Open Watershed Science by Design: Leveraging Distributed Research Networks to Understand Watershed Systems: Workshop Report

Technical Report · Tue Oct 01 04:00:00 EDT 2019

DOI:https://doi.org/10.2172/1616528· OSTI ID:1616528

Stegen, James ^[1]; Brodie, Eoin ^[2]; Wrighton, Kelly ^[3]; Bayer, Paul ^[4]; Lesmes, David ^[4]; Emani, Sujata ^[4]; Moerman, Jessica ^[4]

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1. Pacific Northwest National Lab. (PNNL), Richland, WA (United States)
2. Lawrence Berkeley National Lab. (LBNL), Berkeley, CA (United States)
3. Colorado State Univ., Fort Collins, CO (United States)
4. Dept. of Energy (DOE), Washington DC (United States). Office of Science. Office of Biological and Environmental Research (BER). Climate and Environmental Sciences Division

The workshop upon which this report is based was convened in response to a community-recognized need for greater openness and coordination of multiwatershed distributed research efforts that integrate across capabilities within the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Office of Biological and Environmental Research (BER) and link to those of other agencies. The science enabled by such an approach targets challenges and strategic directions articulated in the Biological and Environmental Research Advisory Committee’s (BERAC) 2017 grand challenges report (BERAC 2017) and the 2018 Climate and Environmental Sciences Division (CESD) strategic plan (U.S. DOE 2018). The BERAC report and CESD strategic plan both focus heavily on the need for integrative research to connect environmental microbes, multiomics, plant system dynamics, biogeochemical interactions, and hydrological processes to understand ecosystem function. The need to develop such connections across scales of space, time, and biological complexity is framed in the context of improving predictions of the Earth system in response to disturbance, including extreme events. This report summarizes the discussions and ideas that came from the watershed systems research community on how to use integrated, coordinated, open, and community-networked watershed science to advance BER’s efforts to link fundamental processes to emergent properties of watershed structure, function, and evolution. The ultimate goal is to enhance predictive capacity across scales up to the integrated Earth system.

• Research Organization: USDOE Office of Science (SC) (United States)
• Sponsoring Organization: USDOE Office of Science (SC), Biological and Environmental Research (BER) (SC-23)
• OSTI ID: 1616528
• Report Number(s): DOE/SC--0200
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES
59 BASIC BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES