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Chapter 9. Biology and Water ScienceWater Science in CIRESCIRES has passed frequently through comprehensive reviews as required by the University and by the Cooperative Agreement between CIRES and NOAA through the University. These reviews, which have involved selfstudy as well as analysis by internal and external reviewers, have consistently shown CIRES to be a vigorous institute with diverse capabilities, a healthy rate of growth, excellent visibility, and high scientific impact. In the face of reviews such as these, motivation for any major change has understandably been quite low. Thus, the general mindset of the CIRES administration and CIRES fellows has been to expand in areas of excellence and to diversify very gradually in areas of study that are connected as directly as possible to established areas of excellence. During 1997, at the instigation of CIRES director Susan Avery, CIRES held a retreat. This productive activity stimulated some unusual forethought, perhaps because it was self-directed rather than externally directed in response to the formal requirements of program review. Some of the CIRES fellows, and notably Fred Fehsenfeld, concluded that the retreat should include some consideration of major programmatic issues packaged as specific proposals. After informal discussions, Fehsenfeld, with encouragement from others including Director Avery, presented a proposal for expansion of CIRES programmatically into the area of water science. The rationale for this proposal was twofold. First, partly due to accidents of ontogeny, the aquatic branch of environmental sciences had been very weakly developed in CIRES as compared with the atmospheric branch and the branch dealing with the solid Earth. Second, increased emphasis on water science could be devised in such a way as to be entirely complementary to existing programs, i.e., it did not necessarily imply compromise of existing strength to development of an entirely new enterprise. Fehsenfeld's presentation was carefully crafted and very persuasive; he received a sound endorsement of his proposal from the CIRES fellows at the retreat. The CIRES water initiative was strongly embraced by Avery, who pushed for its rapid development. Rapid programmatic development required a new and preferably continuing commitment of external funds that could be broadly applied to diverse subjects in water science. Even with new external funding, the acquisition of new faculty lines at the University would be impractical over the short term. Therefore, it was also decided that the program should be initiated by mobilization of the current personnel of CIRES with interests in water science and by organization of the University of Colorado's considerable capabilities in the field of water science outside CIRES. Director Avery assumed personal administrative control of the program, and appointed Bill Lewis to serve as organizer. A number of group decisions shaped the early development of the CIRES water initiative. The decision-making group varied somewhat through time, but consistently included Avery and Lewis as well as Randall Dole and associates in the NOAA Climate Diagnostic Center [ About CDC ] , Roger Barry and associates of the National Snow and Ice Data Center [ About NSIDC ] . It was decided that the CIRES water initiative should be based on a regional, endto- end view of the water cycle (Figure 3). This would allow liberal inclusion of the expertise of CDC in climate and the expertise of NSIDC in linkages between climate and hydrology. The Center for Limnology then could cover the environmental quality aspects of the program. The main defi- ciency internally for CIRES was in the field of social science, including demographic and economic drivers of water use, vulnerabilities of society to irregularities in water availability, and other matters that cannot be ignored in the West, where water is intensively managed for consumptive use.
The region of interest for the CIRES water initiative was defined as the Interior West, which encompasses the prolific water source areas of the southern and south-central Rockies as well as the adjoining plains to the east, where water is intensively used and managed (Figure 4). Thus, the region of interest is an excellent arena for studying relations between climate and the availability of water and the hydrologic, environmental, and social issues that arise as water is intensively used.
The gap in social sciences was to be filled by recruitment of social scientists from the CU Boulder campus. William Travis of the Geography Department, a specialist in demographic trends and land use, and Charles Howe, a member of the Economics Department and specialist in the economy of water, were brought into the program at an early stage. Conceptual development of the water program in CIRES to a large extent was tailored to the capabilities of CIRES and the research interests of CIRES fellows who would be logical participants in a water-oriented program. The development of the program fortuitously coincided, however, with the expansion of a program within NOAA that appeared to offer good prospects for core support of the initiative. This program, which was developed within the Office of Global Programs (OGP) at NOAA, consisted of a set of regional assessments typically involving some combination of climate and water. The program was framed very loosely and was intended to operate through universities. The underlying concept was to allow universities, in collaboration with scientists from NOAA or other agencies, to approach the topic of regional assessment in an innovative way. While there were no rigid requirements, the assessment clearly was aimed at developing integrated views of natural resources in relation to climate in a multi-disciplinary manner, with a view toward developing products or tools that would be of interest to users of information on water or other resources affected by climate. The program was intended to operate in the mode of research, however, and was not intended to perform extension service on a routine basis. The planning group for the CIRES water initiative decided that the match of its objectives with the OGP regional assessment program was irresistibly good, and thus embarked on an effort to write a pre-proposal that might lead to development of a long-term funding base for the CIRES water initiative, which had assumed by this time the name "Western Water Initiative" or "Western Water Assessment." The pre-proposal was completed in 1998 and was funded by NOAA OGP. After the funding of the pre-proposal by NOAA OGP, the CIRES Western Water Assessment was successful each subsequent year in obtaining additional support. CIRES hired a full-time research assistant, Diana Perfect, to maintain communication among the research groups and keep contact with NOAA OGP in Silver Spring, Maryland. She was an invaluable asset to the development of the program, but departed for an attractive position with NOAA in Washington during 2001. Following the funding of the preproposal and the first year of full support, Lewis stepped down from the organizing role, which was subsequently taken over by a management team consisting of six of the main participants and directed by Susan Avery. As of year 2001, the initiative had been invited to submit a five-year proposal, which would provide more continuity if funded. The Western Water Assessment's research program has developed strongly along several lines, and it is still developing. Climate, which is important to the initiative in that it is a key control over water availability in the Interior West, has been treated analytically by NOAA CDC personnel as potentially predictable with increased lead time through relationships involving synoptic climate variation such as that associated with the El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO) or the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO). Relationships between climate and ENSO have been investigated most thoroughly. Results to date have shown that the relationship between ENSO and climate characteristics is more complicated in the Interior West than it is in the Southwest. CDC has made some headway, however, in development of conditional predictions. In addition, CDC personnel have put considerable effort into downscaling GCM modelling to a regional scale that would be useful in the Interior West (Dole 2001). On the hydrologic front, researchers from NSIDC have worked intensively on linkages between climate and hydrology (Clark and Hay 2000). The linkages can be identified in useful form only through models that take into account a wide variety of variables that control the delivery of snowpack to stream channels. Both the timing and the amount of the hydrologic influence from a given amount of snowpack involve climatic variables such as temperature and solar irradiance. In addition, topography plays a role. NSIDC is collaborating with U.S.G.S. in this modelling effort. Studies on environmental quality focused initially on relationships between climate variability, low stream flows, and water quality (Saunders and Lewis 2001). The discharge of wastewater heavily influences water quality. Permits regulate concentrations of pollutants released to waters receiving treated wastewater, and assume that historical flows are representative of future flow. The success of a permit in protecting water quality and aquatic life therefore depends on the accuracy with which dilution flow is estimated in advance. Estimations based on longer flow records are more likely to be realistic than those based on shorter-term measurements. Discharge permits are based, however, on recent historical stream flows, generally less than ten years, during which, for example, drought conditions may not have been experienced. Thus, regulators may need to anticipate error in estimating low flow from analyses involving short records. The environmental quality group also has expended considerable effort on studies of the relationship between climate variability, water management, and stream metabolism. Stream metabolism is under the control of flushing flows, which move fine organic material that is accumulated in the streambed during periods of low flow. The probability of flushing flow is a byproduct of water management and climate variability. The working hypothesis, which is supported by initial findings, is that extended intervals of low precipitation suppress the likelihood of flushing flows, thus producing unusual and undesirable metabolic conditions in rivers of the plains. Occurrence of these conditions can be moved into the realm of probabilistic prediction through a linkage with the hydrology group and the climate study group of the initiative. The social science group (social science/user needs, SSUN) has been directed since 2001 by Professor Charles Howe, although it functions mainly through committee work involving approximately ten participants. Work of this group has included workshops intended to reveal the needs of water managers for various kinds of hydrologic information that might be derived as byproducts of research such as that conducted by the initiative. Studies were also made by interview concerning the receptivity of water managers to additional information on climate or hydrology as related to climate. Potential consequences of major changes in water allocation (which presumably would correspond to changes in water law) also are being considered in the context of a widely-recognized need for greater flexibility in reallocation of water, especially under extreme climatic conditions. Finally, the SSUN group supported the development of a model that can take into account changes in demography, water use, economic factors, and hypothetical reallocation schemes and show the consequent changes in stream flow or water availability geographically. The focus of the model is on the South Platte Basin, where many of the Western Water Assessment studies are now centered. CIRES has considerable expertise in water outside the Western Water Assessment. In 1988, CIRES, in cooperation with the Department of Geological Sciences, recruited Vijay Gupta to fill a position in CSES. Gupta is a senior hydrologist with a fine reputation for his work in the mathematical analysis of drainage networks (Gupta 2000). Gupta was one of a handful of influential U.S. hydrologists who made a successful effort to reinvigorate scientific hydrology through the creation of a new hydrologic sciences funding program at NSF. This was one step toward remedying the imbalance between science and engineering in hydrology (NRC 1991). In 2000-2001, Gupta was responsible for a major programmatic upgrade and redesign of funding for hydrologic sciences through NSF. Tom Chase, who was appointed a CIRES fellow in 1999, analyzes in- fluences on climate from the viewpoint of land use and land cover (Chase et al. 2000). His general working hypothesis is that an important feedback loop exists between land use and climate at local to regional scales. Aside from the CIRES fellows, CIRES has a number of scientists engaged in studies of water but not working on the Western Water Assessment. At various phases in the development of the Western Water Assessment, there will likely be some rotation of individuals into and out of the Western Water Assessment. CIRES made a major change in year 2000 through the recruitment of its first social scientist, Roger Pielke, Jr. From the very inception of CIRES (see chapter one) the advisability of recruiting a social scientist was discussed by the original Steering Committee, the University administration, and, over the years, by the fellows. Although the idea received some support, it was generally viewed as very inadvisable and unjustifiable. By year 2001, however, with the virtual insistence of NOAA OGP that policy questions be integrated into the Western Water Assessment as part of the NOAA-supported assessment program, and the development of parallel viewpoints on the part of other science-support agencies, the perspective of the fellows had changed markedly. Endorsement for the appointment of Pielke, who previously had been working at NCAR, was very strong. In 2001, he created the Center for Science and Technology Policy Research within CIRES, and began involvement in the Western Water Assessment and other programs of interest to CIRES. Next > Conclusion
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