Soil and Water Conservation Modeling: MODELING SUMMIT SUMMARY COMMENTS

1. Soil and Water Conservation Modeling:MODELING SUMMIT SUMMARY COMMENTS Dennis Ojima Natural Resource Ecology Laboratory COLORADO STATE UNIVERSITY 31 MARCH 2011 Denver, CO

2. Ecosystem Services and Society • Soil and water conservation goals are central to social well-being and to reducing environmental degradation • Needed for reducing perverse outcomes or unintended consequences • Assessment tools for scenario analyses of management options and policy decisions • Interdisciplinary efforts needed for joint social science – biophysical science to make a difference

3. CHALLENGES and NEEDSOF Model Development, Inter-comparison, Integration, and Interpretation • Multiple Stresses • Interactive Sectors • Increasing Human Pressures • (e.g., bioenergy, conservation, food production, water usage and sources, energy production, etc) • Information Exchange to Multiple Publics • Scientist within and across disciplines • Managers • Policy Makers • Public at Large

4. SOCIAL-ECOLOGICAL SYSTEM GHG VOC, NOx O3

6. Advancing Modeling ApproachesWHY NOW? • Grand Challenges facing Environmental Sciences • Land Use; Water Resources, Climate change; Biodiversity; Biogeochemical cycles; Infectious disease; Invasive species • New Observational Systems • New Cyber Infrastructure Developments • Development of Data-Model Fusion Techniques

7. National Ecological Observatory Network (NEON) NEON: A continental research platform designed to provide the capacity to forecast future states of ecological systems for the advancement of science and the benefit of society • Novel infrastructure that: • allows scientists to observe the previously unobservable • scale from m2 to continent • evaluate fundamental theory at regional to continental scale • enables a new forecasting and predictive capacity for ecology • takes advantage of new and evolving in situ sensing technologies • couples human and natural systems

8. Multi-sensor/Multi-scale Modeling Framework Nemani et al., 2003, EOM White & Nemani, 2004, CJRS

9. FROM PETABYTE TO SOUNDBYTE

10. Integrated Earth System Approach Linking earth system components together provides a framework to analyze interactions of land use and environmental changes. Analysis provides an analytical tool to guide new policy and understanding of changes to the social-environmental system

11. Changing How Science is Done • Collect data from digital libraries, laboratories, and observation • Analyze the data with models run on the grid • Visualize and share data over the Web • Publish results in a digital library

12. Information Technology for Soil and Water Analysis • SCIENCE BASED: Developing and testing theory and models requires integration of complex in situ process data with large gridded data sets. • MULTI-SCALED: Required data are multi-scale, many formats, originating in multiple disciplines. • AGILE: Rapid prototyping and development cycle to maximize user control of information systems, implies incorporating existing state-of-the-art components rather than de novo development • USER-DRIVEN: Data systems must allow user-driven, knowledge-based querying of multiple data types

13. Modeling Applications • Understanding • Evaluation • Scaling • Integration • Synthesis • Forecasting COMMUNICATION &TRANSLATION COLLABORATION EDUCATION & TRAINING

14. THANK YOU COMMENTS?