Postdoctoral Fellowship: EAR-PF: Evaluating spatiotemporal dependence in groundwater-dependent ecosystem processes

博士后奖学金：EAR-PF：评估地下水依赖的生态系统过程的时空依赖性

• 批准号: 2305449
• 负责人: Matthew Lurtz
• 金额: $ 18万
• 依托单位: Lurtz, Matthew R
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Fellowship Award
• 财政年份: 2023
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2023-09-01 至 2025-08-31
• 项目状态: 未结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=2305449&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Postdoctoral; Fellowship; EAR; PF; Evaluating

Dr. Matthew Lurtz has been awarded an NSF Earth Sciences Postdoctoral Fellowship to carry out research and professional development activities at Colorado State University under the mentorship of Dr. Michael Ronayne and at the University of Technology Sydney under the mentorship of Dr. Alfredo Huerte. Throughout the western United States and elsewhere, inland groundwater dependent ecosystems (GDEs) occur alongside many rivers and lakes where the water table is close to the land surface. These ecosystems host a variety of native and nonnative vegetation that provide benefits such as: reduce agricultural-borne pollutants, protect species habitat, and stabilize stream sediment transport. The vegetation communities utilize water (i.e., plant transpiration), representing an important water budget component for the integrated surface-groundwater system. Therefore, GDEs can be used to identify the groundwater supply connected to vulnerable river systems. In this study, water uptake by GDEs in different climatic regions will be quantified using a combination of site instrumentation, remote sensing methods, and numerical groundwater modeling. By increasing the scientific understanding on GDEs, it is possible to enhance the knowledge base surrounding groundwater supply which is key to human and environmental sustainability. The importance of this work will be realized by engaging with beneficiaries in the water conservancy districts of southeastern Colorado and Arizona, where the field research will be conducted. This project will benefit the next generation of scientists by using place-based education and synthesizing water conservation strategies employed by inhabitants of American and Australian territories. The project will rely on Colorado State University’s (CSU) educational outreach programs to communicate scientific findings and conservation methodologies, including traditional indigenous methods. Data acquired, and models and mapped products created during the fellowship will be shared on local-to-international scales.Groundwater dependent ecosystems play a dominant role in supporting flora and fauna, but little information is available to help quantify GDE health (i.e., evapotranspiration) with varying time, space and climatic scales. The main goal of the study is to uncover temporal and spatial dependence in GDEs using remotely-sensed and numerical modeling methodologies. This study will utilize hypothesis testing to investigate how small scale GDE processes translates to larger spatial scales which will bolster predictive models used to address national water challenges. On a temporal basis, the trend direction between GDE health and groundwater availability will be investigated by collecting environmetrics on plant functional groups found in GDEs under varying groundwater and climatic conditions with data in the western United States. A dimension reduction method will be applied to the environmetric data to infer the trajectory of groundwater dependent ecosystems with reductions in groundwater supply. From a spatial-scale perspective, this work will begin by deriving the function form to describe the relationship between GDE health and groundwater availability at the point scale using a Bayesian regression framework. To examine spatial structure in GDEs beyond the point scale, this work will use the derived function as a subroutine in a spatially distributed parameter modeling scheme to build a scale-enlightened numerical model. This project will result in a more accurate representation of GDEs in water resource models using a research framework that is hypothesis-driven, based on the current state of science, and informed by sustainable engineering concepts.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.

Matthew Lurtz博士获得了NSF地球科学博士后奖学金，在Michael Ronayne博士的指导下在科罗拉多州立大学和Alfredo Huerte博士的指导下在悉尼科技大学开展研究和专业发展活动。在整个美国西部和其他地方，内陆依赖地下水的生态系统（GDE）出现在许多河流和湖泊旁边，这些河流和湖泊的地下水位接近陆地表面。这些生态系统拥有各种各样的原生和非原生植被，这些植被提供的好处包括：减少农业污染物，保护物种栖息地，稳定河流沉积物运输。植物群落利用水（即，植物蒸腾作用），是综合地表-地下水系统的一个重要水收支组成部分。因此，GDE可用于识别与脆弱河流系统相连的地下水供应。在这项研究中，GDE在不同的气候区域的水吸收将使用现场仪器，遥感方法和数值地下水建模的组合进行量化。通过提高对GDE的科学认识，可以加强有关地下水供应的知识基础，这是人类和环境可持续性的关键。这项工作的重要性将通过与科罗拉多东南部和亚利桑那州水利区的受益者接触来实现，实地研究将在那里进行。该项目将通过使用基于地方的教育和综合美国和澳大利亚领土居民采用的水资源保护战略，使下一代科学家受益。该项目将依靠科罗拉多州立大学（CSU）的教育推广计划来传播科学发现和保护方法，包括传统的土著方法。研究期间获得的数据、模型和绘制的产品将在地方到国际范围内共享。依赖地下水的生态系统在支持植物群和动物群方面发挥着主导作用，但几乎没有信息可以帮助量化GDE健康（即，蒸散），具有不同的时间，空间和气候尺度。本研究的主要目标是利用遥感和数值模拟方法揭示GDE的时空依赖性。本研究将利用假设检验来研究小规模GDE过程如何转化为更大的空间尺度，这将支持用于应对国家水挑战的预测模型。在时间的基础上，GDE健康和地下水可用性之间的趋势方向将通过收集植物功能组在不同的地下水和气候条件下，在美国西部的数据GDE中发现的生物计量学进行调查。降维方法将被应用于地下水测量数据，以推断地下水供应减少的依赖地下水的生态系统的轨迹。从空间尺度的角度来看，这项工作将开始推导函数形式来描述GDE健康和地下水可用性之间的关系，在点尺度上使用贝叶斯回归框架。为了研究点尺度以外的GDE空间结构，这项工作将使用导出的函数作为空间分布参数建模方案中的子例程，以建立一个尺度启发的数值模型。该项目将使用假设驱动的研究框架，基于当前的科学状态，并通过可持续工程概念提供信息，从而在水资源模型中更准确地表示GDE。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。