Water Management Session: 16th Federation Meeting - Jan 4-6, 2006 Notes/Highlights

NASA Water Management Program

Presentation by Mayra Montrose, David Toll, Kristi Arsenault, Edwin Engman, Jon Triggs

Fundamental Research

Water and energy cycle

Applied Research

Science utilization

Improve predictions (water cycle)

Variables include: Soil moisture, snow water equivalent, surface runoff, evapotranspiration, rainfall

--Take data from Earth-Sun observations and plug into Earth systems models to make predictions and observations --

Groundwater = GRACE
Precipitation = TRMM/GPM
- TRMM will lead to GPM for Global precipitation
Soil Moisture = Hydros (cancelled, hopefully be back in 07)
- We plan to address soil moisture intensively - Hyrdos provides soil moisture and freeze/thaw info
Snow
Surface water
Snow-water equivalent measured by AMSR-E

--Sensors in concept CLPP mission

--Pathfinder proposed mission provides reservoir height and discharge estimates using 3 methods

Altimetry
Laser
Parallax interferometer approach

--Land Information System (LIS) high performance, high resolution (1 km) for local to global land modeling and data assimilation system

Follows ESMF modeling framework -- single or multiple processors
5+ land surface models -- ingest different types of data sets, dependent on availability, model the data, outputs include: soil moisture, ET, Water availability parameters.
- Goal is to get groups to use the suite more.

Data Assimilation

--Use with satellite data, or model data, in-situ data. Bring them all together to improve the overal output.

Model by itself has many imperfections...Use MODIS data to assimilate more accurately when compared to "truth" data. Satellite data improves the models.

NASA application partners:

Reclamation: Water supply, demand and forecast
- Integration of NASA products: land cover, snow, ET, Streamflow, other
- Ex. Land cover with snow cover to get LSM snow water equivalent
- Used with NOAA Weather forecast model
EPA: non-point source water quality
- MODIS vegetation index foliar biomass loss and nitrogen deposition
Army: global soil moisture (to 100m) trafficability
Dept. Agriculture: water supply forecast, drought assessment, agriculture

Parameters aren't physically based in other models, so they don't show up as well as they should in the end product

--Another project -- Improving NOAA/NWS river forecast center DSS with NASA satellite and land info system products

Satellites, Surface, In-situ sensing + grid computing + data mining + prediction models, DSS, critical applications = Integrated Environmental Information System

GCMD - Global Change Master Directory

Go to the GCMD website

Need internal ESIP Federation Collaboration to see what the Federation actually has in its databases

CLEANER Project

Focused on hydrology and the built environment -- effects on quality/quantity

Trying to link up to a common portal to leverage the data
What is the science that we need to address those problems for engineering solutions?
- Data is being collected. The idea is to have a network to do the large scale science.

--Hydrological community and Environmental engineering community

Cyber-collaboratory = worldwide network (electronic) to do near real-time collaboration for some issue that arises.

General Discussion points

Users don't know that a lot of the data exists -- Marketing the unknown users is a major problem.
White paper defining problems can allow us to build an interaction with the user groups.
USDA? Seems to be a disconnect between what the operations are doing and what the researchers are doing. This is the case in many agencies. They have organizations that seem to be related and connected, but in reality they aren't as coordinated as they probably should be.
- Data providers and scientists will talk to research people and think they're talking to operations people and vice versa -- this poses a problem
Need a Top --> Down endorsement
- Sometimes the written plans and ideas never come about (due to budget cuts, peer-reviews)
- Have blessings from top people, but need core of researchers from both sides to improve what's actually needed.
Make the web easy to use and access (ex. Google Earth with Snow data overlaid)
Since Water cross-cuts many of the applications areas, it's hard to pin down what to include in Water Management

Q & A

Topic areas? Drought, extreme events, pollution, "Water in Conflict 2025" report (DOI)

If we concentrate on drought, what would be included in the ESIP portal?
- Search for anybody who has drought information, put them in one place, then figure out what is there after it's all together.

Drougt is one of many water management issues -- focus on it now, but recognize that there are other things in the community to tackle next.

Water areas are hard to get good data. What kind of information do water people need?

Work with key agencies that have use for water data (EPA, Reclamation, etc.)
Need Predictions, Water Availability (storage and flux of water accurately can provide a lot of good info), Extreme Events (floods/droughts)

Where are the gaps in the data that NASA is using for their models? Where should we collaborate or integrate?

Soil moisture, depending on the applications -- Hydros should improve models
Evaporation -- used MODIS but need to fix problems with it
Surface water proposed mission to look at water discharge/height

Ground truthing data? What could the federation do to help the water management interests that you have?

Solutions network, data information systems, transformations.
- Make more interoperable
Bring the users and data suppliers together
Need a structure for the problem in order to create a structure to solve the problem

Who are the people involved? Who do they go to for information? How do we get known by them? Which levels of gov't are we aiming at? Fed, State, Local?

Work with key federal groups, what do they need? What will we need to give them what they need?

We need to justify the need for projects - quantify the issues with cost-benefit analysis.

If you're building a water mgmt community, there will probably be a number of sub-special interests, and they might cross at times, but there should be a number of distinct categories. Each agency has different foci (every single user has different sets of needs).

Many users don't have the time to do the research, etc. Therefore, we must make it easy to find data resources and get them into their hands. ESIP needs to make an interface to allow users to easily find the data they need, without having to translate into different formats.

Plan of Action

Contact NIDIS
Professional community (researchers to practitioners) -- Amer. Water Resources Association (Give paper at meeting) (CLUSTER LEADS + SCCE)
- Learn GOS2 metadata input, need someone to learn how to manage (with John Koz)
- Identify ESIP products and services
- Identify beyond-ESIP products and services

Science questions to address

--Drought affects waste-water management, agriculture (USDA)

--Community needs-assessment (DAVE TOLL, CLEANER group)

Bureau of Reclamation
USDA
Local Managers (CHUCK H. -- Western Governors Assoc.)
DLESE
GLOBE

--Identify Funding Sources

NASA (talk to program managers to find out if there is interest)
EPA, USGS(Jim Barton), USDA

White paper - do some ground work to better figure out what we can bring to the table before we build a portal.

--Begin to populate Wiki - Cross with other clusters

Education Connections:

Audience --
- Formal and informal -->ask an expert, handouts on monitoring, mitigation
- Press releases
- Teacher review of current products and services (summer institute)
TO DO -- Survey materials that are now available online (JOHN P. and MICHELLE HALL)
- drought
- aquifer drawdown
- impervious surfaces
  - Impervious surfaces, urban heat islands, etc., affect rainfall, highway run-off. Change surface characteristics in cities to allow for more groundwater recharge.

Get information to individual households (fact sheet about water use, runoff, etc.). Water prices are going up, so give info to water companies to distribute to households with reason why prices are going up. People listen when money is on the line.