BRIDGING HYDROLOGY, GEOLOGY, GEOMORPHOLOGY, GOVERNANCE, CULTURE AND SCARCITY FOR EFFECTIVE WATER MANAGEMENT OF THE RIO GRANDE: PLANNING AN INTERDISCIPLINARY FIELD-BASED EXPERIENTIAL LEARNING AND RESEARCH APPROACH
Population growth is increasing demands on a limited supply of water on both sides of the US/Mexico border. The Texas Water Development Board projects municipal use will increase by one hundred percent in the next fifty years, and industrial use will increase by forty percent. Addressing these challenges requires providing the future water managers with a hands-on, experiential, team-based educational experience. The Rio Grande basin provides a unique opportunity for the development of an interdisciplinary teaching, experiential-learning research approach.
A multidisciplinary faculty team from the Colleges of Architecture, Agriculture, Engineering and Geosciences at Texas A&M University has developed a new experience to enhance interdisciplinary, field-based learning along the Rio Grande. The experience consists of a pre-trip classroom-based course and a ten-day field trip. Student research teams are required to prepare research packages covering the geology, geomorphology, hydrology, climate, land use, culture, and all relevant studies of water management problems in their assigned area of the Rio Grande. Each student works as a member of a team in researching and preparing handouts, maps, charts and graphs to be presented in class and in the field. The steps to developing the field trip program involve selecting a route based on the course of the Rio Grande and locations relevant to previous and on-going water issues; arranging for officials to give presentations at the selected stops; and managing the logistics of a 50-student, 10-day excursion. Faculty conducted a pre-trip route survey to determine the number and length of stops, arranged for overnight accommodations and researched each stop along the route.
This program provides the opportunity to observe, study, research, and engage water resource management practitioners in a field environment focused on the entire Rio Grande Basin. This experience will be expose students to the complexity of allocating and managing international/interstate waters.