Amy Zoller, integrated water management coordinator at the Nebraska Department of Natural Resources, will present "GIS in Statewide Integrated Water Management" at 2 p.m., Feb. 27 in Hardin Hall, room 228. The seminar is free and open to the public.
The Integrated Water Management (IWM) division within the Nebraska Department of Natural Resources was formed following a 2004 Legislative action that established a collaborative state and local process to manage interconnected groundwater and surface waters. The goal of IWM is to protect existing water users by achieving and sustaining a long term balance between water uses and supplies.
Functions within the IWM division include water management planning, providing technical expertise to local Natural Resource Districts and other entities, developing hydrologic models, and conducting studies to better understand interconnected ground and surface water and potential effects of alternative water management strategies.
Geographic Information Systems (GIS) have played an increasingly integral part in supporting IWM functions over the past several years. GIS has been used to create representations of irrigated vs. non-irrigated lands over time, evaluate reservoir evaporation, provide a framework for surface water and groundwater modeling studies and create representations of future potential water use demands. GIS visual capabilities have also been utilized by the IWM division to more effectively portray pertinent information to the public regarding IWM planning and technical activities. This presentation will provide an in-depth overview of GIS in IWM activities, as well as provide examples of how GIS has been used to acquire, manipulate and synthesize data to provide a basis for more informative decision making for water managers.
Zoller received a master's degree in natural resource sciences from UNL in 2008. She was hired by the Nebraska Department of Natural Resources in 2010 as a specialist in the Integrated Water Management division. For the next few years, she used GIS to develop historical land use/land cover and reservoir evaporation datasets that are used for water use and supply modeling and accounting.
She currently serves as a Coordinator in the Integrated Water Management Division, where she works with local Natural Resource Districts in developing joint integrated water management plans to proactively manage interconnected ground and surface waters.