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Dr. Laura Norman of the Western Geographic Science Center in Tucson, Arizona, has been named the 2024 recipient of the Farouk El-Baz Desert Research Award.
Dr. Elbaz is an Egyptian-American space scientist and geologist who worked with NASA on lunar scientific exploration and planning for the Apollo program. He helped lead lunar geological studies, the selection of landing sites for the Apollo missions, and the training of astronauts for lunar observation and photography. As a NASA scientist, he also visited every major desert in the world to study the origins and evolution of arid landscapes. Dr. Elbaz was a research professor and director of the Center for Remote Sensing at Boston University from 1986 until his retirement in 2018. Information about the El-Baz Prize and past winners It can be found on the GSA Quaternary Geology and Geomorphology Section (QG&G) website. Previous recipients of this award from the USGS include Julio Betancourt (2012), Dan Muhs (2014), and Merith Reheis (2015). Laura’s award will be presented at the QG&G Awards Ceremony at the GSA Annual Meeting in Anaheim, California on September 24, 2024.
During her 25 years with the USGS, Laura’s research supported environmental management and state, federal, and binational stakeholders in arid regions of the southwestern United States and the U.S.-Mexico border. She has amassed an impressive body of mapping, field, and modeling research addressing point and nonpoint source pollution, environmental health, environmental justice, transboundary watershed management and sustainability, flood risk assessment, ecosystem services, and nature-based solutions.
Twenty years ago, Laura helped develop the USGS Colonia Monitoring Program, funded by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) and Mexico’s National Institute of Statistics and Geography (INEGI), to identify “colonias,” environmental justice communities near the U.S.-Mexico border that lack adequate housing or water/sewer infrastructure, and provide them with necessary funding. Later, she co-led the USGS Border Environmental Health Initiative, an interdisciplinary effort to track sources and sinks of groundwater and surface water pollution in both countries. Laura developed urbanization projections, estimated plausible land uses for flood risk and their assessment, and assessed the exposure of vulnerable human populations to ecosystem services. Laura’s methods are now being applied to sustainable land use planning to make resource management more equitable in the U.S.-Mexico border region.
Laura is also a leading expert on the use of traditional, practical, and low-cost rock retention structures to retain and replenish water, soil, and vegetation in seasonal stream channels and arid watersheds. These management practices have been used by indigenous peoples of the southwestern United States and Mexico for over a thousand years, yet have been overlooked and even opposed in modern water management and restoration science. Laura’s meticulous research has shown that rock retention structures can promote lateral flow; mitigate flood events; extend water seasonality and availability; prevent erosion and enhance alluvial sedimentation; reduce nonpoint source pollution and improve water quality; promote vegetation, especially during droughts; and sequester soil carbon. Major state land agencies (i.e., the U.S. Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management) are using her findings as a lever for funding and permitting to develop restoration projects. In addition, Laura works to advance the science of water management and restoration through presentations to a wide range of regional stakeholders, briefings to policymakers, media interviews, and informative videos (e.g., Isle of Skye Restoration Partnership, Regreening dryland watersheds) impressive.
Congratulations, Laura!
This article was written by Julio Bentancourt, Pam Nagler and Joel Sankey
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