Analytical methods for estimating the joint climatological-social drivers of water quality and supply in contrasting tropical zones: Ecuador and China

热带和亚热带地区有20多亿人获得清洁水和卫生服务的机会有限，已知这些地区的地表沃茨中病原体的命运和传播对气候变化很敏感。该项目解决了在不断变化和多变的气候中水媒疾病传播的关键问题：我们如何能够对未来环境变化对水质，特别是对水媒病原体的影响做出可靠的预测？我们如何指导社会经济决策，以应对未来气候条件下可能增加的水质问题？该项目将利用厄瓜多尔北方和中国西部经过充分研究的试验地点，开发和测试各种方法，以概念化、量化和预测多种气候驱动因素对水量和病原体归宿及迁移的影响。该团队将与弗朗西斯科德基多大学和四川大学的合作伙伴合作，利用该地区目前的NIH/NIAID项目，在每个地点举办研讨会，并促进美国学生和国内合作者之间的互动。该项目的目标是系统地调查气候多变性和变化对热带和亚热带地区水量和水质的影响。核心假设是：1）气候变化可以通过改变地表水流动的动态以及水体中病原体的命运和运输来影响水质; 2）管理决策和社会组织形式都可以限制或加剧气候的影响。 该项目将开发和测试各种方法，以概念化、量化和预测多种气候驱动因素对水量和水质的影响，并将厄瓜多尔北方和中国西部的经过充分研究的地区作为测试地点，这些地区有大量数据。项目活动将为耦合水文-微生物系统的建模和预测奠定经验和理论基础，并有可能大大提高对环境变化如何在多个尺度上改变微生物水质的理解。将探讨气候变化对决定水质的关键途径的影响，包括气候介导的水文动态变化;气候介导的对水体内条件的影响（例如，微环境温度）;以及管理决策的影响（例如，农业实践、卫生设施提供）和社会进程（例如，社会分层、移民），这可能限制或加剧与气候有关的水质变化。

More than 2 billion people in tropical and subtropical regions have limited access to clean water and sanitation services, and the fate and transport of pathogens in surface waters are known to be sensitive to climate change in these settings. This project addresses critical questions in waterborne disease transmission in a changing and variable climate: How can we make reliable predictions about the effects of future environmental change on water quality and specifically on waterborne pathogens? How can we direct social-economic decision-making to counteract potential increased water quality problems under future climate conditions? This project will develop and test methods for conceptualizing, quantifying and predicting the effects of multiple climatological drivers on water quantity and pathogen fate and transport using well studied test sites in northern Ecuador and western China. The team will collaborate with partners at the Universidad San Francisco de Quito and Sichuan University, leverage current NIH/NIAID projects in the regions, host workshops at each site, and facilitate interaction between US students and in-country collaborators. The objective of this project is to systematically investigate the impact of climate variability and change on water quantity and quality in tropical and subtropical zones. The central hypotheses are that 1) climate change can affect water quality by altering the dynamics of surface water flows and the fate and transport of pathogens in the water column, and that 2) both management decisions and forms of social organization can limit or exacerbate climate's influence. This project will develop and test methods for conceptualizing, quantifying and predicting the effects of multiple climatological drivers on water quantity and quality, using as test sites well-studied regions in northern Ecuador and western China where extensive data are available. The project activities will develop empirical and theoretical foundations for the modeling and prediction of coupled hydrological-microbiological systems, and have the potential to considerably improve understanding of how environmental change can alter microbiological water quality at multiple scales. The effects of changing climate on key pathways that determine water quality will be explored, including climate-mediated changes in hydrological dynamics; climate-mediated effects on conditions within the water column (e.g., micro-environmental temperature); and the effects of management decisions (e.g., agricultural practices, sanitation provision) and social processes (e.g., social stratification, migration), which can limit or exacerbate climate-related changes in water quality.