A Message from the Founding Director

Water is a valuable resource that is critical for the health, vitality, and long-term sustainability of all natural ecosystems. For humans, water plays an essential role in food and energy production, transportation, and recreation.

Worldwide, however, water resources are at a risk. Unsustainable population growth, land-use changes, pollution, and global climate change all threaten the distribution, quantity, and quality of the water on which all life depends.

Protecting and preserving our water resources requires that we take a “big picture” approach that addresses where water comes from, where it goes, how it travels, how it is used by living things, what’s in it, and how to remediate problems and develop policies to protect water.

The interdisciplinary program in Water Science & Policy educates students to address the complex challenges that we face today; to develop solutions that are socially acceptable, economically viable, and environmentally sustainable; and to be true stewards of our environment.

We invite you to join us in our endeavors to ensure that all of Earth’s inhabitants, now and into the future, have adequate supplies of clean, healthy water.

Dr. Shreeram Inamdar
Professor of Watershed Hydrology and Biogeochemistry