The Role of the Systems Community in the National Science Foundation’s Environmental Observatories
Publication: Journal of Water Resources Planning and Management
Volume 133, Issue 1
In recent years, the research community has become increasingly aware of limits on its ability to observe, predict, and manage large-scale environmental systems (National Research Council 2001, 2004; National Science Foundation 2003, 2005). This recognition has motivated greater emphasis on investigations involving the integrated assessment and management of complex environmental systems across a spectrum of spatial and temporal scales. Within the water resources and environmental fields, these new research foci will require increased efforts to exploit advances in sensing, computing, and collaboration technologies (National Research Council 2006). The active expansion of research into large-scale systems is not limited to these fields, however, as a number of initiatives have emerged seeking to establish “environmental observatories (EOs).” These EOs involve equipping both ecosystems and infrastructure with a comprehensive network of sensors and monitoring instruments that will give researchers unprecedented access to environmental data. Proposed observatory-related initiatives have included the Collaborative Large-Scale Engineering Analysis Network for Environmental Research (CLEANER); the Consortium of Universities for the Advancement of Hydrologic Sciences, Inc. (CUAHSI) hydrologic observatories; the National Ecological Observatory Network (NEON); the Geosciences Network (GEON); the Ocean Observatory Initiative (OOI); and the Arctic Observatory Network.
The CUAHSI and CLEANER initiatives are those most closely aligned with researchers in water resources and environmental fields. Both initiatives represent community-level efforts that have taken shape through a series of National Science Foundation (NSF) funded meetings and workshops conducted over the past decade. Discussions have revolved around expanding the scope of environmental (primarily water related) research to allow for better understanding of watershed- and basin-scale processes and how this knowledge might be translated into improved environmental policy. Over time, interest in developing the community’s ability to engage in these types of research activities began to coalesce, leading to both CUAHSI and CLEANER establishing NSF-supported project offices (see ⟨http://www.cuahsi.org⟩ and ⟨http://cleaner.ncsa.uiuc.edu⟩). While many within this journal’s readership have heard of CUAHSI and CLEANER, many remain less informed regarding progress on (1) the planning of these initiatives; (2) what types of data and information will be collected; and (3) what role they can play in EO development. These initiatives will have particular relevance to those who are involved in research that is related to systems analysis, a field loosely defined here as involving the development and application of decision/management support tools (e.g., environmental databases and models, normative decision theory, and mathematical programming, etc.) for the purpose of improving the economic and ecological status of environmental systems (de Neufville 1990; Loucks and van Beek 2005). The systems community’s participation in the planning phase is especially critical given similarities in the objectives of the EO initiatives and those of many researchers in the field. These similarities place this journal’s readership in a unique position to both positively influence the design of the EOs and benefit from their creation.
As the planning process has evolved, it’s become clear that both CLEANER (which represents environmental engineering) and CUAHSI (which represents the hydrologic sciences) have parallel interests in many of the same freshwater systems, thus, efforts are currently underway to develop an EO network that will serve the needs of both communities. Together, CLEANER and CUAHSI are now pursuing Major Research Equipment and Facilities Construction (MREFC) funding through NSF for the purpose of developing EOs under a program called the Water and Environmental Research Systems (WATERS) Network. This network, as currently envisioned, will consist of several components including (CLEANER 2006)
1.
A network of highly instrumented environmental field facilities (i.e., observatories) designed for the acquisition and analysis of environmental data;
2.
A cyberinfrastructure that provides data archives and information technology for modeling, data analysis/synthesis, and data visualization;
3.
A multidisciplinary research and education program to exploit instrumented sites and networked information, formulate science and engineering based policy options to protect and remediate stressed environments, and promote sustainable resource use; and
4.
A measurement facility that assists with, and provides training for, sensor deployments, measurement campaigns, and sensor development.
The proposed EOs will be located across a range of different climatic and geographic regions (which have yet to be chosen), and equipped to collect data related to the hydrologic, ecologic, biologic, biogeochemical, and engineered systems within selected watersheds. These data will be valuable in improving our fundamental understanding of, and ability to model, basin-scale processes associated with water, energy, and solute transport. While these areas are certainly important, improved understanding and modeling of complex environmental systems will also require the collection of economic, demographic, and environmental management information at the basin scale. As a result, observatories will include networks for identifying and monitoring processes related to important anthropogenic influences such as industrial practices, changing land-use patterns, and regulatory trends (among many others) that are crucial to understanding the dynamics of environmental and water resource systems (Reed et al. 2006). Acquiring these forms of socioeconomic information will clearly be an important component of the EO initiatives and will provide increased opportunities (as well as challenges) for those seeking to integrate engineering, natural science, and social-science factors into their research. Toward that end, the CLEANER Social Science committee is working to bring together individuals from a broad range of fields for a series of NSF-sponsored workshops designed to ensure that the EOs fully support interdisciplinary research efforts.
While there are many human-related activities and trends that impact the environment, the CLEANER initiative has identified several as being of particular concern, including:
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Population growth and land-use shifts;
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Energy, water, and material resource use; and
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Climate change.
Increases in population will stress the consumptive capacity of water resources, while economic development and the accompanying increases/shifts in material and energy use will lead to changes in water consumption and pollutant loads to receiving waters. At the same time, climate change has the potential to impact the hydrologic cycle in ways that may change precipitation patterns and increase the incidence of more extreme climatic events (e.g., drought and floods). These issues, individually and in combination, will have an effect on the manner in which society manages and protects its water resources. An improved understanding of the linkages between human and natural systems at the basin scale will provide a basis for developing the technologies, models, and policies that will lead to a more sustainable society.
In order to promote advancement toward this goal, and to further clarify the broader objectives of the WATERS network, CUAHSI and CLEANER have proposed the following “Grand Challenge” to researchers:
Given that these objectives are quite consistent with the types of interdisciplinary research conducted by many in the systems community, it is clear that this group has the potential to play a substantial role in both the planning and management of the WATERS network.How do we detect, predict, and manage the effects of human activities and natural perturbations on the quantity, distribution, and quality of water in near-real time? (The term “near-real time” is intended to mean as close to real time as possible given currently available technology.)
Opportunities for the Systems Community
The spatial and temporal scale of data collection, in addition to the broad range of processes to be monitored, will allow for the development, calibration, and verification of environmental/water resource models in ways that have not been possible in the past. The WATERS network will acquire the hydrologic data (e.g., flow rates and nutrient concentrations) and the engineering, socioeconomic, and management information (e.g., water/wastewater treatment technologies, water/wastewater prices, demand growth, stakeholder preferences, and reservoir operating rules) required to model complex environmental systems (Reed et al. 2006; National Research Council 2006). The WATERS network will also provide researchers with unlimited access to data repositories via any internet-enabled computer, as well as a cyberinfrastructure framework designed to facilitate model development and validation. Data will be accessible to the community as close to real time as possible, along with supporting analytical tools capable of handling large data streams, which will provide a unique framework to enable studies of critical event-based phenomena (e.g., flooding or contaminant transport driven by storm events). Real-time data will also be archived and readily available for longer scale studies requiring information on historical trends. Examples of general research goals that could be facilitated by the development of the EOs might include, but are certainly not limited to the following (Minsker et al. 2006; Reed et al. 2006)
1.
Improve management of water resources through the
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Development of more efficient water supply management strategies based on watershed- and basin-scale data (both historical and near-real time) on water flows, storage, and availability;
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Development of more efficient and effective environmental and water resource monitoring strategies through value of information studies, integrating diverse data at multiple spatial and temporal scales;
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Integration of near real-time water quality information into basin-scale management strategies for water and wastewater treatment facilities;
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Basin-scale tracking of pollutant fate and transport (e.g., pathogens, nutrients, and sediment), both in the natural environment and in engineered systems; and
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Assessing stakeholder concerns and priorities relative to water quality metrics and integrating these more effectively into basin-scale management strategies.
2.
Improve forecasting of extreme events (e.g., droughts and floods), minimizing their impacts, and responding more effectively through the
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Design of more rapid, resilient, and adaptive infrastructure, as well as emergency management strategies; and
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Improved understanding of how humans influence the severity and frequency of extreme events.
3.
Evaluate and improve storm water management practices by
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Identifying the origins and transport behavior of runoff-related pollutants within a watershed; and
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Conducting large-scale experiments to evaluate the impact of best management practices (BMPs).
4.
Improve sustainability of environmental and water resources through research on the short- and long-term effects of event-based phenomena.
This list represents only a fraction of the potential research topics that might be pursued given the greater availability of data and information made possible by the WATERS network, and the full participation of the systems community in discussions over network design will ensure that it informs, while leading to innovations in water resources planning and management. The systems community’s expertise will also be valuable in making the case that the WATERS initiative will provide information directly applicable to improving public health and promoting economic growth, important evaluation criteria in the current funding environment with its increased emphasis on the “broader impacts” of proposed research (Torgersen 2006).
The Path Ahead
Over the past year, CLEANER has been assembling (1) drafts of its science, education, and sensor network plans; (2) a strategy for integrating the social sciences; and (3) a proposed organizational structure for the WATERS network. These are currently being integrated with similar planning documents produced by CUAHSI, with the intent of developing a jointly authored draft plan that will include a conceptual network design. During this time, and the public comment period to follow, the research community has an opportunity to provide input on both the design and preliminary program plan (for more information, see ⟨http://www.watersnet.org⟩). Comments from the research community will then be considered and incorporated into the preliminary program plan that will be submitted to NSF in July 2007. Presuming all goes well, the preliminary project execution plan will be initiated at the end of summer 2007, with an eye toward receiving NSF funding for construction of the network in 2010, and launching the network in 2014.
While this date seems somewhat distant, the timeline is not long relative to similar “big science” initiatives in other fields (consider that the planning lead time on large experimental infrastructure in physics is often measured in decades). The WATERS network has the ability to provide the systems community with a unique opportunity to expand the scale of its research efforts, while making available a wide range of new and unexplored areas. Fully recognizing these opportunities, however, will require the active participation of systems researchers in the planning and design stage. It may be some time before another initiative comes along with as much singular potential to advance the field of environmental and water resource systems analysis, and efforts by the community to support and contribute to this effort will provide benefits to researchers in both present and future generations.
References
Collaborative Large-Scale Engineering Analysis Network for Environmental Research (CLEANER). (2006). ⟨cleaner.ncsa.uiuc.edu⟩ (September 2006).
de Neufville, R. (1990). Applied systems analysis: Engineering planning and technology management, McGraw-Hill, New York.
Loucks, D. P., and van Beek, E. (2005). Water resources systems planning and management: An introduction to methods, models, and applications, United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization, New York.
Minsker, B., Schnoor, J., Reible, D., Driscoll, C., Haas, C., and Montgomery, J. (2006). “CLEANER science planning.” ASCE/EWRI World Water Congress, Reston, Va.
National Research Council (NRC). (2001). Grand challenges in environmental sciences, National Academies Press, Washington, D.C.
National Research Council (NRC). (2004). Water and sustainable development: Opportunities for the chemical sciences, National Academies Press, Washington, D.C.
National Research Council (NRC). (2006). CLEANER and NSF’s environmental observatories, National Academies Press, Washington, D.C.
National Science Foundation (NSF). (2003). Complex environmental systems: Synthesis for earth, life, and society in the 21st century, NSF Advisory Committee for Environmental Research and Education, Washington, D.C.
National Science Foundation (NSF). (2005). Complex environmental systems: Pathways to the future, NSF Advisory Committee for Environmental Research and Education, Washington, D.C.
Reed, P., et al. (2006). “Bridging river basin scales and processes to assess human-climate impacts and the terrestrial hydrologic system.” Water Resour. Res., 42, W07418.
Torgersen, T. (2006). “Observatories, think tanks and community models in the hydrologic and environmental sciences: How does it affect me?” Water Resour. Res., 42, W06301.
Information & Authors
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Published In
Journal of Water Resources Planning and Management
Volume 133 • Issue 1 • January 2007
Pages: 1 - 3
Copyright
© 2007 ASCE.
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Published online: Jan 1, 2007
Published in print: Jan 2007
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