Soil and Water Conservation Soil and Water Conservation Modeling:Modeling:

MODELING SUMMIT MODELING SUMMIT SUMMARY COMMENTSSUMMARY COMMENTS

Dennis OjimaDennis OjimaNatural Resource Ecology LaboratoryNatural Resource Ecology Laboratory

COLORADO STATE UNIVERSITYCOLORADO STATE UNIVERSITY

31 MARCH 201131 MARCH 2011

Denver, CODenver, CO

Ecosystem Services Ecosystem Services and Societyand Society

• Soil and water conservation goals are central to social well-being and to reducing environmental degradation

• Needed for reducing perverse outcomes or unintended consequences

• Assessment tools for scenario analyses of management options and policy decisions

• Interdisciplinary efforts needed for joint social science – biophysical science to make a difference

CHALLENGES and NEEDSCHALLENGES and NEEDSOF OF

Model Development, Inter-Model Development, Inter-comparison, Integration, and comparison, Integration, and

InterpretationInterpretation• Multiple Stresses• Interactive Sectors• Increasing Human Pressures

– (e.g., bioenergy, conservation, food production, water usage and sources, energy production, etc)

• Information Exchange to Multiple Publics– Scientist within and across disciplines– Managers– Policy Makers– Public at Large

GHG

VOC, NOx O3

SOCIAL-ECOLOGICAL SYSTEM

Advancing Modeling Advancing Modeling ApproachesApproachesWHY NOW?WHY NOW?

• Grand Challenges facing Environmental Sciences

– Land Use; Water Resources, Climate change; Biodiversity; Biogeochemical cycles; Infectious disease; Invasive species

• New Observational Systems• New Cyber Infrastructure Developments• Development of Data-Model Fusion

Techniques

NEON: A continental research platform designed to provide the capacity to forecast future states of ecological systems for the advancement of science and the benefit of society

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Novel infrastructure that:

• allows scientists to observe the previously unobservable

• scale from m2 to continent

• evaluate fundamental theory at regional to continental scale

• enables a new forecasting and predictive capacity for ecology

• takes advantage of new and evolving in situ sensing technologies

• couples human and natural systems

Multi-sensor/Multi-scale Modeling Framework

Nemani et al., 2003, EOM White & Nemani, 2004, CJRS

FROM PETABYTE TO SOUNDBYTE

Integrated Earth System Approach

Linking earth systemcomponents togetherprovides a frameworkto analyze interactionsof land use and environmental changes.

Analysis provides ananalytical tool to guide new policy and understanding of changesto the social-environmentalsystem

• Collect data from digital libraries, laboratories, and observation

• Analyze the data with models run on the grid

• Visualize and share data over the Web

• Publish results in a digital library

Changing How Science is Done

• SCIENCE BASED: Developing and testing theory and models requires integration of complex in situ process data with large gridded data sets.

• MULTI-SCALED: Required data are multi-scale, many formats, originating in multiple disciplines.

• AGILE: Rapid prototyping and development cycle to maximize user control of information systems, implies incorporating existing state-of-the-art components rather than de novo development

• USER-DRIVEN: Data systems must allow user-driven, knowledge-based querying of multiple data types

Information Technology for Soil and Water Analysis

Modeling ApplicationsModeling Applications

•Understanding•Evaluation•Scaling•Integration•Synthesis•Forecasting

COMMUNICATION COMMUNICATION &TRANSLATION&TRANSLATIONCOLLABORATIONCOLLABORATIONEDUCATION &EDUCATION &

TRAINING TRAINING

THANK YOUCOMMENTS?