1. A University Consortium for Water Science
Consortium of Universities for the Advancement of Hydrologic Science, Inc.
A University Consortium for Water Science
February 20, 2012

2. CUAHSI Mission
“CUAHSI enables the university water science community to advance understanding of the central role of water to life, Earth, and society. CUAHSI focuses on water from bedrock to atmosphere, from summit to sea and from the geologic past, through the present and into the future.”

3. CUAHSI Mission
Articulate community priorities for research infrastructure
Develop and operate infrastructure
Promote access to data
Facilitate interdisciplinary study of water
Assist/promote education and outreach
Promote translating research to practice

4. Diversity of Member Reps: Departmental Affiliation

5. Diversity of Board: Departmental Affiliation

6. E&O Conceptual Basis Water as a view into coupled Earth System
Water transport processes link atmospheric to geologic time scales
Water plays a key role in geomorphic and geochemical processes of surface earth
Water links geologic, biologic, atmospheric and oceanic systems
Humans engineer water systems for societal goals

7. Education Programs Research Community Graduate Students Undergraduate
Webinars by various disciplines
Distribution through scivee.tv and UNESCO IHE very successful (10,000+ downloads)
Graduate Students
Focus on broadening educational experience (Pathfinder Travel Fellowships)
Undergraduate
Exploring distributed REU (modeled on IRIS)

8. Outreach Programs “Let’s Talk about Water”
Use of advocacy documentaries to explore scientific and social issues around water
Carefully managed q-and-a with expert panel
Encourage active learning, critical thinking
Citation: Eos 92: (Oct., 2011)

9. Programmatic E&O CUAHSI Hydrologic Information System
Services-oriented architecture to serve time-series data
Complements other disciplinary data services (e.g., gridded data from atmospheric science)
HydroDesktop, open source client, combines map interface and analysis tools
Enables access to real data, local to class

10. Metadata Catalog, Feb 2012 79 public services 13,000+ variables
Map integrating NWIS, STORET, & Climatic Sites
GetValues requests per day.
79 public services
13,000+ variables
2.3+ million sites
23.3 million series
Referencing 100+ billion data values

11. HydroDesktop: Opening Screen
Search Plug-in
GIS Layers
Map Interface
Specify where, when, what to discover data

12. HydroDesktop: Results
Results from university and government agencies, downloaded to local database. Simple analysis tools available (e.g., R) or export to other program

13. Educational Potential of HD
Enables geographic thinking
Introduces GIS in a free application
Promotes place-based learning
Environment as integrating context
Encourages multidisciplinary approach
Access to real data local to student

14. Consortium of Universities for the Advancement of Hydrologic Science, Inc.
Questions?

17. HIS Usage

18. Usage by Service, Jan 2012