WSC CATEGORY 1: Hydrologic and Ecological Impacts of Changes in Human Water Resource Management in Response to Climate Change and Urbanization.
Human responses to rapid demographic and climatic changes in the Intermountain West have major ramifications for how water flows through this landscape, which in turn affect patterns of water availability, water quality, and the provision of ecological services. Existing scientific understanding of hydrologic and ecological processes in this region tends to be fragmented by discipline, fails to account for many important human elements, and lacks an integrated social-engineering-geoscience-ecological theoretical framework. This project supports a team of interdisciplinary scientists and applied water resource managers to develop a scientific research plan to study complex water systems in the transitioning irrigated landscapes of this Intermountain region. A core scientific question underlying the project is: "What are the intended and unintended consequences of changes in water availability, water allocation and water use efficiency in response to anticipated climate change and urbanization?" To answer that question, the project will produce an analytical framework for modeling patterns of climate change, human water use and their impacts on local and watershed-scale hydrologic processes and ecological systems. A major focus is the identification of ways to integrate human infrastructure and behavior within existing hydrologic and ecological models, and the interactions among the various components. Project activities include weekly workgroup sessions for researchers and water resource managers to share expertise and sensitize team members to the accomplishments and limitations of one another's work. The project also uses in-depth interdisciplinary research methodology workshops to build a unified vision among team members that will guide future research design, data analysis, and modeling approaches. Field trips and meetings in local watersheds help ensure that the research plan is designed with full awareness of the complex social, economic, and political realities that constrain water resource management strategies in this landscape. A key project output will include a synthesis paper that outlines plans for a water systems research observatory and modeling program that integrates human, hydrologic, engineering and ecological components.
Projected climate change and population growth in the Intermountain West will require intensive management of water resources. This project will develop an improved science framework for understanding the impacts of management decisions on water availability, water quality, and ecosystem health in the region. By supporting interdisciplinary collaboration and integrating human and natural science models, the project contributes to better scientific understanding of complex water system dynamics. Meanwhile, systematic interactions between scientists and stakeholders ensure that future research will address the information needs and real-world constraints of applied water resource managers. The project provides important educational benefits in two ways. First, graduate students are receiving valuable training and experience by collaborating in an interdisciplinary work environment and helping design an integrated water systems research plan. Second, water resource managers and users are gaining a deeper understanding of the strengths and gaps in the existing science base, and are improving their ability to work with regional scientists.
Our NSF funding supported an ambitious set of research and team-building activities that led to the development of an applied scientific research plan to study complex water systems in the transitioning irrigated landscapes of the Intermountain West. Human settlement in this region has relied on diversion of snowmelt-dominated streams whose headwaters are in nearby mountains. Residents already use more water per capita than most other states in the U.S. Rapid population growth, conversion of agricultural to urban land uses, and anticipated climate changes pose new challenges to local water managers and water users. Initial efforts to adapt water systems to these challenges often lead to unintended consequences – including major alterations in local hydrology and ecosystems that traditionally depended on systems of inefficient agricultural irrigation. Decision-makers need better scientific information about the complex pathways via which water moves through this settled landscape. Over a two-year period, our group brought together diverse disciplinary scientists from Utah State University and several partner institutions to collaborate with water decision-makers in the Cache Valley of Northern Utah. The group succeeded in generating a detailed plan of work that has since guided us in a series of grant writing and active research collaboration activities. The intellectual output of our project has been significant. As part of our work, we commissioned a graduate student to interview project participants to document the impacts and outcomes of our project. The results of that study suggest that our collaborative exercises and meetings improved the familiarity of the science team members with the research methods, scientific knowledge, conceptual, and theoretical foundations of the different disciplines that study various aspects of complex water systems. However, we also found that true collaborative research requires a significant time investment and years to break through communication barriers. We also learned a great deal about the practical challenges and information needs of real-world water system managers. We discovered that expanding mutual understandings and social ties among the scientists were critical first steps to the development of a truly integrated approach to designing and carrying out interdisciplinary applied science projects. We have several paper manuscripts that are in the pipeline which will serve as a guide to collaborative and participatory science teams facing similar puzzles. Specifically, we expect to publish articles that summarize lessons from our team science process, and our vision for fully integrated social-hydrologic-ecological science modeling that could serve as a platform for work by similar teams in other regions. Our work led directly to successful interdisciplinary grant funding and active research to implement elements of this science plan. The broader impacts of this project served to raise awareness among researchers and water managers of the complex connections among social, engineering, hydrologic and ecological components of water systems in transitioning irrigated areas. We have exposed 8 graduate students and 18 faculty to the opportunities (and challenges!) of interdisciplinary research. Most plan to continue this work in the future. The relationships between scientists and water system managers that were built as part of the NSF-WSC project have been foundational to our ability to direct current and future research efforts. Our work will result in continued growth in our practical scientific knowledge of human-impacted water systems, and increased utilization of scientific information among water system managers in transitioning irrigated landscapes throughout the American West.
