data. Proceedings of the AGU, San Francisco, CA, December 14-18.
Jutla, A.S., Akanda, A.S. and Islam, S. 2010. Tracking Cholera in Coastal Regions using Satellite Observations. Journal of American Water Resources
Association. 46(4):651-662. doi: 10.1111/j.1752-1688.2010.00448.x.
Jutla, A.S., Akanda, A.S. and Islam, S. 2011. Tracking Cholera from Satellites: Space-Time variation of chlorophyll in Northern Bay of Bengal. (in
revision, Remote Sensing of Environment)

Annual Newsletter: May 2011 Page 21

Jutla, A.S., Akanda, A.S. and Islam, S. 2011 Predicting Seasonal Cholera Outbreaks from Satellite Data (in revision, Remote Sensing of Environment).
Jutla, A.S., Akanda, A.S, Griffiths, J. Islam, S. and Colwell, R. 2011. Warming oceans, phytoplankton, and river discharge: Implications for cholera
outbreaks. (submitted to American Journal of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene)
Jutla, A.S., Akanda, A.S., Mazumdar, M., Colwell, R., and Islam, S. 2011, Predicting Cholera Outbreaks: Where is the Next Haiti? (submitted to,
Environmental Health).
Jutla, A.S., Akanda, A.S and Islam, S. 2010. Satellite remote sensing based forecasting of cholera outbreaks in the Bengal Delta. Proceedings of the
UNESCO Xth Kovacs Colloquium, Paris, France, July 3-4.
Jutla, A.S., Akanda, A.S and Islam, S. 2011. Hydroepidemiology of Cholera: Predicting Outbreaks using Satellite Derived Global Cholera Index.
General Assembly of the European Geosciences Union, Vienna, Austria, April 3-8. (Accepted)
Jutla, A.S., Akanda, A.S and Islam, S. 2010. Hydrology and Human Health: Predicting Cholera Outbreaks using Remote Sensing Data. Proceedings of
AGU, Fall Meeting 2010, San Francisco, CA. December 13-17.
Jutla, A.S., Akanda, S. and Islam, S. 2009. Satellites and Human Health: Potential for Tracking Cholera Outbreaks. Proceedings of the AGU, San
Francisco, CA, December 14-18.
Jutla, A.S., Akanda, S. and Islam, S. 2009. Tracking Cholera Outbreaks from Satellites: Space-Time Variability of Chlorophyll in Northern Bay of
Bengal. Research Day on Global Health and Infectious Disease, Tufts University, USA. October 5.
Jutla, A.S., Akanda, S. and Islam, S. 2009. Relationship between Phytoplankton, Sea Surface Temperature and River Discharge in Bay of Bengal.
General Assembly of the EGU, Vienna, Austria, April 19-24.
Jutla, A. S., Akanda, S. and Islam, S. 2009. Spatial and Temporal Variability of Chlorophyll in Bay of Bengal. General Assembly of the EGU, Vienna,
Austria, April 19-24.
Klonsky, Lauren, and R.M. Vogel, Effective Measures of “Effective Discharge”?, The Journal of Geology, Vol. 119, No. 1, pp 1-14, 2011.
Kuhl, Laura. From a culture of disaster response to a culture of adaptation: flooding in Honduras. 8th Annual Water Resources Research Conference,
Amherst, Massachusetts, April 7, 2011.
Kuhl, Laura. Institutional arrangements for resilience in the face of climate change: An analysis of disaster preparedness and response for flooding
in La Ceiba, Honduras. Resilience 2011 Conference, Phoenix, Arizona, March 2011.
Kuhl, Laura and Tirrell A. Reflections on The Hague Conference on Agriculture, Food Security and Climate Change. IDEAS Journal (International
Development, Environment and Sustainability) Issue 7, February 2011.
Kuhl, Laura and Sheridan M. Stigmatized property, clams and community in coastal Ecuador. Journal of Ecological Anthropology 2009; 5(1): 17-38.
Maxwell, Daniel, William Masters, Peter Walker, Patrick Webb, John Parker, and Arthur Ha. (2011) “A Scoping Study on Climate Change and Food
Security.” Report commissioned by Columbia University’s International Research Institute for Climate and Society as part of CGIAR Climate Change,
Agriculture and Food Security (CCAFS) Program. Medford: Feinstein International Center.
Neumann, R.B., St. Vincent, Allison P., Roberts, L.C., Badruzzaman, A.B.M., Ali, M.A., and C.F. Harvey (2011). Rice Field Geochemistry and Hydrology:
An Explanation for Why Groundwater Irrigated Fields in Bangladesh are Net Sinks of Arsenic from Groundwater, Environ. Sci. Technol, February 18,
2011 (web).
Parker, John, Eric Vaughan, and Jeffrey Bate. (2011) “Resilience and Sustainability of Water Resources in the São Francisco River Basin, Brazil:
An Assessment and Plan of Action”. Resilience: Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Science and Humanitarianism, Vol. 2.
Parker, John. (2011) “Understanding the Dynamics of Adoption and Diffusion of Land and Water Management Innovations: A Case Study of the
Quesungual Slash-and-Mulch Agroforestry System.” Resilience 2011 Conference, Tempe, AZ, March 11-16, 2011. (accepted for presentation)
Parker, John. (2011) “Can Integrated Land and Water Management Strengthen Agriculture’s Resilience to Climate Change and Natural Resource
Constraints? Lessons Learned from Southwestern Honduras.” IDEAS Journal: International Development, Environment and Sustainability, Medford,
MA.

Water: Systems, Science and Society Page 22

Parker, John. (2011) “Book Reviews: Managing Without Growth, by Peter Victor (2008) and The Rational Optimist: How Prosperity Evolves, by
Matt Ridley (2010).” Resilience: Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Science and Humanitarianism, Medford, MA. (forthcoming)
Ray, Patrick, P.H. Kirshen and R.M. Vogel, Integrated optimization of a dual quality water and wastewater system, Journal of Water Resources Plan-
ning and Management, Vol. 136, No. 1, pp. 37-47, 2010.
St. Vincent, Allison P., Milando, C., Zhu, S., Zamore, W., Brugge, D., Durant, J (2010). Evaluation of the Quick Urban and Industrial Complex (QUIC)
Modeling System to Predict Ultrafine Particle Levels in an Urban Neighborhood near a Highway. AGU Fall Meeting, San Francisco, CA, 15 December
2010.
St. Vincent, Allison P., Trull, J., Zamore, W., Brugge, D., and J.L. Durant (2010). Spatial and Temporal Distribution of Highway-generated Air
Pollution in a Residential Urban Neighborhood [oral and paper], ASCE/EWRI Congress, Providence, RI, May 2010.
St. Vincent, Allison P., A.P., Trull, J., Zamore, W., Brugge, D., and J.L. Durant (2010). Modeling spatial and temporal variation in the distribution of
highway-generated air pollution in a residential urban neighborhood [oral]. Urban Environmental Pollution, Boston, MA, June 2010.
St. Vincent, Allison P., Trull, J., Zamore, W., Brugge, D., and J. Durant (2010). Modeling the Distribution of Highway-Generated Air Pollution
in a Residential Urban Neighborhood [poster]. 2010 Joint Conference of International Society of Exposure Science & International Society for
Environmental Epidemiology, Seoul, Korea, Aug. 30, 2010.
Strauch, Ayron M. and A.M. Almedom. Traditional resource management and water quality in rural Tanzania. 2011, Human Ecology. in press.
Strauch, Ayron M., Kapust, A.R. and C.C. Jost. (2009) The impact of livestock management on water quality and stream bank structure in a semi-
arid, African ecosystem. Journal of Arid Environments, 75: 795-803.
Strauch, Ayron M. Jost, C.C. (2010) Fish health and community assemblage during drought in lower Zambezi tributaries. Ecological Society of
America Annual Meeting, “Global Warming: The Legacy of our past, the challenge for our future” Pittsburgh, PA, Aug 1-6.
Strauch, Ayron M., Rurai, M.T., and A.M. Almedom. (2010) Traditionally protected catchment forests and ecosystem services in semi-arid, East
African highlands. Society of Ethnobiology Annual Meeting. “The Meeting Place: Integrating Ethnobiological Knowledge” Victoria, B.C., May 5-8.
Strauch, Ayron M. (2009) Water quality as the physiological cue initiating the northward movement of the Serengeti migration. Tanzania Wildlife
Research Institute Annual Meeting. “Wildlife Conservation in a Changing World” Arusha, Tanzania, December 2-5.
Strauch, Ayron M. (2009) Traditional water resource management as a determinant of human health in rural Tanzania: Examining water quality
and quantity. Research Day on Global Health and Infectious Disease. Boston, Massachusetts. October 5.
Strauch, Ayron M. and F.S. Chew. (2009) Water quality as an environmental cue for large mammal migratory behavior in the Serengeti National
Park, Tanzania. Ecological Society of America Annual Meeting. “Ecological Knowledge and a Global Sustainable Society” Albuquerque, New Mexico,
August 2-9.
Strauch, Ayron M. and A.M. Almedom. (2009) Using qualitative and quantitative methods to assess the effectiveness of traditional resource
management (TRM) on reducing contaminants in surface water resources in rural Tanzania. Society for Applied Anthropology Annual Meeting,
“Global Challenge, Local Action: Ethical Engagement, Partnerships and Practice” Santa Fe, New Mexico, March 17-20.
Tsai, Yushiou, Sara Cohen, and Richard M. Vogel, 2011. The Impacts of Water Conservation Strategies on Water Use: Four Case Studies. Journal of
the American Water Resources Association (JAWRA) 1-15. DOI: 10.1111/j.1752-1688.2011.00534
Vaughan, Eric S., Huber-Lee, A., Griffin, T., Kemp-Benedict, E., Vogel, R.M. (2011). “Uncertainty in Agricultural Water Demand in the West Bank:
Policy Implications for a Developing Economy”. ASCE-EWRI, Environmental and Water Resources Congress, Palm Springs, CA (In Press).
Zoltay, Viki I., P.H. Kirshen, R.M. Vogel and K.S. Westphal, Integrated Watershed Management Modeling: A Generic Optimization Model Applied to
the Ipswich River Basin, Journal of Water Resources Planning and Management, Vol 136, No. 5, pp 566-575, Sept/Oct 2010.

Annual Newsletter: May 2011 Page 23

Water: Systems, Science and Society
Contact Us:
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