Humans Transforming the Water Cycle: Community-Based Activities in Hydrologic Synthesis

智力上的功绩。水文学正处在一个重要的十字路口。正如几个《大挑战》文件所阐述的那样，我们在地块、山坡和小流域尺度的过程级别的理解方面取得了巨大的进步，但我们进入下一个地平线的能力。要理解水循环中的内在变异性、其可预测性、人的维度以及与更广泛领域的生物地球化学循环的联系。需要对我们的思维进行重大重新表述，并有目的地朝着综合和系统观察的方向发展。我们在这里重点介绍一种新的观点，即人类正在通过包括直接取水和分流、土地覆盖变化、污染、破坏水生生物多样性和气候变化在内的无数过程，迅速将自己嵌入水循环的基本特征。主要的科学挑战是了解这些变化是如何表现出来的，以及它们是否在不同的范围内产生协同影响。我们的主要科学目标是：。量化美国从区域到大陆的水文系统的广泛变化，确定这种变化的自然和人为来源，并评估其系统性影响。科学议程将通过以下方式推进：召集一个综合综合工作组(WG)，研究地区分水岭、水文地貌和大陆过程，目的是开展综合活动，并就如何以最佳方式进行综合提供一个试验台。我们的工作组扩展了最初由CUAHSI主持的活动，并欢迎领导基于社区的CUAHSI、NSF、国家学院、区域、国家和国际评估活动的新成员。工作组的重点将放在水形态上，这是一个新兴的科学主题，将水系统的演化作为一种复杂的因素，今天包括自然过程和人类管理。我们的注意力首先将集中在东北走廊，这是一个气候、土地和水资源管理梯度很大的地区，也是全国水资源压力的象征。工作组还将保持美国大陆的视角，测试我们提升区域动态和在更大的水系统中模拟协同反应的能力。在此背景下，我们将把我们面向地理的研究与UIUC的可预测性综合结合起来。工作组将编制模型和数据集，通过信息技术框架进行组织，以提供重点和目的的统一。我们还将指定一个子团队，与受资助的倡议(欧盟赞助的WATCH、NASA-NEWS、GWSP)进行互动，以找到美国水系统在全球舞台上的位置。在第四年，我们将制作一份“总结经验的文件和国家水文合成中心的蓝图”。我们还提出了一个由竞争性奖学金项目支持的东北地区学生联盟。该联盟共享来自波士顿大学、哥伦比亚大学、麻省理工学院、宾夕法尼亚州立大学、塔夫茨大学、马萨诸塞州大学、北卡罗来纳大学和北卡罗来纳大学的全国知名顾问，并将被用作综合教育的典范。更广泛的影响。除了科学价值，对水文学的综合理解对美国和国际都具有巨大的战略重要性。水相关问题的全球化在科学界和公共政策界获得了新的紧迫感。鉴于水在我们的环境和人类福祉中的中心作用，不难阐明一套以水为重点的协调原型合成活动的许多好处。水文综合的好处远远超过任何一门新的科学，并针对美国的几个战略和战略环境问题：管理极端气候、农业部门竞争力、保护生态系统服务和生物多样性、保护人类健康和可持续的经济发展。拟议中的工作组活动是为了实现我们的长期愿景，即创建一个国家平台--国家中心--建立一个新的跨学科水科学平台，让水政策和管理部门参与进来，教育下一代学生，并使水文学知识与公众更相关。利用工作组作为跳板来研究合作者之间的合成过程，为正在经历类似向合成转变的其他学科提供了一个重要的模型。

Intellectual Merit. Hydrology is at an important crossroads. As articulated in several "Grand Challenge" documents, we've made enormous progress in process-level understanding at plot, hillslope, and small catchment scales, but our capacity to pass to the next horizon .to understand inherent variability in the water cycle, its predictability, human dimensions, and links to biogeochemical cycling over broader domains.requires a major reformulation of our thinking and a purposeful move toward synthesis and systematic observation. We focus here on an emerging view that humans are rapidly embedding themselves into the basic character of the water cycle, through a myriad of processes including direct water abstraction and flow diversion, land cover change, pollution, destruction of aquatic biodiversity, and climate change. The major scientific challenge is to understand how these changes manifest themselves and if they bear synergistic impacts across the different scales. Our primary scientific goal is to: . Quantify the widespread alteration of hydrologic systems over regional-to-continental U.S. domains, identify natural and anthropogenic sources of such change, and assess their systemic impacts.The science agenda will be advanced by:. Convening a consolidated synthesis Working Group (WG), to study Regional Watersheds, Hydromorphology, and Continental Processes, for the purpose of carrying-out synthesis activities and serving as a test-bed for ideas on how to optimally execute synthesis. Our WGs expand activities originally consolidated under the aegis of CUAHSI, and welcome new members who have led major community-based CUAHSI, NSF, National Academy, regional, national and international assessment activities. The focus of the WG will be on hydromorphology, an emerging science theme that addresses the evolution of hydrosystems as a complex amalgam of factors, today including natural processes as well as human management. Our attention will initially focus on the Northeast Corridor, a region with sharp gradients in climate, land and water manage-ment and emblematic of pressures on water resources across the nation. The WG will also maintain a continental U.S. perspective, testing our capacity to upscale regional dynamics and to simulate synergistic responses in the larger water system. In this context, we will bring together our geographically-oriented studies with the UIUC synthesis of predictability. The WG will produce models and data sets, organized through an IT framework to provide focus and unity of purpose. We will also designate a sub-team to interact with funded initiatives (EU-sponsored WATCH, NASA-NEWS, GWSP), to find the place of U.S. water systems on the global stage. In Year 4 we will produce a "lessons learned document and blueprint for a National Center for Hydrologic Synthesis. We also propose a Northeast Regional Student Consortium supported by a competitive scholarship program. The Consortium shares nationally prominent advisors from Boston U., Columbia, MIT, Penn State, Tufts, UMass, UNC, and UNH, and will be used as a model for synthesis education. Broader Impacts. Beyond its scientific value, a synthetic understanding of hydrology is of enormous strategic importance both to the US and internationally. The globalization of water-related problems has gained a new sense of urgency in science and public policy circles. Given the central role of water in our environment and human well-being, it is not difficult to articulate the many benefits of a coordinated set of prototype synthesis activities focusing on water. The benefits of hydrologic synthesis go well beyond those of any new science alone and aim at several US strategic and strategic environmental issues: managing climate extremes, agricultural sector competitiveness, preserving ecosystem services and biodiversity, protecting human health and sustaining economic development. The proposed WG activities build toward our longer-term vision of creating a national platform -- a National Center--for a new interdisciplinary science of water that engages the water policy and management sectors, educates the next generation of students and makes hydrological knowledge more relevant to the public. Use of the WG as a springboard to study the process of synthesis among collaborators provides an important model for other disciplines undergoing a similar transformation toward synthesis.