This five-year project funds the continued efforts by the hydrologic science community to develop infrastructure for the integrated study of the water cycle. Four major project areas are in informatics, instrumentation, synthesis, and observatory design. In informatics, the focus of the effort is moving a developmental effort in web services to provide seamless access to water data services to an operational status through outreach and engagement of the academic research community and collaboration with government agencies which collect water data, such as the US Geological Survey, US Environmental Protection Agency, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the US Department of Agriculture. Workshops will also be held for the development of a Community Hydrologic Modeling Platform. Training workshops for advanced instrumentation will be held annually that will bring together academic developers, industry, and field scientists. Interdisciplinary research can be advanced through synthesis of data sets from multiple perspectives. Two summer synthesis institutes will be held to enable broader community participation in existing synthesis activities underway at the University of Illinois and City University of New York. CUAHSI will also participate in the on-going design of the WATERS Network, a major capital project for field observatories being developed jointly with the environmental engineering and social sciences communities.
Effective management of water resources in the coming century will require a more complete understanding of water in the earth system, its interactions with biota, and its economic role in food, fiber, and energy production, particularly as we are faced with climate change and increasing population pressures on this vital resource. This project seeks to develop tools and services to permit more integrated water research to be done more quickly and more efficiently.
