Dr. Audrey Sawyer, associate professor in Earth Sciences is a faculty advisory committee member for the Global Water Institute, and molder of future hydrologists. The Global Water Institute at Ohio State is a collaboration engine that delivers sustainable systems solutions for complex water issues and Sawyer’s work fits right into this, by 1) Understanding interactions between surface water and groundwater in streams, rivers, estuaries, and coasts and 2) Determining hydrologic controls on the movement of nutrients, contaminants, and heat in watersheds.
Over the last few years, Dr. Sawyer has been a key player in a partnership with the University of Dodoma (UDOM) of Tanzania. This collaboration reached a pivotal level this summer as OSU and UDOM cohosted simultaneous a virtual workshop on groundwater monitoring for undergraduate and graduate students. A 12-hour difference and a global pandemic did not stop these scientists from collaborating. The students who attended this workshop were taught the basics of groundwater modeling. Groundwater modeling is essential to environmental work as its goal is understanding the connection between the movement of groundwater and how this affects the surface. They were given a situation of a housing development being built near a wetland which is both relevant in the United States as well as Tanzania. They were tasked with modeling and understanding the potential causes and effects of the housing development on the groundwater and nearby wetlands.
The skills and hands-on experience these students gained will be extremely important in their future careers in sustainability, hydrology, and environmentalism.
However, this workshop will not be the end of this collaboration as continued efforts will focus on training students both virtually and in the field both at Ohio State and in Tanzania.
This workshop was conducted by Dr. Audrey Sawyer (OSU), Zaina Mseli (UDOM), and Maduhu Malungu (UDOM).
Sawyer (Left) Mseli (Right)
