Cross Transect Research
Ben Warner and southern Host
Does water governance decentralization systematically relegate rural water spaces from urban water spaces in Latin America? How do rural water actors that lack institutional means to contest encroachment on their water spaces by non-State actors respond to such actions; and, what determines different responses among different rural actors?
This study focuses on understanding broad water governance trends across Latin America. Students interested in this work would likely choose to focus on one or a couple of sites to visit and collect data. Data will consist of interviews with country- and site-level water managers, surveys of water managers at different sites, and archival research focused on changes in water policy. Viable approaches to this work may also include participant observation and ethnography.
Skill set: Qualitative data collection and analysis, statistical modeling, and historical archive use.
Cross Transect: Study #2
Alex Fremier and southern Host
What streams across the Americans are most influenced by El Niño – Southern Oscillation (ENSO)? Do watershed characteristics overwhelm ENSO patterns in stream flow?
This study focuses on quantifying the influence of ENSO pattern on stream flow across the Transect of the Americas. Students would use Google Earth Engine to characterize ENSO patterns in temperature and precipitation and compare them to different climate indices of ENSO (or others). Stream flow gauges exist across the Transect but can be difficult to access. The procuring the stream flow data across the transect (collating existing gauge data) to compare to the maps of ENSO.
Skillset: Programming skills or strong interest in learning, esp. Google Earth Engine and R. Climate or stream hydrology/ecology background. Excited to work with big data and cloud computing.