Hello and welcome to the website of the Water and Environmental Research Institute of the Western Pacific, otherwise known as WERI. This recently updated version of our website provides you with a brief overview of the Institutes evolution and regional mission, and introduces you to the faculty and staff. It gives you a glimpse of our faculty research interests and the research programs they oversee. It also provides you with summaries of their recently completed research projects as well as those currently underway. Our research priorities are determined largely by local needs and are identified by stakeholders represented at our annual advisory council meetings. As a consequence, basic and applied research projects that focus on local water quantity and water quality problems are the order of the day. We are fortunate in having experienced, well rounded faculty with collective expertise in all major fields pertinent to the management, distribution and protection of water resources in the tropical Pacific region.
The current website has updated WERI’s technical report listings. These reports are in pdf format for direct viewing and retrieval at your leisure. One may search the technical report data base by title, year, author and keyword in order to retrieve the report or reports that are of greatest interest to you. If, for any reason, you are unable to view a report, or have comments or suggestions for improvement to the website in general, please feel free to contact me at [email protected].
Those of you who are familiar with this website will recognize that there has been a recent change in the WERI Directorship. My predecessor, Dr. Leroy Heitz, passed that baton on to me in October of last year after serving as the Institute’s Director for six years. Leroy was an outstanding leader who brought cohesiveness and stability to WERI and did much to shape the Institute into the premier water resources research center that it is today. Sadly, he will be leaving us towards the end of the year and retiring with his wife, Joe, to their home in Arizona. We wish them well and hope to see them back here from time to time. Meanwhile, I will try to emulate Leroy’s leadership as best I can until the baton is passed on once again.
On behalf of the Institute, I would like to thank Gary Sung, creative director of Ideal Advertising for his inspiring redesign and upgrade of the previous website to its current format. We would also like to thank the Department of Interior, U.S. Geological Survey, for funding this web renovation project through the Water Resources Research Institute (WRRI) Program. Congresswoman Madeleine Z. Bordallo deserves special mention here for supporting the 2007 reauthorization of the WRRI Act and for her continued interest in the WRRI program and WERI. Finally, we are indebted to the University of Guam and the people of Guam, the CNMI and the FSM, for their unfailing support of the water research programs at WERI.