I-WATER Research Vision

Organization of Major Research Themes
Four major research themes serve as the foundation for WATER-IGERT at CSU addressing research questions at the interfaces between (see schematic):

Theme I          Hydrologic, Atmospheric, and Ecologic systems (HAE):

1. Coupling atmospheric, ecologic, and hydrologic processes: understanding the two-way interactions between atmospheric and land-surface processes is critical to understanding climate change, vegetation function, and watershed hydrology.
2. Spatial and temporal scaling issues in hydrologic processes.

Theme II         Hydrologic, Ecologic, and Socio-economic systems (HES):

1. Defining changes in water, nutrients and sediment transports due to variability and change in climate/weather, land cover/land use, and water resources management.
2. Developing models to ‘optimize’ ecosystem resilience and human economic activity that bear on the hydrologic cycle at regional scales

Theme III       Hydrologic, Atmospheric, and Socio-economic systems (HAS):

1. Regional, integrated assessment of vulnerability of hydrologic and water resource systems, ecologic, and socio-economic systems to environmental variability and climate change.

The fourth Research Theme arises from the need for integration and synthesis:

Theme IV       WATER-Research integration and synthesis

1. Trade-offs, alternative solutions, adaptation strategies, global feedbacks, global integration.