EPS-0919608, University of Alaska, Fairbanks Campus, Virgil L. Sharpton, linked to EPS-0919607 (University of Hawaii)
Collaborative Research: PACMAN ? Cyberinfrastructure for Discovering Climate Change Impacts in Water Resources Across Alaska and the Hawaiian Islands
This award is funded under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (Public Law 111-5).
This project seeks to develop and demonstrate the capability of a Pacific Area Climate Monitoring and Analysis Network (PACMAN). PACMAN is expected to yield a more reliable understanding of the impacts of climate warming on fresh water resources and communities in Alaska and Hawaii. In addition, PACMAN will include modeling and planning activities that can advance the understanding of immediate and long-term precipitation patterns across the North Pacific. PACMAN?s capabilities will include: (1) real-time access to synoptic satellite data and in-situ sensor systems, deployed throughout Alaska and the Hawaiian Islands; (2) integration of these datasets with archival data from existing research databases and drawn from sophisticated web-harvesting capabilities; (3) redundant archival of all data and information products; (4) real-time distributed simulation from supercomputing centers in Alaska and Hawaii; (5) a collaborative framework for visualization and multi-dimensional mapping; (6) development of and reliance upon open-source web tools; (7) development of an agent-based framework for assessing societal impacts, and; (8) open distribution to researchers and policy makers in Alaska, Hawaii, and around the world through the Internet.
Intellectual Merit The core cyberinfrastructure to be developed will enable research focused on measuring and understanding the macro- and micro-scale processes that influence fresh water and its ties to the social, cultural, and environmental wellbeing of communities in Alaska and Hawaii. The researchers seek to understand the dynamics of the integrated climate-water-social system from the local to global scales, and use this understanding as a basis for evaluating the effects of climate change on water resources. The integration framework goes beyond discipline-based inquiry and will be fundamental to understanding the impacts of climate variability and change on ecosystems? functions and biodiversity. The project uses the state-of-the art environmental monitoring and information management system initiated in the prior Hawaii EPSCoR RII awards as the core platform. This management system platform will be further developed in the Track-2 project so that it can handle the complex data processing, simulation, sharing, and integration needs of diverse teams of researchers in various targeted thematic areas.
Broader Impacts The PACMAN consortium?s projects will enhance the abilities of Alaskan and Hawaiian communities to understand, plan for, and respond to changing climate conditions. It will inform effective policies that build resilience in fresh water resource management at multiple scales of control. The project will build upon the successes of previous Alaska and Hawaii EPSCoR RII educational and public outreach plans, as well as the Pacific and Alaska Regional Integrated Science and Assessment programs funded through National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
PACMAN will incorporate capabilities that are relevant to addressing other ?real-world? issues that most directly affect the coupled human-environment systems of the North Pacific, and will provide data and information products that are appropriate for, and capable of advancing a broad suite of cultural, economic, educational, and environmental missions across Alaska and Hawaii. This will be accomplished in two ways: 1) through the development of a highly accessible agent-based model capable of assessing the consequences of different hydrological scenarios, and 2) through the reliance of an External Advisory Group consisting of members drawn from potential end-user groups such as land holders, native Alaskan and Hawaiian groups, NGOs, K-12 schools, and government agencies to ensure that the consortium effectively engages Native Alaskans and Native Hawaiians in the project.
