|
As far as we know, life does not exist in the absence of water. To read this sentence, you are using your brain, kept functioning by a steady supply of blood-borne oxygen from your lungs. The common denominator is water, which makes up 70 percent of the brain, 80 percent of blood and almost 90 percent of the lungs.
Water’s importance to survival and proper functioning is, therefore, hard to overestimate. And yet it’s often overlooked until we’re faced with some calamity, like scarce potable drinking water, massive floods and withering droughts, or fish-kills in a nearby stream.
There are increasing numbers of potential pollutants in our environment today, but also a growing awareness that we need to protect and conserve our world’s water resources. That’s why an interdisciplinary group of Purdue University scientists collaborate to provide a multi-layered approach to improve water quality and watershed management.
Measuring in the rain
Although, in some respects, water quality has improved over the last 50 years, new and persistent challenges remain. As legislation has helped curtail pollution from point sources—single-sources of contaminants like factories—attention has shifted to non-point sources, such as crop fields, where soil erosion remains problematic. Sediment is still the country’s No.-1 water contaminant.
 |
| Soils researcher Dennis Flanagan takes on the role of rainmaker to find models that can predict and prevent soil erosion. Flanagan's research often takes place in this lab, where he uses a network of sprinklers to simulate rainfall. Flanagan and his colleagues have developed computer models that analyze how land use affects soil erosion. |
Researcher Dennis Flanagan has been on the front lines trying to hold back the advance of erosion for more than two decades. To aid his fight, Flanagan makes it rain—literally. From the sheet metal beams that rise 20 feet high in his lab, sprinklers spurt water in all directions to simulate rainfall. This massive rain-making machine—as well as a much lighter, portable version designed for the field—helps him measure rain’s erosive power, guiding efforts to keep soil in its place, he says.
“Soil conservation becomes increasingly important as populations grow and demand higher crop yields from less land,” says Flanagan, who is an agricultural engineer at the National Soil Erosion Research Lab on Purdue’s campus, run by a branch of the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
Model research
Flanagan and his other colleagues examine, among other subjects, the watershed-scale impacts of different conservation practices. Flanagan’s most noted accomplishment—20 years in the making—is the Water Erosion Prediction Project (WEPP), an erosion prediction model. Developed by Flanagan and a team of USDA and university scientists, WEPP is a group of computer programs that can analyze how farming and land use affect soil erosion. Conservation personnel, farmers and others can input data—such as slope shape, management method, location and soil type—and WEPP churns out estimated amounts of soil loss for the next one to 100 years.
|
