Haggard Chosen as National Institutes for Water Resources President-Elect

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Brian Haggard

FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. – Brian Haggard, director of the Arkansas Water Resources Center at the University of Arkansas System Division of Agriculture, was recently elected president-elect of the National Institutes for Water Resources. Haggard, who also serves as a professor of biological and agricultural engineering, will serve as president-elect until October and then serve a year as president.

The NIWR consists of water resource research centers in each state that serve under a congressional mandate to form the primary link between water experts in the nation’s universities and those who manage and use water.

Haggard is currently in charge of planning the program for NIWR’s annual conference in February in Washington.

Haggard has been director of the Arkansas Water Resources Center since 2008, when the center shifted from the Fulbright College of Arts and Sciences to the Division of Agriculture. At the water center, Haggard coordinates with researchers working on several projects funded from sources including the Arkansas Natural Resources Commission and the U.S. Geological Service.

“The center has been collecting water samples in streams draining multiple trans-boundary watersheds, and then getting those analyzed in its fee-based lab,” Haggard said. “Several specific studies on water quality have also been completed looking at the effects of municipal effluent discharges, hydrology and land use changes on water quality.”

Haggard has been with the UA since 2006, where he teaches in the biological engineering program. Haggard has taught watershed hydrology and biological engineering design studio, and his interest in biological engineering grew while he was working on reservoirs, watersheds and studying water quality.

“I came to this type of work when I was studying watersheds and water quality, so my interest turned to ecological hydrology,” he said. Haggard’s research focuses on how human activities at the landscape level influence water quality and chemistry in streams, rivers and reservoirs. He works collaboratively with faculty from biology and crop, soil and environmental sciences to link these changes in water chemistry to stream biology.