Kick-off meeting for the MSU-DEQ Water Resources Partnership in Dr. Shu-Guang Li's lab

Michigan State University recently signed a formal "Water Resource Partnership" with Michigan Department of Environmental Quality (MDEQ) through a joint funding agreement (JFA). The JFA aims at capitalizing on the research being conducted at MSU's Civil and Environmental Engineering (CEE) Department, Institute of Water Research (IWR), and Remote Sensing and GIS Science Center (RS/GIS). MDEQ is supplying $1 million in funding, while the university is contributing $500,000.

The JFA will be used to develop GIS-based modeling, analysis, and visualization technologies for groundwater research, outreach, and science-based water resources management.In particular, the JFA will be used to support the development of a next generation of 1) the GIS-enabled Michigan IGW software by the CEE team, 2) the Michigan geospatial decision support systems by the RS/GIS team, and 3) the Michigan groundwater assessment tool by the IWR team.

The kick-off meeting for the project took place in Dr. Li's Lab. The meeting was chaired by Dr. Jon Bartholic, Director of the IWR. A formal celebration of the partnership was held at the MSU Kellogg Conference Center. The new research agenda will expand the collaborative relationship between MSU and MDEQ and take advantage of the significant strength MSU has in different colleges and departments in hydrologic and environmental modeling research.

Scott Ross in the modeling lab afew days before the JFA kickoff meeting	Jon Bartholic and Elgar Brown in the meeting
Richard Mandle, Scott Ross, Elgar Brown ( left side of table)	Dr. David Lusch explains GIS components of JFA