IRIS News

  • Operationalizing equity for integrated water resources management

    The N-EWN People and Policy team, which consists of representatives from the University of Georgia and U.S. Army Corps of Engineers recently published a new paper in the Journal of American Water Resources, titles, “Operationalizing equity for integrated water resources management.” Abstract: Advancing social equity has been implicitly and explicitly central to water resources policy for…

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  • What it means to be a researcher: water science and community connections in rural Brazil

    What it means to be a researcher: water science and community connections in rural Brazil

    Story by Olivia Allen. Photos and captions provided by Cydney Seigerman. Originally posted to the River Basin Center website Plenty of scientists leave their comfort zone for research, but few relocate to another continent—N-EWN member and anthropology graduate student Cydney Seigerman has done it twice. In 2014, they worked as a Fulbright Teaching Assistant in Madrid,…

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  • Rhett Jackson speaks to how we can improve water quality in urban streams

    Rhett Jackson speaks to how we can improve water quality in urban streams

    In a recent feature in Georgia Magazine, IRIS affiliate Rhett Jackson spoke to how home lawns impact water quality in urban streams and beyond, and provided practical tips for what homeowners can do about it. As he said in the article, “People can reduce their water quality and carbon footprint by re-thinking their landscaping. A…

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  • Researcher feature: Charles Van Rees

    Researcher feature: Charles Van Rees

    IRIS researcher Charles Van Rees was recently featured in an article by the Odum School of Ecology. In the article, he speaks specifically to the power of interdisciplinary research: “We sit there and try to communicate across huge differences in expertise, professional culture and vocabulary, and then we write cool interdisciplinary papers that bring all…

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  • Developing Flood Solutions Along the Mississippi and Missouri River Basins

    Developing Flood Solutions Along the Mississippi and Missouri River Basins

    During a time of extreme rainfall patterns, river communities face unprecedented challenges. In a recent NPR article, writers Juanpablo Ramirez-Franco and Eva Tesfaye covered the flooding along the Mississippi River Basin, where IRIS researchers are looking for solutions to frequent and severe flooding caused by intensified rainfall. Families within these communities are faced with deciding…

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  • Tybee Island Natural Infrastructure Plan

    Tybee Island Natural Infrastructure Plan

    Tybee Island combines human ingenuity with natural resilience in combatting sea level rise By Sarah Buckleitner We don’t usually associate sunshine and blue skies with the sort of flooding that can shut down roads and creep into homes. But as sea level rise creeps further inland, coastal communities face a growing number of “sunny day”…

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  • N-EWN and IRIS in the news: Shoutouts from the Whitehouse

    The Network for Engineering With Nature has two exciting updates from the Whitehouse today! Accelerating Nature-Based Solutions Leaders from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ Engineering With Nature® initiative provided input on a White House report released Tuesday. EWN National Lead Dr. Todd Bridges and EWN Program Manager Dr. Jeff King provided input to the…

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  • Thesis Defense: Modeling Oyster Reef Resilience with Rebecca Stanley

    Thesis Defense: Modeling Oyster Reef Resilience with Rebecca Stanley

    Join us for a IRIS graduate student’s thesis defense! Rebecca Stanley, MS candidate in Civil & Environmental Engineering with Emphasis in Environmental Engineering in the College of Engineering, University of Georgia will defend her thesis: “Modeling Oyster Reef Resilience as a Form of Nature-Based Infrastructure in Response to Local Hydrodynamic Conditions” The application of nature-based infrastructure (NBI) has become…

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  • Rainwater Harvesting with Cisterns

    Rainwater Harvesting with Cisterns

    Whether it’s at the turn of a faucet or a bucket from the well, every person in the world relies on having clean water. In Ceará, Brazil, where water scarcity is an issue, communities rely on collected rainfall in cisterns to ensure that they have access to water through the year. Cydney Seigerman, a PhD…

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  • Join us for Holly Yaryan Hall’s Dissertation Defense!

    Join us on November 1 at 2:30 for Holly Yaryan Hall’s dissertation defense.  The topic of her dissertation is “Innovative Approaches to Urban Riverscape Planning and Design.”  Email Gin Bacon Talati at vbtalati@uga.edu for access to the Zoom information! INNOVATIVE APPROACHES TO URBAN RIVERSCAPE PLANNING AND DESIGN by HOLLY RUTH YARYAN HALL (Under the Direction of…

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  • IRIS Affiliate Jenna Jambeck awarded MacArthur Grant

    IRIS Affiliate Jenna Jambeck awarded MacArthur Grant

    Congratulations to Dr. Jenna Jambeck, a Georgia Athletic Association Distinguished Professor of Environmental Engineering, for her being named a 2022 MacArthur Fellow! Jambeck was given this honor for her work investigating the scale of plastic pollution and galvanizing efforts to address plastic waste. Read the full story here.

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  • Sizing up marshes for flood prevention

    Sizing up marshes for flood prevention

    Just how big do coastal marshes need to be to do their job as protectors of the coastline? IRIS researchers from the University of Georgia, Viyaktha Hithaishi Hewageegana, Matt Bilskie, Brock Woodson, and Brian Bledsoe investigated the matter by running simulations that tested how changes in marsh geometry impacted the storm surge and amount of…

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