IGERT: Climate Change, Water, and Society (CCWAS)

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This Integrative Graduate Education and Research Traineeship (IGERT) award will provide a new generation of scientists with the tools to address effects of climate change on water resources. Monitoring data in the Western U.S. show alarming trends in temperature, river flows and snowpack. General circulation models (GCMs) indicate these and other climate-driven trends will continue and accelerate. Currently, major scientific gaps and socioeconomic factors preclude reliable predictions of climate change impacts on water resources, agriculture, and natural ecosystems on a sub-continental scale (e.g., California, Chile). Climate change requires attention from an unprecedented range of scientific disciplines, including atmospheric science, computational science, ecology, economics, engineering, hydrology, political science, and soil science, among others. Intellectual Merit: The Climate Change, Water and Society (CCWAS) project will develop needed synergies through 1) a framework for cutting-edge research that focuses on key interfaces of climate/water/social sciences, and 2) an unprecedented, integrative, flexible education and training program. CCWAS fellows will pursue a special degree designation in "Climate Change, Water and Society," core and interface courses in hydroclimatology and decision making under uncertainty, cyber-enabled audio and video instruction for joint course offerings and sharing among campuses, and an innovative "world café" style capstone course that annually defines state of the art and research needs in climate change, future water availability, and water resources management. Broader Impacts: Transformative qualities of the research will be broadened through collaboration and comparative studies with colleagues in Chile, which faces similar climate change and water challenges as California. An internship program will engage students with the government agencies responsible for mitigating and adapting to climate change effects. IGERT is an NSF-wide program intended to meet the challenges of educating U.S. Ph.D. scientists and engineers with the interdisciplinary background, deep knowledge in a chosen discipline, and the technical, professional, and personal skills needed for the career demands of the future. The program is intended to catalyze a cultural change in graduate education by establishing innovative new models for graduate education and training in a fertile environment for collaborative research that transcends traditional disciplinary boundaries.