David Crawford takes a moment to visit a booth at the 2011 Iowa Water Conference.
This year’s Iowa Water Conference is being held at Iowa State University. The conference, titled “More Water to Manage,” is a collaborative effort featuring participating conferences of Ag and the Environment, Floodplain Management, Iowa Learning Farms, Stormwater and Water Monitoring. The goal of this partnership is to create greater awareness of Iowa urban and agricultural water issues through sustainable watershed management.
Today we attended a stormwater workshop led by Dr. Bill Hunt from North Carolina State University, an expert in bioretention cells (rain gardens). Dr. Hunt spoke about the current research, applications, designs, maintenance issues, and case studies involving bioretention cells and rain gardens. Dr. Hunt was a very enthusiastic speaker and we hope to apply much of what we learned to the implementation and design of rain gardens on the University of Iowa campus.
We also had the unique opportunity to spend the evening listening to Dr. Curt Meine from the Aldo Leopold Foundation in Baraboo, WI. Dr. Meine introduced and provided background for the new documentary titled “Green Fire: Aldo Leopold and the Land Ethic in the 21st Century,” a film about Leopold’s life and career as a conservationist and how his teachings still apply to problems we face today concerning land use and watershed management.
Both of these presentations provided a great kick-start for the conference and we are excited about tomorrow’s presentations!
-Jeremy, Lora, Sam, David, and Amber
Note: Jeremy, Lora, Sam, David and Amber are students at The University of Iowa College of Engineering. They attended the conference with support from the UI Office of Sustainability.