Communicating Outcomes
Collaborating and sharing information
By Danielle Supercinski
As participants arrived in beautiful Ruidoso, New Mexico, cool, breezy weather greeted them for the fifth annual Rio Grande Basin Initiatives (RGBI) Conference held March 28-30, 2006.
The week began with welcome talks from project and university administrators and an overview of New Mexico region water issues. The first day moved quickly into individual task group and county program presentations, which continued throughout most of the conference. The week ended with additional project reports from the U.S. Geological Survey, New Mexico Water Resources Research Institute and an overview of the River Systems Institute, Transboundary Studies Center and Edwards Aquifer Center at Texas State University. The conference closed with wrap-up discussions regarding future collaborations.
RGBI project participants from New Mexico State University (NMSU) and the Texas A&M University System (TAMUS) attended along with participants from two other Rio Grande projects from the Texas State University System (TSUS) and the University of Texas (UT). This three-day event brought together project administrators, state and federal agency partners, irrigation district managers, Extension agents and specialists, and Experiment Station researchers.
“We have a lot of friends in this room and we enjoy the opportunity to get together, meet and discuss our research and educational efforts and results,” said Dr. Bill Harris, RGBI project director and associate director of Texas Water Resources Institute. “It is a great pleasure to collaborate with NMSU in our RGBI project and we enjoy our newer interactions and collaboration with Kevin Urbanczyk from TSUS and Daene McKinney from UT.”
Having this joint conference between the three initiatives allows project participants from the different universities to visit with each other and discuss opportunities for collaboration on their projects in the future, Harris said. The format for this year’s conference was set-up different than previously to allow each of the three projects time to talk and present each individual’s project efforts and results.
“Most of the time project participants within the same project aren’t aware of each other’s efforts,” Harris said. “This format gave everyone a chance to see what everyone else is doing within their own initiative.”
The RGBI project is in its fifth year and success continually builds toward conserving water in the Rio Grande Basin.
“You might think that the enthusiasm and excitement might be diminishing, but I don’t see that,” said Craig Runyan, water quality and RGBI program coordinator at NMSU. “It’s a synergy that builds upon itself. As long as we’re showing enthusiasm and getting results then we help to ensure we continue with these activities.”
However, it is apparent that collaboration is the key.
“It is important for TAMUS, NMSU, UT and TSUS to know what each other is doing,” said Kevin Urbanczyk, project director for the Sustainable Agricultural Water Conservation Project and Earth and Physical Sciences Department chair at Sul Ross State University. “This is a perfect example of collaboration. I plan on attending all of these meetings in the years to come.”
To view the 2006 and past conference materials, presentations, photos and all initiatives’ Web sites go to http://riogrande-conference.tamu.edu.
