Keeping Water Knowledge Flowing
The deserts of Arizona are only habitable because water is carefully managed there. The Water Resources Research Center at the University of Arizona works to keep it that way, by providing educational seminars for kids, supporting water managers, and bringing together water research across the university to solve real-world problems.
Tour the Water Sensing Facility
From the outside it looks like a shed. But inside, the Water Sensing lab at the University of Arizona's Water Village is a high-tech mini water-treatment plant. Researchers there are purposefully dropping contaminants into their water lines to test sensors that can detect not just chemical contaminants but biological ones too.
The Nose Knows
Researcher Ryan Sinclair is studying how to use human senses of taste and smell as scientific instruments. Using human volunteer sniffers and tasters, Sinclair is looking for the threshold at which most people can taste or smell a certain molecule, to better set limits on these things in our drinking water.
Taking the "Fingerprint" of Water
In the Water Sensing lab at the University of Arizona's Water Village, a humble metal tube is one of the most powerful pieces of equipment. The S::CAN uses ultraviolet light to take a "fingerprint" of water as it flows through, and could someday be widely used at water treatment plants to detect introduced bacteria or other contaminants.