Biocomplexity - Incubation Activity: Transcending Boundaries of Scale and Discipline in Environmental Problem Solving

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0083937BendaRecognizing and solving environmental problems are becoming major research priorities in the United States and across the world. Solving environmental problems involves understanding how human activities interact with complicated natural environments, including impacts dealing with climate, oceans, lakes and streams, and watersheds. Natural environments can be extremely dynamic over periods of years to centuries and such natural variability can complicate our understanding of environmental changes triggered by humans. The proposed research aims to develop a new scientific method for integrating across a range of scientific disciplines in the study of environmental problems dealing with streams and rivers. The research will develop quantitative tools that explicitly account for natural dynamics of environmental systems, and how human activities alter those dynamics in space and over time. The new approach will include the use of computer simulation models and new parameters that describe the full suite of watershed attributes and how those attributes change over time due to natural processes and human activities.