Aaron Lien Receives a Carson Scholars Fellowship
Aaron Lien is a 2014 recipient of the Institute of the Environment Carson Scholars Fellowship. Aaron is a former WRRC senior researcher and a Ph.D. student in the Arid Lands Resource Sciences program. His Ph.D. research involves working with ranchers in southern Arizona to better understand their attitudes and preferences toward wildlife conservation, especially jaguars, an endangered species, to improve conservation efforts. The Carson Scholars Program is designed to build a network of students and faculty devoted to furthering knowledge and awareness of the environment and its interactions with people.
Leah Edwards Honored with Pillars of Excellence Award
Leah Edwards, a senior at the University of Arizona, has been honored with a Pillars of Excellence award. Leah has worked since 2011 at the WRRC in Water RAPIDS (Research and Planning Innovations for Dryland Systems). The Pillars of Excellence is awarded to students and alumni who exhibit academic excellence and contribute to their field and to the university. For the past two years, Leah has been working on sustainability initiatives at the university, and currently serves as the Chair of the Students for Sustainability Waste Reduction Team. She plans to spend her future career integrating environmental economics into policy and the economic system.
3 Students Win Poster Prizes at WRRC’s Annual Conference
Three winners were awarded prizes for the best posters at the WRRC’s Annual Conference poster session by Michael Fulton of the Arizona Department of Environmental Quality, which sponsored the session. Two posters tied for first place: Hwee Hwang’s poster (UA Dept. of Civil Engineering and Engineering Mechanics), “Comparison of Regional Water Supply System Sustainability, Robustness, and Resilience for Two Different Tank Operations,” and Aloah Pope’s poster (University of Arizona School of Natural Resources and the Environment), “Linking Bayesian and Agent-Based Models to Simulate Complex Social-Ecological Systems in the Sonoran Desert.” The second-place winner was Todd McOmber (University of Arizona Dept. of Soil, Water and Environmental Science) for his poster, “Is Treated Wastewater Effluent Improving the Water Quality of the Upper Santa Cruz River?”