It's approximately 2,300 kilometres away, but one Quest University student has caught the attention of scientists trying to solve the water shortage in the Colorado River Basin.
Third-year student Noelani Forde's paper on management of the endemic imbalance of water supply and usage of the 640,000-square-kilometre watershed was recently printed in the Journal of the American Water Resources Association. Co-authored by her professor, Rich Wildman, the report elaborated on an Earth-Oceans-Space class assignment she completed in April.
The original project required students to calculate the water balance of Colorado River's Lake Mead - the largest reservoir in the United States - and predict when it would run dry if municipal and agricultural users don't change their practices.
Forde's work was impressively elegant and insightful, Wildman said in a statement. The postdoctoral researcher at Harvard University Centre for the Environment, who is joining Quest's faculty full-time in August, was so impressed he suggested they collaborate on a paper for a broader audience.
"She proposed a cap-and-trade system, such as that being applied to CO2 emissions, and then she explained the basic ideas of how it would work," Wildman said. "[Forde] had essentially described the major elements of Australia's successful Murray-Darling Basin interstate water trading system, without ever having heard of it before."
The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation is currently wrapping up a major study to assess options to resolve the imbalance between supply and demand in the Colorado River Basin. Forde's and Wildman's paper has been submitted in response to the bureau's solicitation for comments. The final study will present policymakers with an analysis of options to address the issue.
Forde stated she is still trying to process it all. The duo have worked on the project for so long, that she said she can't quite believe all that has happened.
"I have learned so much along the way; not the least of which is that water markets are incredibly complex and need to be thoroughly planned out depending upon the context."
