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/北方爱尔兰牵头机构协议共同资助的项目。该协议允许提交一个单一的提案，并由NSF进行审查，其中有来自三个参与国的PI。在NSF决定授予后，每个国家的机构为预算的一部分以及与其自己的调查人员和工作组成部分相关的调查人员提供资金。泥炭地约占全球地表面积的3%，但泥炭地含有全球土壤碳总量的40%，使沼泽成为地球碳系统的重要组成部分。然而，关于水流变化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，信息很少。这项工作将适用于现成的传感器技术，以评估在爱尔兰偏远地区泥炭地水质变化的水文条件的影响。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。这个项目是由俄亥俄州州立大学小组与来自北方爱尔兰和爱尔兰共和国的合作者联合进行的。这项合作将使来自美国的早期职业科学家能够发展国际研究联系。此外，还将开展外展活动，宣传泥炭地对全球碳循环的重要性。该项目将把一个最先进的传感器网络与传统的水取样技术结合起来，以便在水文变化与泥炭地生态地球化学过程和元素通量之间建立一种改进的、更定量的关系。这将包括评估高能量事件的相对重要性，如河流洪水对沼泽水文和化学动力学的影响。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，以增加有关水文如何影响沼泽化学品通量的知识。总的来说，所产生的信息将导致水文变化对水质和流域尺度过程的影响，在泥炭地landscapes.This奖项主要反映了NSF的法定使命，并已被认为是值得通过使用基金会的智力价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估的支持。

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.