University of Oklahoma International Water Prize Awarded to Dawn Martin-Hill

Research examines the sources of water contamination on both Six Nations and the Lubicon Cree in Alberta, Canada

View photos, program and presentation. NORMAN, Okla., Oct. 6, 2022 – Dawn Martin-Hill is a storyteller, because it is in stories where the truth lies. She tells one story of leading a water ceremony out on the west coast of the United States. One participant brought a pottery bowl that was engraved with “Water is Life” in many different languages. That bowl is a symbol of Martin-Hill's lifework – to honor and celebrate the sacramental gift that water is to all peoples using the stories and myths of her culture, the Haudenosaunee peoples of Canada’s Six Nations of the Grand River.  The two-row wampum belt is another symbol that expresses a journey of two cultures who travel down the river together, side by side, without trying to steer one another. Surrounded by the Great Lakes, Martin-Hill's tribal culture is defined and nourished by freshwater. She says that “our entire way of life is governed by water. It is spiritual, it is cultural, it is our identity. When you take that away from us, you are literally taking away our culture.”   Traditional indigenous knowledge is relayed through oral tradition, primarily from stories, arts, crafts and ceremonies, all done in the indigenous language. Under colonization, the residential schools outlawed the indigenous language, and yet indigenous knowledge about water and ecology is embedded in the native language. When the language is lost, so is the indigenous knowledge. Thus, Martin-Hill's integrated teams of elders, youth, biologists, scientists, and engineers present their work in bilingual format. The seventh biennial OU International Water Conference was held in a virtual format on Sept. 26-27 and featured 104 registrants presenting on and discussing such topics as engineering with nature, hydrology and water security, water for disadvantaged populations, wastewater epidemiology, water resources and climate change, and household water, sanitation and hygiene (WaSH). An in-person prize banquet was held on Sept. 26 with 128 people in attendance at the beautiful First Americans Museum (FAM) in Oklahoma City.  Martin-Hill, Ph.D. was honored at the banquet with the 2022 OU International Water Prize. Martin-Hill is an Indigenous (Haudenosaunee) woman, a cultural anthropologist and an associate professor at McMaster University. In addition, she is a mother who raised her girls in a home with periods of no running water. Using grants from the Global Water Futures, she and her students from McMaster University have developed indigenous water quality tools to monitor and assess the rich water life that surrounds them.  Her research examines the sources of water contamination on both Six Nations and the Lubicon Cree in Alberta. At the prize banquet, Martin-Hill spoke of her passionate commitment to study and improve the health impacts of water quality on people and animals that live in both communities. She presented her work in water as relationship, not utility alone. Martin-Hill is committed to understanding how water quality and security are linked to Indigenous community culture, livelihood and health, all important in pursuit of future water security. Water is life . . . to all peoples.

Study Finds U.S. Future Floods Becoming More Frequent, Wider Spread, Yet Less Seasonal

Summer 2022 has been an unprecedented one with five “1-in-1,000-year” floods experienced across the U.S.: St. Louis and Eastern Kentucky both in July, and Southeast Illinois, Death Valley and Dallas all in August.

“The intense rainfall combined with conducive land surface conditions, known as impervious surfaces, have caused flash floods and widespread inundation in cities,” said Yang Hong, Ph.D., professor of hydrology and remote sensing in the School of Civil Engineering and Environmental Science in the Gallogly College of Engineering at the University of Oklahoma. “The continued warming climate and aging water infrastructure will exacerbate flood risks.”

Hong is leading a research team with Zhi Li, Ph.D., and Jonathan Gourley, Ph.D., research hydrometeorologist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) National Severe Storms Laboratory. Their latest study, published in Earth’s Future, has shown that future flooding in the U.S. is becoming more frequent, wider spread, yet less seasonal.

In a previous study, the team demonstrated flash flooding is becoming 7.9% more extreme, including higher peak flows and faster arrival times across the country.

In their new study “Spatiotemporal characteristics of US floods: Current status and forecast under a future warmer climate,” the researchers used computer modeling to simulate variability of rainfall and flooding over the contiguous U.S. Changes in rainfall and flood frequency, spatial scale, and seasonality are explored within major climate divisions.

“Our models demonstrate that weakening rainfall and flood seasonality could result in more random and less predictable extreme events throughout the year,” Gourley said. “Specific impacts demonstrated through our modeling flooding seasons will begin happening earlier in the West in snow-dominated regions, while flooding is likely to be delayed in the East. We also found correlation between extreme rainfall and flood onsets becoming stronger in the West, yet weaker in the East in the future.”

Overall, their study predicts an overall 101.7% in flood frequency and 44.9% increase in the extent of flooding, mainly attributed to more extreme rainfall and variability in the future.

“Predicting future floods is becoming more challenging because of changing land surface conditions,” Li said. “Our past experience and knowledge are likely not applicable in preparing future floods.”

Hong added, “there is a pressing need for dynamically evolving knowledge about floods to design flood infrastructures, especially given the fact that many flood infrastructures, like dams, levees, drainage systems, and waterways, were built 50 to 100 years ago. We need more resilient flood defense measures in cities to address flood risks.”