U.S.-Ireland R&D Partnership: Sensor Application to Peatland Hydrology in Remote Environments (SAPHIRE)

这是一个由国家科学基金会地球科学理事会(NSF/GEO)和国家科学基金会/爱尔兰共和国/北爱尔兰牵头机构协定共同资助的项目。本协定允许提交单一提案，并由国家科学基金会进行审查，三个参与国均有个人投资促进机构。在国家科学基金会确定一项奖励后，该机构在每个国家为与其本国调查员和工作部分有关的预算和调查员的比例提供资金。泥炭地约占全球地表陆地的3%，但泥炭地含有高达全球土壤碳总量的40%，使泥炭地成为地球碳系统的重要组成部分。然而，关于水流和气候变化的影响与储存和运输泥炭地环境中碳等元素的化学过程之间的关系的信息很少。这项工作将应用现成的传感器技术来评估不断变化的水文条件对爱尔兰偏远地区泥炭地水质的影响。对这些过程的理解可以应用于其他重要的泥炭地地区，如美国和加拿大的泥炭地地区。该项目是俄亥俄州立大学小组与北爱尔兰和爱尔兰共和国的合作者共同完成的。这项合作将使一位来自美国的早期职业科学家能够发展国际研究联系。此外，还将开展宣传活动，宣传泥炭地在全球碳循环中的重要性。该项目将把最先进的传感器网络与传统的水采样技术相结合，以开发改进的、更定量的水文变化与泥炭地生物地球化学过程和元素通量之间的关系。这将包括评估河流洪水等高能事件对沼泽水文学和化学动力学的相对重要性。该项目还将使用机器学习来整合传感器网络收集的水流数据，以增加关于水文学如何影响沼泽化学品流量的知识。总体而言，所产生的信息将有助于更好地了解水文变化对以泥炭地景观为主的地区的水质和分水岭尺度过程的影响。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

This is a project that is jointly funded by the National Science Foundation’s Directorate of Geosciences (NSF/GEO) and both the via an NSF/Republic of Ireland/Northern Ireland Lead Agency Agreement. This Agreement allows a single proposal to be submitted and merit reviewed by NSF, for which there are PIs from each of the three participating countries. Upon determination of an award by NSF, the Agency in each country funds the proportion of the budget and the investigators associated with its own investigators and component of the work. Peatlands make up approximately 3% of surface land globally but peatlands contain as much as 40% of the total global soil carbon, making bogs an important component of the Earth’s carbon system. Yet there is little information on the relationship between the impact of changing water flows and climate with the chemical processes that store and transport elements such as carbon from peatland environments. This work will apply off-the-shelf sensor technology to assess the impact of changing hydrological conditions on peatland water quality in a remote area in Ireland. The understanding of these processes can be applied to other important peatland regions such as those in the United States and Canada. This project is joint between the Ohio State University group and collaborators from Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. The collaboration will allow an early career scientist from the United States to develop international research connections. In addition, outreach activities will be developed to communicate the importance of peatlands on the global carbon cycle. The project will integrate a state-of-the-art sensor network with conventional water sampling techniques to develop an improved, more quantitative relationship between hydrological variations and peatland biogeochemical processes and elemental fluxes. This will include evaluating the relative importance of high energy events like stream floods on bog hydrology and chemodynamics. The project will also use machine learning to integrate data on stream flow collected by the sensor network to grow knowledge about how hydrology influences the flux of chemicals from bogs. Overall, the information generated will lead to an enhanced understanding of the influence of hydrological variations on water quality and watershed scale processes in areas dominated by peatland landscapes.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.