B Y - L A U R A - W E X L E R
With Georgia in the grips of perhaps the most insidious drought in history, UGA's new River Basin Science and Policy Center couldn't have been born at a better time
n a cruel joke of sorts, Jim Kundell gave a presentation about water in Athens late last summer on yet another in a seemingly endless string of insufferably hot, dry days. When Kundell, co-director of the UGA's new River Basin Science and Policy Center, talked about coastal rivers and mountain streams and the rich underground aquifer in South Georgia, his audience could hear the gurgling, could almost feel the moist coolness. They licked their lips, trying to remember rain, trying to imagine their gardens in full bloom, trying to recall how green their grass once was.
 Kundell and Kramer are analyzing satellite photos to determine how urban sprawl affects Georgia's environmental health (see side bar). |
As Kundell points out, it basically stopped raining in Georgia in May 1998. In the nearly three years since then, some areas of the state have missed nearly a year's worth of rain. The drought has kindled forest fires, ruined crops, and caused rivers all over the state—the Ogeechee, the Suwanee, the Flint—to run at perilously low levels, their aquatic life threatened. On top of scant rainfall, Georgia has suffered unusually high temperatures, which means a goodly amount of the rain that did fall was lost to evaporation. In July, U.S. Agriculture Secretary Dan Glickman declared Georgia an official drought disaster area. That terminology may grow even more apt as this dry spell shapes up to be the worst on record.
So Kundell had a formidable task as he got up to speak on that late summer evening. He had to balance his audience's immediate concerns about the drought with the bigger picture of water management in the state. And to do that, he had to talk science in a way his audience could understand.
He was up to the task. In fact, Jim Kundell's ability to talk science with lay people may be his greatest contribution to the state of Georgia, which he has served not only as a UGA faculty member but as a trusted science advisor to the state legislature. He's a knowledgeable go-between, a translator fluent in both the hard language of science and the softer languages of politics and public policy.
And now Kundell has a new venture designed to expand the interface of science and policy. He and ecology professor Judy Meyer have created the River Basin Science and Policy Center, a think tank that draws together more than 50 water experts from 16 UGA units. The center's philosophy is to build on interdisciplinary approaches to create better science, and then make that scientific knowledge accessible to legislators, community officials, and private citizens. It's a trickle-down model, in which the combined brainpower of UGA's water experts benefits everyone in the state.
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A map is worth a thousand words
Satellite views of Georgia track the history of urban sprawl
Making a good map, says Liz Kramer, "is as much an art as it is a science."
Kramer, director of UGA's Natural Resources Spatial Analysis (NARSA) lab, is standing amidst 10 computer screens which document change in Georgia's land cover over the past 25 years. When completed, the Georgia Land Use Trends (GLUT) project will help state planners decipher mistakes made in the past and develop new plans for handling land management better in the future.
"GLUT is a perfect acronym," says Kramer. "Basically, we're trying to understand the footprint of sprawl."
Supported by a $1 million grant from the Turner Foundation, Kramer and co-investigator Jim Kundell have purchased satellite images of Georgia from 1973-98. These multi-spectral images, known as LANDSAT, record both visible light and infrared bands reflected from a surface. Each different land-cover type, whether it's commercial, residential, forest, or pasture, produces a unique visual signature, depending on the amount of the sun's energy it absorbs, and the amount it reflects.
By interpreting the spectral signature of a given area, Kramer and the graduate students working in the NARSA lab classify the area as one of 25 land-cover types with each cover type—golf courses, wetlands, row crops, etc.—corresponding to a color on the GLUT map. Red, for instance, is for urban land cover. As Kramer says, "There's a big red blob in the middle of Northeast Georgia—Atlanta!"
After mapping each of Georgia's 159 counties separately, Kramer and her team will assemble them like a jigsaw puzzle to create a statewide map. The first map, which covers 1998, will be completed in January 2001. After that, they'll rewind to 1973, the first year for which LANDSAT is available, and move forward in five-year increments.
"The GLUT project will not only provide insights into sprawl issues," says Kundell, "it will also serve as an important source of information for watershed and river basin studies."
Water Resources 101
Georgia is a water resources paradox. It averages 50 inches of precipitation a year, ranking it fifth in the U.S. But about 70 percent of that is return-ed to the atmosphere through evaporation and transpiration from plants, leaving Georgia with only about 15 inches to meet its needs. Population and economic growth produce ever-increasing water demands, and filling those demands is complicated by uneven distribution of water users and water resources. North Georgia is more vulnerable to water problems for the following reasons:
—Laura Wexler |
In 1977, Jim Kundell received the first Ph.D. in environmental science ever awarded at Syracuse University. Though the rift between science and policy yawned even wider then than now, Kundell sensed the need for scientists to make their expertise known to lawmakers. So he combined his B.S. in biology and his M.S. in limnology with courses on environmental law and planning, and resource management. "Looking back," he says, "I was right on target."
Just out of grad school, Kundell was offered the position of science advisor to the Georgia legislature. It's a role he's comfortable in, traveling between the Capitol in Atlanta and UGA's Carl Vinson Institute of Government, where he is director of the environmental policy program.
In his first days at the Capitol in '77, Kundell saw that one of the main issues facing Georgia was ground water management. He studied existing research and talked with experts. He drove to Albany to talk with scientists from the U.S. Geological Survey and representatives of Georgia's Environmental Protection Division. He pulled all he learned into a study that he made available to legislators.
Our role is to provide the decision-makers with a series of scenarios, a variety of choices.—Judy Meyer, co-director, River Basin Center
"I see my job as being a translator," says Kundell. "You've got to understand the science, but you've also got to be able to communicate with people who aren't scientists. Fortunately, I can write and speak in an understandable way."
In that first study, published by the Vinson Institute in 1978, Kundell pointed out that the major problem with ground water regulation was that only industries and local governments withdrawing more than 100,000 gallons per day from the state's water reserves needed to obtain permits—meaning farmers who withdrew 100,000 gallons a day to irrigate their crops were not fully considered in the water management program. Ten years after he wrote that study, the legislature passed a law requiring farmers to apply for permits. Though Kundell was pleased, he says "the legislation did not fully address the concerns of how much water is being used for irrigation purposes, where that water is coming from, and how much of it is being returned to the system. We are still grappling with these issues."
That's one of the frustrations inherent in Kundell's line of work. "The legislative process is a compromise," he says. "You rarely pass optimum legislation. You pass legislation that's politically acceptable."
In the end, it's not Kundell's job to advocate legislation. His role, and the role of the experts in the River Basin Center, is to offer decision-makers sound scientific information upon which to base their decisions. According to a study conducted at Harvard, Kundell has "become personally well-known and trusted within the legislature."
When a bill calling for allowing private companies to store water in the state's vast aquifers came before the committee recently, Hanner and his committee ended up voting against the idea after consulting with Kundell. "His information was really helpful," says Hanner. "His job is just sound science, without taking a side."
Rep. Judy Manning, also a member of the natural resources committee, says she had trouble understanding the aquifer system until Kundell slipped her a study he'd written. "He is the most knowledgeable expert on water issues and policy in the state," says Manning (BS '65), who represents the 32nd district. "He's technically informed but also aware of the complexities of environmental policy."
Members of the environment and natural resources committees of the General Assembly agree with the study's conclusions. "We are a citizen legislature," says Bob Hanner, chair of the House Natural Resources and Environment Committee. "We have to rely on experts, and he's one I can really depend on."
Rep. Louise McBee of the 88th district consulted Kundell last year during the heated controversy over a bill proposing the buffer zone between trout streams and any development be reduced from 100 feet to 50 feet. "I called Jim," says McBee, "and he told me that the bill called for reinforcing the river banks in order to reduce erosion. I was going to vote against it, but he said they took enough safety measures, so I ended up voting for it."
 Top: Kundell, who functions as science advisor to the Georgia General Assembly, is also director of environmental policy at UGA's Carl Vinson Institiute of Government. Bottom: Kundell, second from left, is frequently called upon to testify before legislative committees in Atlanta. |
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o does Judy Meyer, a stream ecologist in UGA's Institute of Ecology who is co-director of the River Basin Center. "I feel such urgency about our doing this because we have such huge water issues in this state," she says. "We have a lot to offer legislators."
Last fall, Meyer testified before a legislative advisory committee on trout stream buffers, and she was able to use her scientific acumen to educate committee members. "In the ideal circumstance, we should be able to say, for instance, that if you cut the riparian buffer in half, these will be the scientific consequences," she says. "Our role is to provide decision-makers with a series of scenarios, a variety of choices."
And for those legislators who haven't heard the word "riparian" before, Meyer is happy to define it as land adjacent to a river, stream or lake.
Meyer hopes her science will benefit as much from interaction with policymakers as the policymakers benefit from sound science. "I've realized that understanding the policy questions helps me frame really important science questions," she says. "For example, examining the policies that regulate dams raises a host of scientific questions, including how ecosystems respond to damming, and how much water is required to keep critical flow in a river."
Beyond the marriage of science and policy, Meyer is also excited by the sheer diversity of experts housed under the River Basin Center's virtual roof. Because water both affects and is affected by dozens of factors, its study spans multiple fields: agriculture, forestry, ecology, toxicology, landscape architecture, economics, and sociology, to name a few. Drawing people from these varied perspectives and methods together, says Meyer, promises exciting interdisciplinary research.
Last spring, Meyer, along with a team of scientists drawn from UGA's departments of crop and soil science, entomology, agricultural and applied economics, anthropology, and environmental health science, embarked on a study of the effects of lawn care practices on suburban watersheds. Based on the idea that homeowners' beliefs, values, and socioeconomic status will determine the amount of chemicals they use on their lawns—and, in turn, greatly affect the resulting amount of toxins that enter the watershed—the study incorporates physical, ecological, and social science research methods. The hard scientists measure toxins in the stream water and sediment, as well as monitor the aquatic life; the social scientists seek to understand the beliefs and values of the surrounding homeowners. The ultimate goal is to understand both the scientific effects of lawn care chemicals on the watershed and the human decisions that govern the usage of those chemicals.
"This is the kind of work the River Basin Center will be most interested in promoting," says Marsha Black, a toxicologist in environmental health science who is taking part in the lawn chemical study. "And it seems to be the wave of the future in federal funding. I see more and more applications calling for interdisciplinary research."
Even without collaboration, grouping so many diverse experts makes for interesting possibilities. Here's a brief look at work being done by three members of the River Basin Science and Policy Center:
ruce Beck, a Georgia Research Alliance Eminent Scholar in the Warnell School of Forest Resources, is examining the environmental health of Lake Lanier. One man told Beck he worried his grandchildren wouldn't be able to fish for striped bass; other people talked about their fear of bacteria. The next stage of the project is to develop computer models to explore the possibility of such scenarios. It's cutting-edge work, says Beck, that allows the "torchlight of science" to be directed a bit more by the stakeholders. Beck's other projects fall under the rubric of Integrated Urban Water Management, a field that seeks to address the host of new problems created when formerly toxic streams are rehabilitated.
Laurie Fowler, who has a joint appointment in UGA's Institute of Ecology and School of Law, is working with state and local officials and citizens to develop land use and water management policies. She also coordinates the Institute's service learning initiatives. At the request of officials in Cherokee County, Fowler's students recently wrote a draft ordinance that changed existing land use policies to allow for the development of conservation subdivisions. The students' draft ordinance was unanimously passed into law.
Environmental design professor Bruce Ferguson is writing a book about porous pavements—road surfaces that trap water in the soil below rather than allow it to run off. "Porous pavement is gravel stuck together with cement," he says. "Think of a Rice Krispies treat." The use of porous pavement, says Ferguson, is crucial to cooling down urban heat islands, conserving water, and reducing pollutants in water.
On that hot, dry, August day, Jim Kundell waxed poetic: "Drought is the stealth bomber of natural disasters. It doesn't come roaring at you like a tornado or hurricane. It doesn't spew forth telltale smoke and gases like a volcano. It just slowly, insidiously, does its thing."
Then he offered his audience a look beyond the drought. He said Georgia faces several challenges in water management: small streams, too-little natural storage of surface water, too-little natural storage of ground water, and a major demand area—Atlanta. Also of concern are Georgia's water wars with Florida and Alabama over how much each state is entitled to from their shared river systems.
"The demands are increasing," says Kundell. "How do you decide how to allocate the water?"
It's the million-dollar question of the 21st century—and UGA's new River Basin Science and Policy Center will be working hard to find the answer.
