Humans Transforming the Water Cycle: Community-Based Activities in Hydrologic Synthesis

人类改变水循环：基于社区的水文综合活动

• 批准号: 0635887
• 负责人: Charles Vorosmarty
• 金额: $ 87.5万
• 依托单位: University of New Hampshire
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Continuing Grant
• 财政年份: 2007
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2007-06-01 至 2009-02-28
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=0635887&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Humans; Transforming; Water; Cycle; Community

Intellectual Merit. Hydrology is at an important crossroads. As articulated in several "Grand Challenge" documents, we've made enormous progress in process-level understanding at plot, hillslope, and small catchment scales, but our capacity to pass to the next horizon .to understand inherent variability in the water cycle, its predictability, human dimensions, and links to biogeochemical cycling over broader domains.requires a major reformulation of our thinking and a purposeful move toward synthesis and systematic observation. We focus here on an emerging view that humans are rapidly embedding themselves into the basic character of the water cycle, through a myriad of processes including direct water abstraction and flow diversion, land cover change, pollution, destruction of aquatic biodiversity, and climate change. The major scientific challenge is to understand how these changes manifest themselves and if they bear synergistic impacts across the different scales. Our primary scientific goal is to: . Quantify the widespread alteration of hydrologic systems over regional-to-continental U.S. domains, identify natural and anthropogenic sources of such change, and assess their systemic impacts.The science agenda will be advanced by:. Convening a consolidated synthesis Working Group (WG), to study Regional Watersheds, Hydromorphology, and Continental Processes, for the purpose of carrying-out synthesis activities and serving as a test-bed for ideas on how to optimally execute synthesis. Our WGs expand activities originally consolidated under the aegis of CUAHSI, and welcome new members who have led major community-based CUAHSI, NSF, National Academy, regional, national and international assessment activities. The focus of the WG will be on hydromorphology, an emerging science theme that addresses the evolution of hydrosystems as a complex amalgam of factors, today including natural processes as well as human management. Our attention will initially focus on the Northeast Corridor, a region with sharp gradients in climate, land and water manage-ment and emblematic of pressures on water resources across the nation. The WG will also maintain a continental U.S. perspective, testing our capacity to upscale regional dynamics and to simulate synergistic responses in the larger water system. In this context, we will bring together our geographically-oriented studies with the UIUC synthesis of predictability. The WG will produce models and data sets, organized through an IT framework to provide focus and unity of purpose. We will also designate a sub-team to interact with funded initiatives (EU-sponsored WATCH, NASA-NEWS, GWSP), to find the place of U.S. water systems on the global stage. In Year 4 we will produce a "lessons learned document and blueprint for a National Center for Hydrologic Synthesis. We also propose a Northeast Regional Student Consortium supported by a competitive scholarship program. The Consortium shares nationally prominent advisors from Boston U., Columbia, MIT, Penn State, Tufts, UMass, UNC, and UNH, and will be used as a model for synthesis education. Broader Impacts. Beyond its scientific value, a synthetic understanding of hydrology is of enormous strategic importance both to the US and internationally. The globalization of water-related problems has gained a new sense of urgency in science and public policy circles. Given the central role of water in our environment and human well-being, it is not difficult to articulate the many benefits of a coordinated set of prototype synthesis activities focusing on water. The benefits of hydrologic synthesis go well beyond those of any new science alone and aim at several US strategic and strategic environmental issues: managing climate extremes, agricultural sector competitiveness, preserving ecosystem services and biodiversity, protecting human health and sustaining economic development. The proposed WG activities build toward our longer-term vision of creating a national platform -- a National Center--for a new interdisciplinary science of water that engages the water policy and management sectors, educates the next generation of students and makes hydrological knowledge more relevant to the public. Use of the WG as a springboard to study the process of synthesis among collaborators provides an important model for other disciplines undergoing a similar transformation toward synthesis.

智力优点。水文学正处于一个重要的十字路口。正如几份“大挑战”文件中所阐述的那样，我们在地块、山坡和小流域尺度的过程层面理解方面取得了巨大进展，但我们要进入下一个地平线，了解水循环的内在变化、其可预测性、人类维度以及更广泛领域内与生物地球化学循环的联系，需要对我们的思维进行重大重新表述，并有目的地进行综合和系统观察。我们在此关注一种新兴观点，即人类正在通过直接取水和分流、土地覆盖变化、污染、水生生物多样性破坏和气候变化等无数过程，迅速融入水循环的基本特征。主要的科学挑战是了解这些变化如何表现出来，以及它们是否在不同尺度上产生协同影响。我们的主要科学目标是： .量化美国区域到大陆范围内水文系统的广泛变化，确定这种变化的自然和人为来源，并评估其系统影响。科学议程将通过以下方式推进：召集综合综合工作组（WG），研究区域流域、水文形态和大陆过程，以开展综合活动并作为如何最佳执行综合的想法的试验台。我们的工作组扩大了最初由 CUAHSI 主持的活动，并欢迎领导主要社区 CUAHSI、NSF、国家科学院、区域、国家和国际评估活动的新成员。工作组的重点将放在水形态学上，这是一个新兴的科学主题，它将水文系统的演变视为一个复杂的因素的混合体，今天包括自然过程和人类管理。我们的注意力首先将集中在东北走廊，该地区在气候、土地和水资源管理方面存在明显的梯度，也是全国水资源压力的象征。工作组还将保持美国大陆的视角，测试我们升级区域动态和模拟更大水系统中协同反应的能力。在此背景下，我们将把我们的地理导向研究与 UIUC 的可预测性综合结合起来。工作组将生成模型和数据集，并通过 IT 框架进行组织，以提供重点和目标的统一性。我们还将指定一个小组与资助的倡议（欧盟资助的 WATCH、NASA-NEWS、GWSP）进行互动，以找到美国水系统在全球舞台上的位置。在第 4 年，我们将制定“国家水文综合中心的经验教训文件和蓝图”。我们还提议建立一个由竞争性奖学金计划支持的东北地区学生联盟。该联盟拥有来自波士顿大学、哥伦比亚大学、麻省理工学院、宾夕法尼亚州立大学、塔夫茨大学、麻省大学、北卡罗来纳大学和新罕布什尔大学的全国知名顾问，并将用作综合教育的典范。更广泛的影响。除了其科学价值之外， 对水文学的综合理解对于美国和国际社会都具有巨大的战略意义。与水相关的问题的全球化在科学和公共政策界获得了新的紧迫感。鉴于水在我们的环境和人类福祉中的核心作用，不难阐明以水为中心的协调一致的原型合成活动的许多好处。水文综合的好处远远超出任何新科学本身的好处，其目标 处理美国的几个战略和战略环境问题：管理极端气候、农业部门竞争力、保护生态系统服务和生物多样性、保护人类健康和可持续经济发展。拟议的工作组活动旨在实现我们的长期愿景，即为新的跨学科水科学创建一个国家平台（国家中心），让水政策和管理部门参与其中，教育下一代学生并使水文知识与实际情况更加相关。 公开。使用工作组作为研究合作者之间的综合过程的跳板，为其他经历类似综合转型的学科提供了一个重要的模型。