The Davis College Water Center provides a platform for communicating information and opportunities for cooperation focusing on water-resource activities. This platform recognizes the key role of water in sustaining the livelihood of humanity and the health of natural resources in the semiarid region of West Texas and the world.
The foundational purpose of the Water Center is to support research which focuses on the future of our water resources. This support comes in the form of access to research funding and resources for faculty partners.
The innovative research supported by the Water Center is carried out by member institutes and faculty. These projects are pushing forward our understanding of the key roles water plays in sustaining the livelihood of humanity, agriculture, and the environment as a whole.
Research that remains between the pages of a journal rarely changes the world. The outreach and education deployed by the Water Center puts information, practices, and technologies out into the world in order to actively build an economically feasible and environmentally sustainable future.
The Water Center consists of faculty whose research, education, and engagement activities address a wide spectrum of water issues pertaining to agriculture and the environment. Such issues include crop and animal improvement; soil water-plant-atmospheric sensors; ecosystems, natural resources, and modeling; forage, rangeland, and livestock; and economics and rural development.
Cutting edge genetic and genomic approaches employed to develop water use efficient crops for the region. Employ efficient management practices for productive use of water to sustain crop and animal productivity under current and future uncertain climatic conditions.
Rapid advances in sensing and measuring soil water, atmospheric variables and plant responses present the opportunity to develop new and efficient irrigation management systems. Utilizing an array of soil water-plant-atmospheric sensors will provide a robust framework for developing modeling tools to determine water conserving management options for current and future climatic conditions.