CUAHSI-Hydrologic Information Systems UCAR CUAHSI – Consortium of Universities for the Advancement of Hydrologic Science, Inc Formed in 2001 as a legal entity 89 member universities (May 2004) Program office in Washington (3 staff) Rick Hooper is Executive Director Unidata Atmospheric Sciences Earth Sciences Ocean Sciences CUAHSI NSF Geosciences Directorate HIS

Environmental Cyberinfrastructure Part of NSF Cyberinfrastructure program Special emphasis on environmental sciences fostered by Margaret Leinen CUAHSI Hydrologic Information Systems is one of several pilot projects

CUAHSI Program Components

CUAHSI Hydrologic Information System (HIS) Project This a 2-year project to develop an RFP for the Center for Hydrologic Information (CHI) and perform preliminary research and prototyping for HIS For years 3 and onwards, all funding will be competitively awarded by NSF/CUAHSI Center for Hydrologic Information HydroInformatics Thematic Centers Project started 1 April 2004

Hydrologic Information Partners Institutions of participants in the CUAHSI HIS Proposal

Hydrologic Information System Analysis, Modeling, Hypothesis testing Hydrologic Database

Arc Hydro: GIS for Water Resources An ArcGIS data model for water resources Arc Hydro toolset for implementation Framework for linking hydrologic simulation models Notes: Industrial partners: ESRI, Danish Hydraulic Institute, Camp,Dresser and McKee, Dodson and Associates Government partners: Federal: EPA, USGS, Corps of Engineers (Hydrologic Engineering Center) State: Texas Natural Resource Conservation Commission, Texas Water Development Board Local: Lower Colorado River Authority, City of Austin, Dept of Watershed Protection Academic Partners: University of Texas, Brigham Young University, Utah State University The Arc Hydro data model and application tools are in the public domain

CUAHSI Hydrologic Information System Experiments Monitoring 1. Assemble data from many sources Information Sources Remote sensing GIS Climate models 2. Integrate data into a coherent structure Hydrologic Information Data Model Hypothesis testing Analysis and Visualization 3. Do science Statistics Data Assimilation Simulation

Digital Watershed: An implementation of the CUAHSI Hydrologic Information Data Model for a particular region Created first for the Neuse basin and then for each of the following CUAHSI Observatory Planning basins

3D Control Volume of Neuse Basin Fluxes Extrude watershed boundary 15 km up into atmosphere and 1 km down into subsurface

Hydrologic Characterization at Observatories Three properties: Residence time distribution within “stores” Fluxes across interfaces/stores Flowpaths between stores Conceptual model Include atmosphere as part of model Elaboration of stores (boxes) and structure must be reconciled among disciplines Need for spatial definition of “stores”, perhaps as control volumes

Fluxes of greatest interest Water Vertical water flux Precipitation (Nexrad) Evaporation Water vapor flux (with atmospheric circulation) Energy Net radiation Sensible and latent heat Atmospheric quality Nitrogen, Mercury, contaminant transport

Ocean-Atmosphere Models HIS will facilitate Model Integration Coupled Ocean-Atmosphere Models Watershed Models Mesoscale Models P E Qs D Ss D Sg Qg Ig Groundwater Models SVATs Information collected in HOs should be sufficient to run different types of codes: Regional climate model Land surface model Watershed model Groundwater model Modeling …..interpolate and extrapolate from point data Modeling …. Assess controls on water, energy, nutrient, and contaminant transport Modeling can be used to develop predictive understanding of system response to climate change, land use/cover change

Challenges: Unidata and HIS Focused on the present Mostly “push” technology Issue is rapid data dissemination Operates mainly in Linux and Unix Uses mainly public domain and institutional software 3D, time varying data continuously over the earth CUAHSI – HIS Focused on the past Mostly “pull” technology Issue is data capture and archiving Operates mainly in Windows Mixture of commercial and public domain software Monitoring gage and GIS data

Integration of data systems and tools IDV Very useful cross-platform application for allowing hydrologists to view atmospheric information. How can this be used for data selection and acquisition? THREDDS and netCDF Integrating atmospheric science data systems and hydrologic data systems Integrating data models (netCDF and GIS data models) NCAR SCD and NCDC How to access historical data?

Where do we go from here? Some pilot projects? Educational activities? Data viewing via IDV? Joint CUAHSI-UCAR proposal for atmosphere-hydrology data integration? ………………….