SRS RN (Track 2): Nevada Water: A Science-With-Society Research and Education Network

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Paragraph 1Nevada is the driest state in the nation and is facing multiple water sustainability challenges including declining mountain snowpacks, extreme weather, rapid population growth, and increasing urban-rural tensions. “Nevada Water” will develop a partnership of water suppliers, users, policy-makers, and academics whose primary goal is to create a dynamic research, societal, and education network focusing on critical urban-rural water issues across Nevada. The network will include key public, private, tribal, research, nonprofit, and educational water resource partners. These planning activities will operate under the “Science With Society” concept, that emphasizes communication, connections, and collaboration. In this one-year project, Nevada Water partners will work together to a) identify crucial urban-rural water sustainability issues; b) discuss and frame different ways of thinking about water sustainability solutions; c) identify information, knowledge, and resource gaps need to be filled; d) develop shared visions for desirable, equitable, and sustainable water futures; and e) determine the best network structure to address Nevada’s urban-rural water sustainability challenges. To achieve these goals, regional and thematically-based groups of partners will prepare the nascent network for a 2-day conference focused on characterizing information gaps, co-identifying water priorities, and network development. Nevada Water will foster new knowledge and collaboration strategies to significantly advance integration, coordination, innovation, and sustainable regional systems science. Across Nevada, water users, suppliers, and policymakers are facing growing stressors including declining snowpacks, extreme weather, rapid population growth, and increasing urban-rural tensions around water sustainability. The Nevada Water network is a collaborative and inclusive partnership of water-related practitioners and academics whose primary goal is to create a dynamic research, societal, and education network focusing on critical urban-to-rural water issues across Nevada. The network will include key public, private, tribal, research, nonprofit, and educational water resource partners. Through a transformative Science-with-Society convergent approach, this Track 2 effort will a) co-identify key state and regional urban-rural water challenges in a changing climate; b) initiate stakeholder conversations to frame partner-based, equitable urban-rural water solutions; c) co-identify information needs, resource gaps, theoretical frameworks, applications, and research priorities towards advancing sustainable regional systems science to achieve regional water sustainability; d) foster new knowledge and deeper understanding of regional wicked water sustainability challenges, and envision desirable and equitable water futures; and e) determine the best structure and function of the network to serve these challenges, solutions, information needs, resource gaps, and future priorities. Urban-rural “collaboratories” and thematic groups will prepare a network for a 2-day conference focused on characterizing information gaps, co-identifying water priorities, and network development. This Nevada Water network will foster new knowledge and collaboration strategies to significantly advance sustainable regional systems science.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.