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Advanced Information Technologies for Assessing Nonpoint Source Pollution in the Vadose Zone: Conference Overview

U.S. Salinity Lab., USDA-ARS, 450 West Big Springs Road, Riverside, CA 92507-4617;

K. Loague

Dep. of Geological and Environmental Sciences, Stanford Univ., Stanford, CA 94305-2115;

T. R. Ellsworth

Dep. of Natural Resources and Environmental Sciences, Univ. of Illinois, Urbana, IL 61801.

^* Corresponding author (dcorwin{at}ussl.ars.usda.gov).

ABSTRACT

The information age has ushered in an awareness of and concern for global environmental problems such as climatic change, ozone depletion, deforestation, desertification, and nonpoint source (NPS) pollution. Nonpoint source pollution is the single greatest threat to surface and subsurface drinking water resources. Nonpoint source pollutants also pose a threat to sustainable agriculture, which is viewed as the most viable means of meeting the food demands of a world population that is expected to reach 9.4 billion by the middle of the next century. The ability to accurately assess present and future NPS pollution impacts on ecosystems ranging from local to global scales would provide a powerful tool for environmental stewardship and guiding future human activities. Assessing NPS pollutant is a multidisciplinary problem. To address the problem, advanced information technologies and methodologies are needed that draw from all areas of science and are applied in a spatial context. It was from this setting that the 1997 Joint AGU Chapman/SSSA Outreach Conference Application of GIS, Remote Sensing, Geostatistics, and Solute Transport Modeling for Assessing Nonpoint Source Pollutants in the Vadose Zone (19–24 Oct. 1997, Riverside, CA) materialized. The objective of the conference was to examine current multidisciplinary technologies and methodologies for assessing NPS pollutants in the vadose zone, and to explore new conceptual approaches. It was the conference's goal to provide a forum to stimulate multidisciplinary interaction to enhance the development of techniques for the real-time measurement and modeling of NPS pollution in the vadose zone and subsurface waters.