What is hydrology? In short, hydrology is the study of water.  Specifically, hydrology looks at how people impact water and how water impacts people. What is adventure? Adventure is an exciting experience that often invokes emotion. What does the intersection of Adventure and Hydrology look like?

Meet Chris Wolff. Chris is the founder and director of Adventure Hydrology who is a hydrologist, adventurer, and filmmaker who uses visual imagery, video and storytelling to connect people to our ever-changing planet. Chris brings you along on his adventures to show you how truly amazing our planet is. By following his YouTube Channel, you can follow all the amazing efforts from the volunteers, scientists and conservationists around the world.  Instead of looking at water as what we use to flush our toilets, adventure hydrology explores the world through the lens of adventure.
In this podcast, you will learn about:
-The locality of water shed management 
-How we as humans can pay it forward to make a positive impact on our watershed
-Small acts of stewardship that can make a social impact
-What does watershed management look like in New Mexico compared to California
-Why are we growing almonds in the desert 

To learn more, visit the Adventure Hydrology website http://adventurehydro.com/ or follow @AdventureHydrology

Adventure Hydrology

Let’s talk about the ocean and fisheries.
On this episode of the ReThinking H2O Podcast, we discuss with the President of Lazuli advisors Matt Merighi, who is an interdisciplinary expert at the intersection of policy, business, and technology in the international water sector. Matt gives us context about the ocean and what role the ocean plays with tourism, law, economics and overall climate issues. In addition, Matt will lay the groundwork around aquaculture and how we can address food and nutritional security around the world.
To learn more and get in touch with Matt please visit https://www.lazuliadvisors.com/

Safe Oceans & Sustainable Fisheries

In this episode of the ReThinking H2O Podcast, we are honored to discuss “Water is Medicine” in action with Travis Bays! Travis started the Bodhi Surf + Yoga camps which are week-long experiential learning vacations in Costa Rica. This includes surfing, yoga, and community and nature immersion to facilitate memorable learning experiences for guests. The most important takeaways of the week are that knowledge and skills are acquired, connections are made, and you leave fulfilled!

Once a peace corps member, Travis focuses on listening to others and making sure his business impacts the local community. Travis will elaborate how they encourage sustainable lifestyles with pre, during and post trip education around environmental consumer decisions.
If you want to watch a video about what is Bodhi, please watch this video or visit their website: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NjzSvYqZEdU, https://www.bodhisurfyoga.com/

'Water is Medicine' in Action! with Bodhi Surf + Yoga

Come explore Nature is Medicine in Alaska with Scott Ramsey. Scott leads the Alaska Outdoor Science School which brings kids into the wild and allows people to experience nature in real life. 

Located at the end of North America’s longest glacial fjord lies Haines, the Alaska Outdoor Science School (AOSS) enables tangible experiences for children around the world. Surrounded by the Pacific Ocean, majestic mountains, dynamic glaciers, and wild rivers, Alaska creates the ideal environment to experience one of the last “wild” worlds.

AOSS takes a different approach to education. In the traditional classroom setting, students do their best to retain bits of data for a test or paper that they have been given from a textbook and lectures. However, research indicates that this type of learning is generally superficial and less meaningful. Instead, AOSS has lasting learning from experience for students. The AOSS approach combines lectures with experiential opportunities to ground learning and help root understanding. Using nature as a living textbook makes learning more meaningful.

To learn more visit https://www.aoss.education/

Nature is Medicine in Alaska

What if we could make our existing infrastructure talk to each other to make our communities more resilient? Faced with a water challenges, a few PHD students from the University of Michigan set out to harness data to solve some of the Great Lakes water challenges.  In this podcast, you will hear from Sara Troutman and Gregory Ewing to learn more about how this project came to life. 

In 2018 the Water Environment Foundation opened up the LIFT intelligent water systems challenge to rethink the water problem in the Great Lakes region. Due to many stressors in the Great Lakes region, such as aging infrastructure, changing populations, and rapid development, the sewer and storm water conveyance system is strained well beyond its design. As a result, the combined sewer system experiences untreated combined sewer overflows.

To combat these persistent untreated outflows, the University of Michigan team engineered a plan to use real-time sensor feeds to control valves, pumps and gates in the existing system, which dynamically reconfigure themselves to changing inputs. Their winning LIFT Challenge submission lays out an algorithm that can be applied to Great Lake Water Authority system and that is accompanied by a real-time dashboard and decision support tool for operators.

The web-based decision-support dashboard is a key innovation, giving real-time readouts of measurements from across the storm water system and also providing control recommendations to the user as determined by the market-based control algorithm.

Through data and testing, they were able to show that there is a significant opportunity for GLWA to use its current system (sensors, storage basins, pumps, etc.) to maximize storage and reduce combined sewer overflows.

To follow the ongoing program, please visit http://open-storm.org/

Internet of Water - Great Lakes Innovation

What is the water energy nexus and why is it important to you?

Well, it’s complicated. But we’re here to break it down.

The Alberta Energy - Water Nexus Project provides context into the intricate relationship between water and energy consumption as it pertains to agriculture, industry and induvial consumption.  As there is no silver bullet to our energy - water problem, we must work amongst multiple stakeholders and energy resources to solve this challenge.

Executive Director of Alberta Water Portal Society, Kim Sturgess, leads the charge around this Energy Water Nexus discussion. She teaches us how this portal can be an educational resource for everyone and provides context for individuals on how they can reduce their overall footprint.

We hope you enjoy this thoughtful discussion and if you want to learn more, please visit https://albertawater.com/

Water - Energy Nexus

#JANDYSTRONG is a story of strength, perseverance and hope.  For those of you that do not know Jake Anderson, please enlighten yourself with this podcast to gain some perspective on life and inspiration for the future.

In this episode you will learn about Jake's story, his road to recovery and upcoming events.  In particular, September 29, 2019 will be the fifth and final year at the Chicago half marathon event, and we encourage YOU to come out and support.  For those of you who are new to the JandyStrong movement, we are doing this fundraiser to raise money for paralysis research and recovery, and to support friend Jake Anderson, as he continues to embark on his long journey of extensive medical care and physical therapy.  Last year at the Chicago 1/2 marathon, Jake used a customized tandem trike – engineered by himself and three other UW-Madison students – to complete the 13.1 mile race along Lake Michigan.  It was another significant milestone in Jake’s recovery and an inspiration to us all.  Jake plans to participate again this year, with sights set on beating last year’s finishing time of 1:57:47.
If you enjoy this podcast and want to support Jake, please consider donating to the GoFundMe link found here:

https://www.gofundme.com/f/jandystrong-5th-annual-halfmarathon-fundraiser

Jandy Strong

Welcome to the Rethinking H2O Podcast!  In this podcast, we explore the countless ways that humans interact with water on a daily basis.  We believe all water issues are important!  Everything from social water enterprise in Africa to ecosystem preservation in the Great Lakes.  Come join our #BlueMind discussion!

Rethinking H2O Podcast

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