Water Resources Institute

10/08/2026

A new study by UVM researchers suggests good news for Lake Champlain’s baby trout!🐟🐟🐟

For decades, fisheries managers have struggled to restore wild populations of lake trout across the Great Lakes region, and a potential barrier is Thiamine Deficiency Complex (TDC), a disorder caused by insufficient vitamin B1, or thiamine.

Now, scientists have conducted the first study to examine whether embryos can acquire thiamine naturally in their wild environment, opening the door to improved restoration strategies.

Read more at the link in our bio!

10/01/2026

Happy Water New Year from the Water Resources Institute! This is a 12-month period that’s used to track and report surface water supply.

09/30/2026

Join us this UVM Weekend at the Jericho Research Forest to explore the institute’s weather monitoring infrastructure.

Drop in to learn about the Vermont Mesonet—a statewide network of automated weather stations providing real-time, localized data—and the Summit to Shore network—a smaller scale network focused on snowmelt flood forecasting. Discover how these networks support flood resiliency, agriculture, utility management, and winter tourism across Vermont.

More details can be found on the WRI Events page.

09/29/2026

Join us on Monday, October 5, for the next talk of our fall seminar series: Research Across the Lake Champlain Basin!

We’re excited to welcome Julie Dragon, an Associate Professor in UVM’s Larner College of Medicine, who will present:

Transmissible Cancer Discovered in Catfish in Vermont’s Lakes.

💧10/5 at 12–1 PM
💧Transmissible Cancer Discovered in Catfish in Vermont’s Lakes
💧Hybrid: Join us in person at UVM’s Davis Center in Room 413, or remotely using the link in our bio!

We hope you’ll join us!

09/24/2026

09/23/2026

While everyone’s thinking about fall, here at the WRI, we’re already looking towards winter!🥶

Yesterday, Sam, our Senior Meteorological Technician, went to the top of Mount Mansfield to get our highest-altitude monitoring station ready for the snow. This involves making sure all the equipment is running properly, ensuring it can handle the chilly mountain temperatures and accurately provide data.

The foliage is definitely a fall fieldwork perk!🍁🍃🍂

09/21/2026

UVM’s Water Resources Institute has officially been around 2 years! As we launch our third year, we wanted to share our progress we’ve made since Fall 2024.

View the full report at the link in our bio.

08/31/2026

Led by University of Vermont, a team of northern New England universities and institutions has been awarded $5.9 million from the National Science Foundation (NSF) to advance snow research and explore connections between winter weather and the outdoor recreation economy in Vermont, New Hampshire, and Maine.

“For decades, western states have dominated snow research in the United States. This investment from NSF will supercharge northern New England snow studies,” said Keith Jennings, PhD, the principal investigator on the project and Director of Research at The Water Resources Institute at UVM.

The project, Snow STORE, will improve mountain snowpack observations and develop foundational snow monitoring infrastructure adapted for the region’s unique climates, geographies, ecosystems, and communities.

Learn more at the link in our bio.

08/14/2026

Who is producing cyanotoxins? When do they produce them? And why?

These three questions are guiding Katelynn Warner’s work as a postdoctoral researcher at UVM. She is sampling four bloom-prone areas of the lake— Alburgh, Missisquoi Bay, St. Albans Bay, and Burlington Bay—every two weeks to determine which cyanobacteria are present, which are producing toxins, and under what environmental conditions.

Read more about her work at the link in our bio.

07/24/2026

Yesterday, we were paid a visit by the Hawai’i Mesonet! Dr. Thomas Giambelluca, a climatologist from the University of Hawai’i at Manoa and project lead from the Hawai’i Mesonet, gave a talk on his work on the network and corresponding Hawai’i Climate Data Portal.

Afterwards, the WRI team took Tom and Abby Frazier, a contributor on the project, up to our monitoring stations on Mount Mansfield. It was a great chance to share information and learn from our respective networks and climates.