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。水文学处于重要的十字路口。正如几个“巨大挑战”文件中所阐明的那样，我们在情节，山坡和小流域尺度上的过程级别的理解方面取得了巨大进展，但是我们可以传递到下一个地平线的能力。了解水周期中的固有变化，其可预测性，人类尺寸，人类尺寸以及与BioCochemical Cycligical Cycling跨越广泛的域的联系。我们在这里着重于一种新兴观点，即人类通过无数过程，包括直接抽象和流动转移，土地覆盖，污染，污染，水生生物多样性和气候变化，将自己迅速嵌入水周期的基本特征。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：。量化水文系统对美国区域到美国领域的广泛变化，确定这种变化的自然和人为来源，并评估其系统性影响。科学议程将通过：。召集一个合并合成工作组（WG），研究区域流域，氢形态学和大陆过程，目的是进行出现综合活动，并用作测试床，以了解如何最佳地执行合成的想法。我们的WGS扩大了最初在Cuahsi的宙斯盾下进行合并的活动，并欢迎领导主要基于社区的Cuahsi，NSF，National Academy，地区，国家和国际评估活动的新成员。 WG的重点将放在水力学上，这是一个新兴的科学主题，该主题旨在将水系统作为复杂因素的复杂汞合金的演变，如今，包括自然过程和人类管理。我们的注意力最初将集中在东北走廊上，东北走廊是一个在气候，土地和水管理方面具有敏锐梯度的地区，并象征着全国水资源的压力。 WG还将保持美国大陆的观点，测试我们在高档区域动态的能力，并模拟较大的供水系统中的协同反应。在这种情况下，我们将通过可预测性的UIUC综合将我们的面向地理的研究汇总在一起。 WG将生产通过IT框架组织的模型和数据集，以提供目的的重点和统一性。我们还将指定一个子团队与资助的计划（欧盟赞助的手表，NASA-NEWS，GWSP）互动，以在全球舞台上找到美国供水系统的位置。 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,对水文学的综合理解对美国和国际问题的全球化都具有巨大的战略意义。在美国的几个战略和战略环境问题上：管理极端气候，农业部门的竞争力，维护生态系统服务和生物多样性，保护人类健康和维持经济发展。拟议的WG活动旨在我们建立国家平台（国家中心）的长期愿景，其中包括一门参与水政策和管理部门的新跨学科科学，对下一代学生进行教育，并使水文知识与公众更加相关。将WG用作跳板来研究合作者之间的合成过程，为其他学科提供了一个重要的模型，从而经历了类似的综合转变。