CAREER: Humans, Water, and Climate: Advancing Research and Education on Water Resource Sustainability in Managed Land-Water Systems using Integrated Hydrological Modeling Framework

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A critical challenge in sustainable water resource management is to ensure adequate supply of water to meet the rapidly growing demands for food, energy, and water, while minimizing negative social, environmental, and ecological impacts. Striking this balance requires a clear understanding of the human-induced changes in freshwater flows and storages, agricultural systems, and ecosystem services, as well as the complex interactions and feedback among coupled natural and human systems. The goal of this project is to advance the research and education of water resource sustainability in managed land-water systems by using a novel numerical modeling framework and a wealth of data from ground and satellite observations, climate models, and socio-economic analysis. The framework, which comprises of a suite of hydrological, agricultural, and ecological models, is used to identify ways to optimize the use of land and water resources by systematically examining the trade-offs between upstream basin management for food-energy production (e.g., hydropower, irrigation) and downstream changes in river-floodplain dynamics and groundwater systems (e.g., reduction in sediment load, seawater intrusion). The project will provide new insights about ways to best utilize the information on global change and practices for local-regional water management through its integration into coupled hydrological-agricultural-ecological models to develop adaptation strategies for sustainable water resource management as well as achieving water and food security. The research project integrates a substantive set of educational initiatives for promoting knowledge about hydrology and water resources among high school and community college students, motivating them to pursue STEM education and inspiring them to study freshwater systems toward addressing pressing societal challenges regarding food, energy, and water security. The educational component involves an interactive web-based version of the modeling system for classroom use in undergraduate and graduate teaching, for educating high school and community college students, and as resource for teachers especially in community colleges. The education program also includes mentored international research and training through online initiatives. The modeling framework is based on the Community Land Model (CLM) but includes critical enhancements made by incorporating advanced schemes representing crop growth, irrigation, groundwater pumping, and river-floodplain-reservoir routing. The strength of this novel framework lies in its ability to explicitly resolve the coupled behavior of a range of natural hydrologic and biophysical processes (e.g., surface hydrology, groundwater dynamics, sediment transport, land use change, and crop growth), human land-water management practices (irrigation, reservoir operation, groundwater pumping), and ecological processes (seawater intrusion, floodplain-wetland dynamics). The framework is designed to simulate large-scale water cycle dynamics at regional to continental scales while also mechanistically resolving fine-scale, topography-driven hydrologic-groundwater processes such as lateral groundwater flow and river-floodplain-groundwater interactions. Thus, the study will significantly advance our capability to simulate coupled surface water, groundwater, and agricultural systems, which is critical for achieving food security through better assessment and prediction of water resource. Since CLM is a land component of an Earth System Model (ESM), the new framework and insights gained from the study are expected to inform the development of the next generation of ESMs through the incorporation of human components for the holistic study of coupled natural-human systems, and to assess human-climate interactions. The new framework will also enable us to better assess and predict water resources in highly managed land-water system around the world including the High Plains in the central US and Central Valley in California where declining water supplies are likely to adversely impact regional, national, and global food security in the future.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.