Kevin Dressler Project Manager CUAHSI Science Advisory Team May 24, 2006

1. Consortium of Universities for the Advancement of Hydrologic Science Inc. (CUAHSI) Science Plan: A Community-based Infrastructure Initiative Kevin Dressler Project Manager CUAHSI Science Advisory TeamMay 24, 2006

2. Talk Outline • Context – where does this come from? • Continental Water Dynamics • High-level Science Questions • Observing System

3. Hydrologic Science • Concerns the “… occurrence, distribution, circulation and properties of water on the earth … affected by physical, chemical, biological processes within all … components of the Earth system.” (NRC, 1991) • That Earth system, and the role of water within it, is dynamic and changing. • The only certainty in hydrologic science is change.

4. Context NSF (2000) • Regarding the human demand side, and the supply-demand tension, the availability of high quality freshwater, or lack thereof, is potentially one of the most pervasive crises of the coming century. • Interdisciplinary research & education in hydrologic sciences provides for informed decisions (local, state, national, international levels)

5. Context NRC (2001), Environmental Grand Challenges • Enhance ability to “predict changes in freshwater resources and the environment caused by floods, droughts, sedimentation and contamination in the context of growing water demand.”

6. Context NSF AC-ERE (2005), “Blue Book” • “… water is a critical resource whose availability strongly impacts human health and economic development, answering questions in this domain will advance scientific understanding while addressing urgent societal issues … • this research will advance the ability to forecast and plan for changes in water systems …”

7. Context OSTP-OMB (FY-2007) Priorities Memo • Ensure an adequate water supply through research that improves our ability to measure, monitor, and forecast US and global freshwater supplies.

8. Community-Based Infrastructure and Programsin Previous Hydrologic Science Planning Efforts Opportunities in Hydrologic Science (NRC, 1991) • Recommends field studies (campaigns, long-term field experiments) involving multiple disciplines coordinating observations around a common, multidisciplinary objective. Water Energy and Biota (WEB, 2000) • Recommends a ‘network of "natural laboratories" in key geographic areas eventually linked by a "National Hydrologic Facility." Such a system would design and facilitate deployment of cutting-edge instrumentation, support field observations, and support the organization, analysis and management of community data sets and models.’

9. thresholds interfaces HYDROVIEW Community-Based Infrastructure and Programsin Previous Hydrologic Science Planning Efforts prediction evolution CUAHSI Technical Report #1 (CUAHSI, 2002) • If we want to adapt to changes and uncertainty in our freshwater resources, we need to improve our understanding of and ability to characterize and predict the storage, movement and transformations of water in natural and impacted environments. heterogeneity coupling adaptation patterns scaling

10. CUAHSI Science Advisory Team • Lead: John Wilson Project Manager: Kevin Dressler • Members: • Ana Barros, Rafael Bras, David Gochis, George Hornberger, Venkat Lakshmi, Upmanu Lall, David Maidment, Murugesu Sivapalan, Bridget Scanlon • Consultants: • Roger Bales, Steve Burges, Chris Duffy, John Selker, Soroosh Sorooshian • Charge: To develop a “next generation” science plan • Deliverable: • “Science Plan” for review Summer (June) 2006

11. Continental Water Dynamics • Continental freshwater • part of the planet-wide water cycle also involving the oceans, the atmosphere, and the cryosphere, • but it plays a special role, • it links most other continental environmental sciences, sustains life on land, and makes human civilization possible. • Continental Water Dynamics • focuses on the dynamics of water and its interaction with climate, the landscape, ecosystems, and people. The title “Continental Water Dynamics” is not meant to imply that the only scale of interest is the continent.

12. Water Supply Landscape Productivity TDR Droughts Urban Soil moisture remote sensing Rain Radar Agriculture Productivity Lidar Floods Transport Scale of interest

13. Dynamics because of … • Dynamic temporal variation and interaction of processes and responses, • Daily to interannual swings of water-related fluxes and stores, • to rare and episodic events, • Address non-stationarity of swings and the changing propensity for rare and non-linear events • Address detection, attribution, and prediction • Complicated by spatial patterns, heterogeneity and gradients in the landscape • Must account for emerging behavior as scale changes and as processes change

14. Some of the Recent Progress in Hydrologic Science • Hydrogeological Heterogeneity • Characterization and prediction of subsurface fluxes and behavior of water, chemicals, and microbiota. • Hydrometeorology • Spectacular suite of land and space-based observing platforms and campaigns; explaining observations with innovative land-atmospheric modeling approaches. • Geomorphology • Revolution of quantitative tools to simulate, measure, and explain stream channel networks, their similarities, and their controls of fluxes.

15. But … • These recent advances address individual components of continental freshwater dynamics • Research is by single investigators and small collaborations • Limited observations and almost no integration of data or modeling. • Despite impressive progress in some of the individual components, (eg, subsurface pollutant transport and hydrometeorology),the nation’s ability to apply scientific understanding to the wide range of complex environmental issues it faces will be impaired until hydrologic science becomes the truly interdisciplinary field it is destined to be.

16. Approach • Driven by • Limited scientific understanding • Severity, complexity, and scale of water-related issues facing the nation today, • Hydrologic science community is organizing a truly interdisciplinary research approach to Continental Water Dynamics • Brings physical, chemical, and biological sciences together with • social and behavioral sciences

17. Observing System • Integrated hydrologic observing system • Designed by scientists to enhance the nation’s scientific ability to understand complex water-related issues • Provides an unprecedented capability to observe and predict the quantity and quality of continental hydrologic states and fluxes across a wide range of space and time scales. CUAHSI has used the term “Hydroview” in the past and is working with CLEANER on WATERS Network …

18. Key Questions • What processes control the pattern and variability of continental water dynamics? • e.g. Geomorphology, Biogeochemistry, Vegetation • What are the relative roles of climate and human development in Continental Water Dynamics? • How will Continental Water Dynamics evolve in the future?

19. What processes control the pattern and variability of continental water dynamics? • Physical, chemical and biological processes continually act to control the movement and quality of water. • Time and space dependent • Control modulated by spatiotemporal variation in climate, vegetation, lithology and human activities. • Processes exhibit highly non-linear or threshold modes of behavior • Profound impact on the state and movement of water. • Improved understanding of these processes is critical to advancing prediction of freshwater resources in the U.S. and globally.

20. What are the relative roles of climate and human development in Continental Water Dynamics? • How can the impacts and feedbacks of these two drivers of change and variability be distinguished?

21. What are the relative roles of climate and human development in Continental Water Dynamics? • How do hillslope processes partition basin response among flows with different residence times? How does that partitioning change with human modifications and dynamic vegetation and geomorphology?

22. How will Continental Water Dynamics evolve in the future? • Can we predict the likely changes, and can we reliably characterize our prediction uncertainty? • How can we manage future change so that humans can coexist sustainably with nature? How can we manage that change for long-term ecological sustainability? • What will the future hold for human settlements? Will any changes be so dramatic that it might involve dramatic land-use changes, or even the wholesale movement of human populations?

23. Observing System • Cyberinfrastructure • capable of ingesting information and making predictions of all hydrologic-science processes at all important time and space scales • Observing strategy • Reconstructions • Campaigns (planned and opportunistic) • Fixed place observatories • Measurement technology • Synthesis (tied to CI) • coordinate activities • assess and blend the products from the various elements • organize planned and opportunistic observational campaigns • foster formulation of new hydrologic science questions and research initiatives • provide direction for future science programs and infrastructure needs. SYN CI MT OBS

24. Linkages and Partnerships • Water and the … • Physical Environment • water itself; atmospheric and ocean sciences, and other Earth-surface sciences, including, geomorphology, weathering and soil science, and abiotic aspects of limnology; eg, weathering science (e.g. CZEN, NCED, SAHRA) • Ecological Environment • ecology and limnology; eg, NEON • Human Environment • Economics, sociology, engineering; eg, CLEANER • Related links to agencies

25. Why Now? • The community is ready • Hydrologic science is now challenging traditional boundaries within its own research and reaching out to sister sciences • The science is ready and the science is needed • Hydrologic science is ready to take integrated approaches to important science questions in order to dramatically improve predictive understanding. • Water is the unifying link within environmental sciences and between them and the social and behavioral sciences • The technology is ready • Explosion of computational, data analysis, modeling and visualization tools. • Dizzying array of new sensors and data acquisition technology. • Enables the collection, processing, and modeling of data that was inconceivable only a few years ago

26. Future • The intellectual depth and rigor of hydrologic science, as well as its breadth, will grow with the shift from research limited to individuals and small collaborations, to community based and supported interdisciplinary efforts. • Once the sub-disciplines within the field work together on regular basis, what they learn from each other will lead to • significant new insights, • a new series of questions and hypotheses. • Enhancing the nation’s scientific ability to understand and grapple with Continental Water Dynamics.