Source: http://users.humboldt.edu/ayarberry/
Andrea Yarberry REU in Planning and Water Management
Purpose:
Andrea Yarberry participated in the Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU) program in water resources planning and management. She was assigned to work with Professor Rajagopalan Balaji, who teaches at the University of Colorado in Boulder, California. Their goal was to analyze upon the 8 year drought conditions that persist on the Colorado River. Questions had recently come up concerning whether the river could dry up entirely. Andrea was given the task of monitoring the river, figuring out the entire output of the river, and predicting how best to manage the reservoirs located along the Colorado River.
Brief Project Information:
Prior to starting the project, Professor Balaji developed a graph that clearly showed a 20% reduction of the stream flow. From a Heuristic Model, a model that predicts the storage capacity available before water supply problems develop, they tried to figure out how to maximize yield and storage. After simulating 10,000 different sets of stream flows for 50-year increments, they were able to define a plan to address the drought in the Colorado River. Andrea will speak of their findings at the 2010 American Geophysical Union Conference in San Francisco, California during December. The research results are also being prepared for a journal publication.
The graph belowshows the reliability of the river under different conditions.
Source: Andrea Yarberry (MATLAB computer program)
Experience/Personal opinion of Internship:
Andrea would “definitely do it again”; because of all the experiences she gained from her REU. She lived in Boulder, Colorado for about 2 months. She was provided meals, a travel stipend of $500 value, and a payment of $5,000.
She received a lot of experience with Matlab, modeling programs, programming, probability, and got to work 20 hours a week in the out of doors. In addition, Andrea has more respect for mathematical modeling, which she says “there is no away around models". Andrea said "that internships were a great way to build experience to get into graduate school". With the abundance of self learning on the project, Andrea got real experience of the type of work she would be doing in graduate school. She hopes that her work with Professor Balaji, along with this internship, will put her on track for her Master’s degree and she is leaning towards air quality or wastewater research.
If you would like to keep up with Andrea Yarberry's work there is a link found to the left of this page of her humboldt user's account.
Internship website:
For those wondering, Andrea used the National Science Foundation's Research Experience for Undergraduates Webpage to find this REU. There is a link found to the left of this page.