Week 11

Welcome back everyone!

Like I said in the last post, the final presentation is underway! I did a run-through with Ms. Vaughan on Monday to prepare for my practice presentation on Wednesday! Although there isn't any new research to present here, one update I can give you is that my final presentation will be on May 21st at 6:00 pm at the Coconino County Public Library meeting room (3000 N. 4th Street)! The head of BASIS mightbe there, but I will put my best foot forward regardless. There are three other SRP presentations that day with mine being the first and each lasting approximately 25 minutes! I hope to see you guys there! :)

-Lia

Week 10

Hi everyone!

All of my research and data collection is done so that means presentation making and paper writing is well underway! My practice presentation for Dr. Hartman and Dr. Clark will be next week and that will determine if I am truly worthy of my project. The final presentations are scheduled for May 19th-21st in two different locations: Coconino Center for the Arts and the Eastside Community Library meeting room! I believe they are from 6-8pm each day so I hope you guys can make it! I will update you on when my timeslot is next week! Finally, as we are nearing the end of the SRPs, I will be wrapping up my blog posts within the next few weeks. Thank you all for reading my posts and I hope you've enjoyed them! Have a good week. :)

-Lia

Week 9

Hey guys!

Again, this week's post is going to be fairly short because most of my research is done and I'm now focusing on making my presentation and paper for the city!
    The main part of this week was to meet with Robin Harrington, Water Conservation Manager of Flagstaff, and ask her a few questions regarding water usage, predictions, incentives, etc. To begin, I asked her what plans the city might have if water availability gets scarcer (such as the situation in California). She told me that they have had a strategy report since the 1980's with three levels (or "strategies" as they call them) of water conservation based on different criterion. Furthermore, as the strategies "go up," water restrictions and conservation enforcement become more severe due to less water available--level three is implemented for the most severe conditions while level one is more moderate. For example, in strategy one, people are encouraged to us xeriscaping techniques, use the best practices to minimize waste, and follow a watering schedule. However in strategy three, everyone must follow the protocol of strategy one and two as well as: "not using any potable water for outside use," "not using waste water intentionally or unintentionally," and "not using fire hydrants other than for public health and safety." Now, this isn't nearly the same as cutting water usage by 25% in CA, but we still do have a plan if things turn south. Finally, Robin did tell me that we are currently in strategy one but we did go into strategy two for some time a few years back. If you want to see the full report, here it is!

#2: How is the city predicting future precipitation? What have they predicted? 
      In short, she told me she honestly didn't know the answers and that I would need to ask in a different department--hey, honesty is the best policy (unless you're asking who stole the cookies from the cookie jar, because in that case I didn't do it). Anywho, back on track, what she did tell me is that she would think that they look at historical data to predict but also take into account population growth. Although there have been drier periods in the past, but it may not have had a huge affect on the city because the population was much smaller. With this in mind, she said that the City Council has to plan changes well in order to balance the water amount available with the population in order to conserve. She also informed me that the city has about 100 years of water in our sources! That really surprised me because I never expected us to have that much! Finally, on the topic of usage, she said that even though the people of Israel live off of 18 gallons per day, a person could theoretically live off of the bare minimum of 10 gallons/ day. However, how much one can cut back on water usage depends on how willing they are. Some are willing to take a sponge bath while others may put up a fight when they can't wash their car every week.

#3: What efforts are being made to impact climate change (emissions-wise)--both on a city and individual level? 
      On the city level, it is mainly public outreach and education about conservation as well as social events such as promoting. On an individual level, Robin recommended that people:

• Travel less
• Bike ride and walk more
• Use less electricity (thus possibly lowering emissions from power plants)
• Use less water (less electricity to pump it)

      If I did all that, I bet I'd be the coolest cat in town! Now, even if it seems like you won't make a difference just by doing this individually, I think that you can. Even if you can't force others to change how they live, all you can do is change how you live yours. But if others see you, then they might be inspired to do the same! Ripple effect, people!

#4: What are the water sources for the city?
      She told me that the city gets its water from three main sources: ground water pumped from several ranches in the surrounding area, Lake Mary, and several wells. Depending on the season, they will also take advantage of the Inner Basin springs.

#5: What incentives do you have for people to use less water?
     I told you, incentives! She told me that the main way the city does this is through a rebate system. The main three rebates someone can take advantage of is the rainwater, turf, and low-flow rebates. With the rainwater, if you harvest at least 1,000 gallons of rainwater--lowering your overall city water consumption--the city will give you a $100 rebate! For the turf, you would get a rebate if you replace at least 1500 square feet of your outdoor turf with plants that require less water. Finally, even though the national requirements on toilets is 1.6 gallons, if you install toilets requiring 1.3 gallons or less, then today is your lucky day! For more information on all of these, you can find them here!

#6: If many of the residents of Flagstaff began harvesting rain, how would that effect/ benefit the city?
     Now, I believe I discussed this question last week but just to recap, Robin told me that one benefit is that people would use less city water, the city would have to pay less to pump groundwater. However, she did tell me that one downside is that waste would become more concentrated and would thus be more strenuous on city utilities. I understood this to be caused by people becoming more aware of their water consumption (one imminent, non-lethal side effect of harvesting rainwater) thus trying to conserve by using less to remove waste, making it more concentrated!

     On a final note, there is a fairly new documentary out called Cowspiracy which discusses how the main water consumer in California is the cattle industry. Even though this doesn't have much to do with rainwater harvesting, it does have a lot to do with water conservation and how even diet can influence your community. Interesting idea, huh?
     Well, this wraps up this week, so thanks for reading and I hope you have a good day! And if you're interested in any of the other awesome Senior Research Project, feel free to check them out aqui! :)

-Lia

Week 8

Hello everyone!

   This post will be extra-ordinarily short because--as some of you might know--some of us SRPers are transitioning into the final phase of our projects: making of the presentation. Some are still collecting data but for me, most of my research is done and I will start focusing on creating a paper for the city and the final presentation! Now to continue, this week I will be answering the following questions: "what is the air-speed velocity of an unladen swallow?" "do coconuts migrate?" and "what are the benefits of rainwater harvesting?"

   I will start off this week, as said above, by discussing what the benefits might be (especially for the city) if many people installed a collection system. On the household basis, it not only lowers your water bill but it also makes you more "aware" of the environment. With our family, once we started harvesting, we began to appreciate how precious water really is--especially in an arid climate--and how much the climate can affect our supply. We also became aware of how we can manage our water more efficiently to cut back on waste. For the city's benefit, reducing the amount of water flowing down the streets or alleys during monsoon season can not only reduce erosion but save money by using less utilities to fix damage and deal with an overflowing water treatment plant. After talking with Robin Harrington, she informed me that the city would need to pump less fresh water because there will be less of a demand for city water. However, she also told me that a downside might be that sewage could be more concentrated and thus harder to process for the city. Although I did not completely understand this, this "over concentration" might be caused by people becoming aware of their water consumption, cutting back on their usage by installing lower flowing toilets, and thus "diluting" the waste less by using less water. But hey, that's just my idea! Well that concludes this week's post but stick around next week when we explore the incredible relationship between witches and ducks and the phenomenon of writing a scientific paper!

Thanks for reading! :)

-Lia

Week 7

Hello humanoids!

For week 7, the main goals were to make graphs/ figures of precipitation and water usage, estimate the optimal tank size, and look at past data to see how that might relate to our usage and potential storage.
     So to start out, I worked with my father to create a bar graph comparing average annual precipitation and per capita daily water usage for Flagstaff, Israel, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE).

To further describe this graph, the average precip. for Israel is 21 in. (surprisingly, about the same as here!) and daily consumption is 18 gals. For Flagstaff, precipitation is approximately 22 in. and consumption is 53 gals. Finally, for the UAE, the precipitation is 3.1 in. and consumption is 157 gals. All in all, I find it interesting that although we get about the same annual precip. as Israel, they use about one third the amount of water we do. Also, the UAE gets 1/7 the precip. but uses almost three times the amount of water we do, and almost nine times that of Israel. Not only does this put our water situation into perspective, but it helps solidify the idea that we can live on a limited water consumption.

Using data from the past 30 years (I decided to use the 4SW station this time), the next steps we took was to compare the cool season (Oct.-Mar.) and the warm season (Apr.-Sep). Now, even though this doesn't include predictions, doing this will show how variable the climate is around here and give us a better on how rainwater harvesting might work to get us through dryer periods. First, the basic comparison:

Although the cooler season has higher precip., I think that the warm season is not that far behind because a lot of our water comes during the monsoon storms (July, August, September).

Next we (I mean "I," as in the royal "we"), broke up each cool and warm season for each year since 1985:

What I find interesting here is that (in most cases) if one season is lacking in precip. the following season makes up for it! But, as shown from the 2010 warm year through the cool year of 2013, there is steady decrease in precipitation. Since designing the system and tank size is so important, we used this type of trend and this "season system" to narrow down the best tank size.

Looking at the wettest month in the cool seasons (January 1993), I calculated how much a household could have collected with an average roof size.

2,270.20 x .623 x 8.58 x .95

= 11,528 gallons

So, we estimated that the optimal tank size is 10,000 gals. Since a family of four would use 10,800 a month (with limited consumption), 16,000 gallons would be too big. The important thing to remember is that you won't fill the entire tank and wait for the next storm. As you'll harvest water, you will also use some. Therefore, 10,000 gallons is an ideal volume because you won't have wasted space but it can also hold enough rainfall in the wetter parts of the year (most months won't bring in as much precipitation as January '93, so no need to worry about overflow). 

However, there needs to be enough water to get you through a drought. So, using our household and the average water consumption, we calculated how much space you might need if there are longer periods of low precipitation or the worst case scenario (such as the period from April of 2010 through March of 2013). So, let's say that you filled your 10,000 gallon tank from the previously season--that can be our starting amount. 

For the first season, I took that 10,000 gals. and subtracted the amount we would have used if living off of 18 gallons/day (2,160 gals./month). At the end of the 1st month, what remained is: 7,516 gals. However since it did rain some that season, I added that into the end amount. There was approximately 8 inches of precip. but since I want it in inches/month, I divided that by 6 (1.3 in.) 2,270.2 x .623 x 1.3 x .95 = 1,746. Therefore we would have had 9,262 gallons remaining.

I repeated this process for the next few months. Since there are 6 months per cool/ warm season, I used the same data for the first season six months. Here are my results of remaining amounts (gals):

1st month: 9,262 7th month: 4,940 13th month: 1,593

2nd month: 7,102 8th month: 4,434 14th month: 776

3rd month: 6,688 9th month: 3,928 15th month: -41

4th month: 6,274 10th month: 3,422

5th month: 5,860 11th month: 2,916

6th month: 5,446 12th month: 2,410

To summarize, with a 10,000 gallon tank and a period of decreasing precipitation, the average person would have run out of water halfway through the 3rd season. So, in the toughest times, would the 16,000 tank work better? Well according my calculations, it would help prolong your water supply, but you would still fall short before the end of the drought. Thus, there would be a need for more conservative water use.

However, let's say, hypothetically, that it didn't rain from January through May (150-ish days) but you had filled your 10,000 gal. tank. In that time, with limited consumption, our household would have used 10,800 gallons. If that drought only lasted 4 months (120 days), we would have used 8,640 gallons. Even though we would have run out of water in the 5 month period, all of this narrows down how big our tank should be and how much we'd need to get through a drought.

The last thing this week is comparing our use the worst and best season. To start in the wettest cool month, it rained, on average, 4 inches a month (equating to 5,374.5 gallons). With our monthly use being 2,160 gals, we would be covered. In the driest cool month, it rained about .3 in/ month (403.1 gals.)--not enough with that amount of consumption. In the wettest dry month it rained was about 2.6 in/month (3,493). Again, sustaining our needs. Finally, in the driest warm month, there was .67 in. of rain (900 gals.). Now, even though it seems counter intuitive for the "driest warm" to be wetter than the "driest cool," remember that the latter part of the warm season is our monsoon season!

To conclude, the point of all this was to not only find the optimal tank volume but to also see how rainwater harvesting could take you through drier periods!

I apologize for the late post but just so you know, out SRP presentations are April 19th-21st so if you would like to come watch, all are welcome! Thanks again for reading! :)

Till next time,

-Lia