Water Wonks Hour Lecture Series #8: Prioritization of Riparian Conservation Opportunities in the Upper Guadalupe River Basin (UGRB), South-Central Texas
The Greater Edwards Aquifer Alliance is pleased to introduce our 2024 Water Wonks Lecture Series. Mark your calendars for 3:30 p.m. on the 4th Wednesday of each month. Water Wonks will feature a host of experts sharing innovative ideas and details about their work in the world of water. The series is a free community education opportunity.
Lecture #8: Prioritization of Riparian Conservation Opportunities in the Upper Guadalupe River Basin (UGRB), South-Central Texas
Bio: Originally from Dhaka, the capital city of Bangladesh, Dr. Udita has spent most of her academic life working towards finding nature-based, sustainable solutions to existing environmental problems.
Dr. Udita is currently working with the City of Austin’s Office of Sustainability to facilitate the city’s Climate Pollution Reduction Grants Program by assisting in the development of regional and community-wide greenhouse gas inventory. Additionally, she analyzes energy data from multiple sectors (e.g., transportation, residential and commercial buildings, wastewater) to determine their reduction measures.
Prior to this role Dr. Udita worked for The Texas Water Company where she utilized the USGS Groundwater Toolbox to calculate and identify baseflow pattern, use climatic and other related variables to conduct a comparative and causal analysis between baseflow and all variables. In doing so, she acquired data from multiple sources and harmonized them to create an integrated database.
Dr. Udita has worked as both a Graduate Instructional Assistant and a Doctoral Instructional and Research Assistant at Texas State University as well as serving as a GIS Analyst and Research Assistant at The Meadows Center for Water and the Environment.
Synopsis: Dr. Udita will speak on her research on aquatic and riparian connectivity and share information derived from her doctoral program in Geographic Information Science regarding data layers and mapping resources that resulted from her research offering implications for identifying and prioritizing riparian lands for conservation. Dr. Udita will share her insight on riparian land cover changes and associated intact and fragmented lateral and longitudinal riparian corridor data as it applies to water quality and instream habitat assessments.
