The Water Center brings expertise to students through field work

Foresters are in many ways, you know, a jack of all trades. They learn a little bit about the whole forest system. Here we're looking at water features and we're characterizing the condition of streams. This is like my first class, where we've been able to actually do this for long periods of time, and it's been really exciting to actually see what it looks like in the field, what our career will look like someday. We kind of get like the building tools to do, like any sort of field work in natural resources. I'm the director of the Virginia Water Resources Research Center. The mission of the water center is just like the land grant mission, where we're focused on facilitating and doing research, training the next generation of water resource professionals. And then we have an information transfer component. This lab, and what we're doing out here, tends to be a little bit more natural resource oriented. We sort of characterize condition as is, or to look at before and after some potential disturbance or impact. So we might monitor that over time to look at changes and think about what's causing those changes and what sort of management might we implement to reduce impacts.

academics 1:10 The Water Center brings expertise to students through field work

By:

Luke Hayes

25 Jun 2026 205

Experts from the Virginia Water Resources Research Center work with students in the Field Experience in Forest Resources and Environmental Conservation course to teach them techniques and practices fundamental to their future careers.