CUAHSI-Hydrologic Information Systems

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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
Ocean Sciences
Earth Sciences
CUAHSI
NSF Geosciences Directorate
HIS
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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

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CUAHSI Program Components
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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

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Hydrologic Information Partners
Institutions of participants in the CUAHSI HIS
Proposal
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Hydrologic Information System
Analysis, Modeling, Hypothesis testing
Hydrologic Database
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Arc Hydro GIS for Water Resources

• Arc Hydro
• An ArcGIS data model for water resources
• Arc Hydro toolset for implementation
• Framework for linking hydrologic simulation models

The Arc Hydro data model and application tools
are in the public domain
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CUAHSI Hydrologic Information System
Experiments
Monitoring
1. Assemble data from many sources
Information Sources
GIS
Remote sensing
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
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Digital WatershedAn 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
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3D Control Volume of Neuse Basin
Fluxes
Extrude watershed boundary 15 km up into
atmosphere and 1 km down into subsurface
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Hydrologic Characterizationat 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
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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

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HIS will facilitate Model Integration
Watershed Models
Coupled Ocean-Atmosphere Models
Mesoscale Models
Groundwater Models
SVATs
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Challenges Unidata and HIS

• Unidata
• 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

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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?

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Where do we go from here?

• Some pilot projects?
• Educational activities?
• Data viewing via IDV?
• Joint CUAHSI-UCAR proposal for atmosphere-hydrolog
  y data integration?
• .