Description
Multiple federal government agencies have mission elements that address national needs related to water and advance the underlying science. These diverse mission and scientific needs have engendered a large base of water-related data and modeling capabilities that, while useful for their intended purposes, are not yet fully integrated to address overarching national problems. An interagency workshop was held on September 4-6, 2019, at the National Science Foundation in Alexandria, VA, bringing together 120 representatives of these agencies and their scientific partners (including university researchers) to refine a vision for and initiate action toward the development of an Integrated Hydro-Terrestrial Modeling (IHTM) and data infrastructure system. More seamless and integrated data and modeling capabilities and improved methodologies will not only advance the water-related missions, collectively and individually, of the participating agencies, but will also enhance national capabilities for prediction and scenario-building in cross-cutting areas of high priority, including but not limited to water availability in the West, hypoxia and harmful algal blooms, and flooding and other extreme weather-related hazards. Additionally, the capabilities of individual water-related agencies and academic researchers will become more available to the research community to address collective water-related concerns and interactions at national, basin, regional, state and local scales. A significant focus of the workshop is on establishing methodologies for sustainable IHTM development, extending from research to operations and back to research, and leveraging synergies to overcome fragmentation while managing dependencies between system components.
PNNL Participants:
- Tim Scheibe (Chair, Scientific Organizing Committee)
- Nathalie Voisin (Member, Technical Steering Committee)
- Xingyuan Chen
- Mohamad Hejazi
- Jennie Rice
- Chris Vernon
Coordinating Agencies:
- National Science Foundation
- U.S. Department of Energy
- U.S. Geological Survey
Participating Federal Organizations:
- National Aeronautics and Space Administration
- National Center for Atmospheric Research
- National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
- U.S. Army Corps of Engineers
- U.S. Bureau of Reclamation
- U.S. Department of Agriculture
- U.S. Department of Homeland Security
- U.S. Department of the Interior
- U.S. Department of State
- U.S. Environmental Protection Agency
- U.S. Global Change Research Program
Universities Represented:
- Colorado School of Mines
- Cornell University
- Michigan State University
- Northern Arizona University
- Ohio State University
- Rutgers University
- Texas A&M University
- University of Arizona
- University of California – Davis
- University of California – Irvine
- University of Central Florida
- University of Colorado – Boulder
- University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
- University of Texas-Austin
- Utah State University
- Virginia Institute of Marine Sciences