Goals: This Research Infrastructure Improvement award seeks to improve observational modeling and analysis of high elevation hydroclimatology by strengthening the instrumentation and modeling infrastructure. A second goal is to address a critical state problem with global significance ? understanding and forecasting the effects of climate change on water supply and water quality in arid regions. Climate changes are affecting natural environments around the world. In New Mexico, climate changes are altering processes associated with water supply, which sustains New Mexico?s economy and determines, to a large extent, the quality of life. This multidisciplinary effort will transform climate change science and policymaking in New Mexico by providing the tools required for quantitative, science-driven discussion of difficult water policy options facing the state, and will create a citizenry that is informed about climate change and its impact on natural resources.
Project Major Foci: The research will address the influence of large scale atmospheric circulations on regional and local atmospheric processes and explore how hydrometeorological fluctuations propagate into changes in surface flows downstream. Given the uncertainties associated with global coupled model projections across southwestern North America, the research will examine the covariability of precipitation and land anomalies in these projections as they relate to the Southwest. Land-atmosphere feedbacks associated with snowpack at high elevation may be of first-order importance in modulating the transition from winter to summer precipitation in the current climate. Thus, characterizing and properly simulating the full seasonal hydrological cycle in regions with winter snowpack is critical for process-based analysis and for projections of stream flows in New Mexico, motivating the proposal?s focus on the upstream portion of the Rio Grande in northern New Mexico.
Intellectual Merit The impacts of climate change on New Mexico are profound and are altering processes associated with the water supply for the region. Proposed research infrastructure improvements will enable scientists to observe processes at the watershed scale and to understand the effects of climate change on water supply, water sources, and water quality in arid regions. New Mexico EPSCoR proposes to strategically invest in building a robust hydrologic infrastructure to develop a better understanding of the relationship of high elevation events to downstream water supplies. This capability is needed for meaningful forecasting and decision support. New cyberinfrastructure will support multi-scale modeling and rapid delivery of climate change data and information to scientists, educators, decision-makers, and the public.
Broader Impacts New Mexico EPSCoR research foci are of global scientific and societal importance. The investment in research, cyberinfrastructure and human infrastructure will establish New Mexico as a laboratory for climate change and a model for science-based public policy that can serve science and society. Education, outreach and diversity programs will create a citizenry that is informed about climate change and its impact on natural resources.
North central New Mexico (NM) is the southernmost extent of the Rocky Mountain range and serves as the headwaters for river systems crucial to New Mexico, including the Rio Grande. The central focus of this research infrastructure improvement award has been to develop NM's capacity to conduct research on how future changes in temperature and precipitation will impact snowpack, snowmelt and spring runoff in this region. We focused on several key components: filling critical gaps in climate monitoring network, installation of water quality sensors capable of real-time monitoring of surface water conditions, and socio-economic models that combine human, ecological, and physical factors. In addition, we developed computing systems and data storage facilities that make climate-related data available to researchers, educators, decision-makers and the general public. A key component of NM's ability to carry out research in the future is the education of its citizens; NM EPSCoR invested in the education of graduate students, undergraduates, K-12 teachers and the general public. NM EPSCoR enhanced the regional climate monitoring system by installing five new and upgrading 12 existing SNOTEL sites; these collect important information about snowpack and related climate data. NM EPSCoR also installed eight new Soil Climate Analysis Network (SCAN) sites, including three within the Navajo Nation in New Mexico. Together, these sites provide essential data that can be used by researchers and decision-makers to make more reliable water supply forecasts and other resource management decisions. Not only is it important to have good long-term data on climate variability, it is critical to understand the impacts of climate change on the quality of surface water in New Mexico. Water quality researchers installed instruments in streams across northern New Mexico to measure changes to water chemistry. These instruments provided important new information about the impact of severe, drought-enhanced wild fire on watershed ecosystems. Northern New Mexico has a centuries-old water management system, called acequias. NM EPSCoR researchers worked with these community water management groups as partners in the research on their valuable and vulnerable water sources. Together, they developed a model for acequia watersheds that considers the interactions of hydrology, economics, ecology and socio-cultural factors. In addition, researchers from NM universities collaborated with Sandia National Laboratories to enhance a modeling tool that shows the impacts of drought, economics and policies on people's decisions about water use. A website that provides numerous simulations based on this tool is maintained by NM EPSCoR at http://watertool.nmepscor.net. NM EPSCoR created a web-based repository for the data collected by researchers and related data. The website, http://nmepscor.org/dataportal, contains data in numerous formats available for download. In addition, NM EPSCoR created and maintains a website that translates small amounts of data into lessons for middle and high school classrooms at http://teachdata.nmepscor.net. Over the five-year period of the award, over 450 individuals participated in EPSCoR project activities—faculty, post docs, graduate students, undergraduates, and K-12 teachers. Thirty-five graduate students supported by NM EPSCoR, 40% female and 20% from under-represented minority groups, earned advanced degrees in a variety of science disciplines including chemistry, biology, geology, and environmental science. Eight infrastructure seed awards were granted to New Mexico colleges to bolster their programs to provide research opportunities to their undergraduate students. These $50,000 awards were used to purchase equipment that will continue to support undergraduate research on topics such as climate change impacts on local ecosystems, paleoclimatology, and wildfire ecology. In addition, 52 undergraduates, over 50% from under-represented minority groups, participated in the Undergraduate Research Opportunity Program (UROP). They worked for a summer with graduate students and faculty on EPSCoR research projects. Many of these undergraduate projects resulted in posters and science research presentations at national conferences and the 2013 New Mexico Academy of Science Annual Meeting. NM EPSCoR also provided summer workshops with follow-up to 77 teachers from middle and high schools from rural districts across northern New Mexico. Teachers participated in field science activities that provided the foundation for activities they implemented in their classrooms. We also supported development of an exhibit at the NM Museum of Natural History and Science, Degrees of Change: New Mexico's Climate Forecast, which is seen by an estimated 250,000 visitors annually. Over the five years of this award, NM EPSCoR researchers received 32 additional research awards, totaling over $37 million. These additional awards involve collaborations across disciplines and institutions, many of which were fostered through the structures developed by NM EPSCoR.
