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Welcome to the SAWLS home page.
We are a multidisciplinary group focused on watershed hydrology housed within the College of
Agriculture, Department of Renewable Resources at the University
of Wyoming. The group is composed of several graduate
students, faculty and post-docs working on a variety of field
applications, GIS and remote sensing research related to
hydrologic modeling, impacts of
land cover change, and sustainable watershed management. This
site is intended to provide a brief overview of the ongoing
projects in SAWLS. If you have any follow-up questions, please
feel free to contact me.
Scott Miller is the director of SAWLS, a professor in the Department of
Renewable Resources at the
University of Wyoming. My job title is "spatial processes
hydrologist" and I teach and pursue research in the general domain
of watershed hydrology. Long-term research interests
lie at the intersection of human use, process-based
understanding on hydrological and geomorphic processes, and
sustainable development. Short research blurbs can be read by
following the links on the left.
Summary of the
SAWLS Research Program
Over the past several years we
have been working on a variety of projects in which we have
developed research applications related to both basic and
applied research in hydrology and watershed management. In
addition to field-based empirical research we construct GIS tools for automating hydrologic,
geomorphic and ecological modeling processes. While
GIS approaches have provided useful advances for watershed
management, they have proven to be most beneficial in providing
a means for advancing our understanding of watershed processes.
Specifically, the focus has been on projects involving multi-scale
(both temporal and spatial) modeling for landscape assessment;
the effects of watershed complexity on model results;
information entropy and process representation as a function of
scale; and remote sensing misclassification error in hydrologic
investigations. Prior research projects have investigated linkages between watershed hydrology
and fluvial dynamics, scale issues in watershed response, the
sensitivity of hydrologic models to spatial data, and the
impacts of map scale on geomorphic research.
A common thread runs through the SAWLS research experience and goals:
multi-scale investigations into spatially
distributed watershed processes with particular interest in
fluvial dynamics and geomorphology.
Emerging technologies are
developed to serve as tools that allow us to probe questions
that could not be addressed in their absence. However, the focus
of this research has been on watershed processes and core
hydrologic research, not on the technologies themselves. Many of
the critical research issues in watershed hydrology and
environmental science are multi-disciplinary and complex, and
our
research has benefited from a collaborative, inter-disciplinary
approach.
Take a tour of our
research sites using Google Earth
Please Feel
Free to Contact Me
Scott N. Miller
Associate Professor, Spatial Processes Hydrologist
Rangeland Ecology and Watershed Management
University of Wyoming
Department 3354
1000 E. University Avenue
Laramie, WY 82071
ph: 307-766-4274
fax: 307-766-6403
email: snmiller@uwyo.edu
| Recent
Graduates |
| Tracy
Baldyga, PhD in Rangeland Ecology and Watershed
Management.
Dissertation Title: Spatially Explicit Multiple
Objective Decision Support for Rural Watersheds.
Completion Date: December 2008. Now working with
the International Water Management Institute (www.iwmi.org)
in Accra, Ghana as a post-doctoral scientist. |
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|
Philip Baigas. MS student, Department of Renewable
Resources, University of Wyoming. Thesis Title: Moose
habitat selection, winter diet, and seasonal
distribution mapping of moose in Southeastern Wyoming.
Completion Date: December 2008. Now working with Wyoming
game and Fish on a moose ecology study in the Greater
Yellowstone Ecosystem, NW Wyoming. |
 |
|
Hannah R. Griscom, MS student, Department
of Renewable Resources, University of Wyoming. Thesis
topic: Land cover and hydrologic assessments of the
upper Luvuvhu and Shingwedzi watersheds, South Africa:
steps towards integrated catchment management.
Completion date: May, 2007. Now working with the
Wyoming Natural Diversity Database (http://uwadmnweb.uwyo.edu/wyndd/)
as an ecologist. |
 |
|
Sudhir Raj Shrestha, MS student,
Department of Renewable Resources, University of
Wyoming. Dissertation topic: Remote mapping of soil
characteristics using heuristic rules and fuzzy logic.
Completion date: May. 2007. Now working with
Florida A&M University as a research scientist. |
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