This proposal is aimed at developing the knowledge base and technical tools to help define the ecosystem needs of rivers for freshwater. The resilience and long-term sustainability of freshwater ecosystems are being severely challenged by rapid global change, including increasing human demands due to population growth and, potentially, climate change. River scientists, including ecologists and hydrologists, urgently need to develop tools to define the hydrological needs of these globally important ecosystems, both to support their ecosystem functions and biodiversity, and to provide information critical for their sustainable management. This proposal will support two workshops to bring together river ecologists and hydrologic modelers to lay this important foundation through the processes of synthesizing the hydro-ecological literature and expert opinion and of hydrologic modeling using a variety of techniques. The contributions of these workshops will be to seek consensus among international scientists for ecosystem needs for freshwater, to enhance infrastructure for research and education by building interdisciplinary networks among ecologists and hydrologists from around the world, to build future capacity by involving advanced graduate students and/or post-docs in the workshops, to broadly disseminate workshop results both on web pages and as primary literature publications, and to lay the foundation for a more comprehensive, 5-8 year long, interdisciplinary, international research effort to define river ecosystem needs on a global scale (GRSP).
