Biosystems
Water availability is greatly influenced by climate. During the past decade, the Southeast has experienced several severe droughts, which have caused losses in agricultural productivity and increased wildfires, water use restrictions and conflicts among different water users and states. The ocean-atmosphere phenomenon that has the greatest influence on drought and flood in the Southeast is known as the El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO). Through two externally-funded projects, biosystems engineering faculty member Puneet Srivastava and his colleagues are using ENSO information generated by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Agency (NOAA) to develop methods for addressing both drought and flood in the Southeast. In the first project, Srivastava and Latif Kalin, a faculty member in the School of Forestry and Wildlife Sciences, as well as collaborators fromthe University of Florida, University of Georgia, NOAA Climate Prediction Center and California State University, are working on a NOAA-funded project to reduce drought risks for small- to midsize municipalities in the Southeast. The overall goal is to develop a water deficit index for municipal water managers and help them better plan for drought. Once fully developed, the index has potential to become part of NOAA’s National Integrated Drought Information System in the Apalachicola-Chattahoochee-Flint river basin. In a separate project funded by Mississippi-Alabama Sea Grant Consortium, Srivastava, Kalin and Charlene LeBlue, a faculty member in Auburn’s College of Architecture, Design and Construction, are developing methods to reduce flood risks in the coastal areas of Alabama.
- Auburn University Samuel Ginn College of Engineering
- Auburn, AL 36849
- Phone: 334-844-2308