Achievement

One important program goal we achieved this year was for I-WATER Fellows to collaborate with federal and nonfederal agencies. I-WATER organized a meeting of all trainees with a host of federal and non-governmental organizations including the USBR, USFS, NCAR, NASA, NOAA, and USGS. Fellows presented and discussed their interdisciplinary research ideas and received excellent feedback from the organizational representatives. This activity was extremely productive and led to many additional interactions between individual fellows and the agencies. For example, the US Bureau of Reclamation requested participation of the I-WATER program at a brainstorming meeting for potential California Basin Studies. Also, the chief of the Water Cycle branch from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration requested involvement of the I-WATER program in the hydrologic assessment of the climate models used in the CMIP 5 experiment. Several other such opportunities arose from this activity