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4
Implementing Environmental Observatories
The need for better understanding and management of the nation's
environmental resources over past decades has led to the establishment of
several federal, regional, state, and local monitoring and assessment programs.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's (NOAA) weather and
ocean/Great Lakes monitoring, the U.S. Geological Survey's (USGS) national
hydrologic monitoring and water quality assessment programs, the U.S.
Department of Agriculture (USDA) Forest Service (FS) and Agricultural
Research Service (ARS) experimental watershed facilities, and the
Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) Clean Air and Clean Water Act
monitoring are examples of federal activities with practical or regulatory drivers.
These programs, along with regional, state, and local monitoring and assessment
activities, provide data useful to many fields of science and engineering, and
contribute to the understanding of complex environmental phenomena.
These monitoring and assessment activities provide valuable information to
research communities and management agencies. However, there remains a
critical need for more integrated and comprehensive approaches to
understanding and analyzing environmental processes that ultimately will help
us better manage and improve the quality of air, land, and water resources. This
need has motivated the planning of environmental observatory and research
networks by the National Science Foundation (NSF). These initiatives are at
different stages of planning and implementation and in many respects have been
developed by separate scientific constituencies and separate directorates within
the NSF. No single environmental observatory initiative as currently formulated
will be sufficient to provide the integrated data sets, models, and predictive
capability necessary to adequately understand and guide effective management
of our nation's environmental resources in a setting where large scale, even
global factors, must be considered. As a coordinated group, however, they
might be.
Planning has been underway for the National Ecological Observatory
Network (NEON) after several NSF workshops in 2000 addressed the needs for
long-term ecological observatories. NEON will focus on large scale and
interdisciplinary analysis of ecological systems (NRC, 2004a). The Ocean
Observatory Initiative (OOI) is another NSF environmental observatory system
at approximately the same stage of development as NEON; it is being designed
to help better characterize processes occurring in the ocean. The Geosciences
Network (GEON) grew from a series of workshops in 1999 and seeks to
advance the field of geoinformatics in support of the geosciences. A national
hydrologic observatory network that proposes to address atmosphere,
subsurface, and surface dynamics of water movement is in the beginning stages
under the leadership of the Consortium of Universities for the Advancement of
Hydrologic Science, Incorporated (CUAHSI). NSF's Office of Polar Programs
is also working to design a land/atmosphere/ocean-based Arctic Observing
34
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Implementing Environmental Observatories 35
Network that would collect, check, organize, and distribute arctic observations.
Finally, CLEANER is a proposed network through which problems involving
large-scale complex engineered systems and human-stressed environments
would be addressed. As noted earlier, during the course of this study, the NSF
was considering and planning for the merger of the CUAHSI Hydrologic
Observatories and CLEANER.
These national environmental observatories are now being planned, each
with a somewhat different focus area and each designed to meet somewhat
different goals. Yet each observatory has a core focus on transformative
developments in the environmental sciences. Because of the differences in the
stages of development, these observatory programs will be ready for
implementation at various times over the coming years. Even so, it makes sense
to think about their coordination to take advantage of existing expertise,
experience, and technology, and to avoid duplication of expensive infrastructure,
including cyberinfrastructure.
COORDINATION OF ENVIRONMENTAL OBSERVATORIES
Coordination of Environmental Observatories within NSF
Because these individual NSF initiatives have been developed somewhat
independently, there is danger of unnecessary and inefficient redundancy in
developing data collection standards and infrastructure and in performing
various research and associated activities. To effectively observe complex
environmental systems and inform their management, a coordinated,
administratively integrated effort will be necessary. Indeed, there is a danger
that lack of coordination among different observatory designs will make the
sharing of data, information technology, and education and outreach activities
more difficult if not impossible across programs.
As these observatory initiatives develop, communication and close
coordination among the programs are essential. It is apparent that the various
environmental observatory projects currently in the planning process at the NSF
have some similar basic components and needs. These needs include the
development of a cyberinfrastructure, coordinated educational activities and
outreach, and the co-location of some observatory elements to achieve needed
data integration at lower costs. It makes scientific and economic sense to share
infrastructure/capital that will meet common needs.
The scientific challenges to be addressed by each of the initiatives clearly
require an integrated effort across the relevant disciplines (i.e., engineering,
ecology, hydrology, earth sciences). For instance, the exchange of materials
between terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems should be of interest to both NEON
and CLEANER, which further suggests coordination with existing agency-based
observatories and environmental assessment programs.
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36 CLEANER and NSF's Environmental Observatories
The NSF appears to recognize these issues and ongoing efforts to
coordinate the observatory initiatives are currently underway. The NSF
program officers leading the development of these initiatives have issued joint
calls for proposals in the areas of sensor development and cyberinfrastructure
that will benefit each of the observatory initiatives. Even more coordination and
possibly joint management of these initiatives may be desirable as the programs
reach implementation.
Serious consideration should be given to placing the various NSF
environmental observatory programs under a parent organization that could be
termed something like the "Environmental Observatory Networks" or EON.
This parent entity would be responsible for cyberinfrastructure development,
educational activities, outreach, and other shared activities across the
observatory programs. This entity would facilitate collaboration and
coordination among programs and minimize redundancy, while not impeding
the progress of individual observatory initiatives. It would also help ensure that
the observatory networks are well integrated spatially and across relevant
landscape units. An independent expert committee outside of the NSF could
provide advice and oversight on the research and support activities of EON.
Again, this integration of observatories would contribute to data integration and
reduce infrastructure redundancy and associated costs.
Coordination of Observatories with Other Agencies and Stakeholders
Many federal and state agencies have programs that support water resources
research, monitoring, and management through in-house capabilities or by the
distribution of grants. Federal organizations having significant water resources
research programs include the NSF, USGS, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service,
USDA, EPA, Department of Defense, Bureau of Reclamation, Department of
Energy, National Aeronautics and Space Administration, and NOAA (NRC,
2004b). The proposed NSF observatories will need to document their value in
the context of existing state, regional, and federal programs that conduct similar
types of investigations. Observatories should focus on filling scientific and
engineering gaps identified by researchers at universities and managers of
programs administered by the government agencies. The new observatory
infrastructure needs to be designed to enhance existing infrastructure, if such
infrastructure exists, without significant duplication. Expertise in the federal,
regional, and state agencies on conducting watershed-based field studies,
modeling, analyzing geospatial information, making ecological assessments,
working with sensors, addressing water quality issues such as nutrients, toxics,
pathogens and invasive species, and managing databases should be of value to
investigations at CLEANER observatories. Close cooperation should result in
mutual benefits and cost-savings.
Cooperation with federal, regional, and state agencies needs to be
established at several levels that include: (1) coordination of data collection, (2)
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Implementing Environmental Observatories 37
management of data, (3) sharing of techniques such as modeling capabilities and
analytical methods, and (4) coordination of activities at sites where there are
common interests between an agency program and a CLEANER observatory.
The two major national water databases are the National Water Information
System (NWIS; managed by the USGS) and STORET (short for storage and
retrieval; managed by EPA). Both databases are available on the Internet,
although they are not now compatible through one portal. Recent work funded
through CUAHSI for its Hydrologic Information System (HIS) has advanced the
development of a common portal to access water databases from different
agencies. If ultimately successful, it will be a major achievement for the
retrieval of water resource information. The NSF has proposed to have the data
generated through all NSF-funded observatories available through a
cyberinfrastructure.
Field-focused activities that are most likely to have common interests with
sites selected for investigation by CLEANER are those managed by the USGS,
the USDA ARS and FS, EPA, and the NSF Long-Term Ecological Research
(LTER) programs. The USGS has several field-based programs, including the
National Water Quality Assessment (NAWQA) program that focuses on
watersheds and major aquifers to assess the status of, trends in, and causes of
changes to the quality of the nation's groundwater and surface waters; the Toxic
Substances Hydrology Program, through which long-term research is conducted
at sites that represent different types of contamination, and a long-term small
watershed program (Water, Energy, and Biogeochemical Budgets (WEBB)
Program) at five sites, which focuses on processes in different climate regimes.
The USDA supports watershed research through the ARS, FS, and Natural
Resource Conservation Service. The ARS watershed network is a nested, multi-
scale network designed to assess the hydrologic impacts of watershed
conservation and management practices. The USDA FS supports experimental
forest and range research sites. Nine of these sites focus on watershed research.
The NSF LTER Network is designed to address long-term research to
understand ecological phenomena that occur over long temporal and broad
spatial scales. The LTER Network involves long-term ecological measurements
and experiments at 26 sites in the United States and Antarctica, some of which
are in human-stressed environments. The EPA conducts water-related research
in its Office of Water and Office of Research and Development. EPA's
Regional Environmental Monitoring Assessment Program (REMAP) is a
research initiative aimed at helping to monitor and assess the status and trends of
national ecological resources, including water quality. Also the EPA supports
site-specific investigations such as in the Chesapeake Bay and Great Lakes.
CLEANER is different from most of these other programs because it offers a
large-scale focus on human-stressed environmental-hydrologic systems from the
engineering perspective of identifying and evaluating innovative approaches to
the solution of environmental problems.
There is also a need to coordinate with non-governmental organizations that
are actively involved in addressing environmental issues in many areas of the
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38 CLEANER and NSF's Environmental Observatories
country. In many major river basins, a variety of non-governmental
organizations (i.e., the Nature Conservancy, the Wetlands Initiative,
Environmental Defense) are working with various stakeholders to develop
solutions to problems in the basins. The observatory networks should
coordinate with these efforts to facilitate the transfer of applicable observations
and analysis to address relevant problems.
Mechanisms to Achieve Coordination and Cooperation
Several measures can be implemented to help achieve successful
coordination of the new observatories with existing federal, regional, and state
programs. Activities that can facilitate coordination include: (1) workshops on
specific topics, (2) information requests in proposals about existing
infrastructure funded at the federal, regional, and state levels, (3) establishment
of agreements with federal, regional, and state agencies, and (4) dialog in
committees that have representatives from government agencies.
Workshops on specific topics can enhance scientific exchange and
encourage coordination and collaboration. Workshops where parties, including
university and government scientists and managers, work together to find
solutions and identify directions are often more effective in establishing
communication than are briefings that tend to become "show and tell"
exchanges. The most successful collaboration is often achieved at the scientist-
to-scientist level. Workshops should be designed to encourage this type of
interactive exchange. By encouraging participation of others, the observatory
networks can benefit by sharing costs and avoiding duplication of efforts.
Another measure to encourage collaboration with federal, regional, and
state agencies is to require in the planning process that the existing infrastructure
at a potential site be identified and that the agency supporting the infrastructure
be notified and their goals documented. A solicitation of letters of support from
the appropriate agency managers or scientists can be encouraged. This process
is currently in place in several NSF programs.
Collaborative agreements between the observatories and government
agencies will provide mechanisms for sharing resources. For example, the
USGS and CUAHSI have an agreement, as of 2006, in regard to the USGS
Hydrologic Instrumentation Facility (HIF) that covers the rental of equipment,
such as that used for gauging streams. The agreement will save the
observatories from having to purchase all their instrumentation and develop
facilities to test, repair, calibrate, and house it. The instrumentation is located at
the HIF and is used by the USGS for its investigations and thus is cost neutral to
the USGS.
One approach to establishing cooperation with the federal agencies that
have water resource research programs may be for the EON coordinator to
interact with the Subcommittee on Water Availability and Quality (SWAQ) that
was formed by the Office of Science and Technology, Executive Office of the
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Implementing Environmental Observatories 39
President. The SWAQ, created in 2003 initially for five years, has a
membership of 18 federal agencies to "advise and assist the Committee on
Environment and Natural Resources and National Science and Technology
Council on policies, procedures, plans, issues, scientific developments, and
research needs related to the availability and quality of water resources of the
United States" (SWAQ, 2004). Although the future of SWAQ is uncertain, the
NSF is a member of the subcommittee, and it is an appropriate group with which
to exchange information and establish coordination.
CLEANER CYBERINFRASTRUCTURE ISSUES
National-scale environmental observing initiatives will need to coordinate
and share resources to provide quality data products for accurate scientific
analysis and forecasting. The scale of the scientific enterprise and the fact that
there are numerous participating communities, agencies, and programs precludes
a single home-grown bottom-up approach to observing system development and
operations. Operating across distinct jurisdictional boundaries, with disparate
policies and technologies, raises a number of challenges--both in infrastructure
and operations. By considering these challenges during the planning of
cyberinfrastructure initiatives associated with the environmental observatories,
there may be some hope of achieving a high-level of system compatibility and
integration that will benefit both the quality of the science and the economics of
system development and operation.
Cyberinfrastructure for environmental observing systems includes hardware
(i.e., sensors, actuators, networks, computers, storage platforms), software (i.e.,
middleware that supports different application components, tools, applications),
and the standards and policies necessary for operations. Given the extreme
heterogeneity of the technology base, the role of cyberinfrastructure in
facilitating system integration will be paramount. A robust cyberinfrastructure
can provide common frameworks, components, modules, and interface models
that can be used in multiple observatories or applications.
There are several cyberinfrastructure activities underway that address
aspects of the resource integration challenge. For example, CUASHI has
initiated a Hydrologic Information System (HIS) project to integrate access to
national water resources data, and there are plans to leverage this
cyberinfrastructure for NEON. Extending this activity to include CLEANER, as
seems likely given the merger of CLEANER and CUAHSI's Hydrologic
Observatories, is one example of the types of cross-organizational collaborations
that would facilitate the vision of an integrated EON.
In the following sections a few of the key issues are discussed related to
creating a common cyberinfrastructure for environmental observatories: (1)
policies--rules and guidelines for operations, (2) standards for data, networks,
and instruments, and (3) the hardware and software of the cyberinfrastructure.
A comprehensive approach to building an efficient and secure, scalable and
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40 CLEANER and NSF's Environmental Observatories
extensible, environmental observing system will require careful design across all
three areas.
Policies
Many of the challenging issues involved in integrating observing system
resources center on governance policies. Who owns the resources (including
data and physical resources--sensors, instruments, computing platforms, etc.)?
Who can use the resources and under what conditions (including access control,
resource contention and scheduling, intellectual property rights, publication, and
citations)? Often these policies vary by community or project (e.g.,
requirements for timely public access to data products). Privacy policies and
public disclosure of sensitive data (e.g., wetlands designations) also factor into
information sharing activities and applications across observing systems and
communities. The current practice in negotiating cross-agency (or cross-project)
resource-sharing policies is typically limited in scope and heavily influenced by
a small number of participants. A more comprehensive approach would benefit
multiple observing system initiatives or the multiple users of a common
environmental observatory network. Policies will be needed regarding the
access and use of a variety of resources beyond data products, including the
field-deployed observing system sensors and instruments, and the data center
resources for data management, modeling, and analysis. A services-oriented
architecture (see below) provides the engineering framework for building
distributed resource-sharing applications; however, it is the policy specifications
that will determine the efficiency and usability of such applications.
Standards
Standards with respect to observatory hardware, software, and research
activities, including data collection, documentation, and storage, can facilitate
cross-program applications. Standards can also constrain scientists and
engineers, especially in an environment of rapid changes in technology. The
challenge is to develop standards that can both facilitate multi-disciplinary
activities and be adaptable to changing technologies and needs. Especially
important are standards for providing metadata descriptors for key resources and
infrastructure components.
Metadata perform a number of roles in observatory network design and
operation, including facilitating application integration and locating, evaluating
and using data products, sensors, communication and computer networks,
software applications, and the like. For example the ocean observing
community's Marine Metadata Initiative1 and the CUAHSI HIS metadata
1http://marinemetadata.org/.
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Implementing Environmental Observatories 41
initiative have direct relevance to the CLEANER program. A common set of
metadata specifications and tools would facilitate cross-observatory activities.
Most of the observing system standards to date have focused on data
collection and products. Similar standards need to be specified for other
resources including sensors, instruments, and actuators. The ocean observing
initiatives (e.g., the Laboratory for the Ocean Observatory Knowledge
Integration Grid [LOOKING]2) have been exploring these issues, drawing on
evolving standards.
Tools and Applications
Observing system cyberinfrastructure must provide the tools to implement
polices and deliver services. The cyberinfrastructure goals include:
1. Interoperability--the ability to build applications across domains;
2. Extensibility--the ability to add new devices, components, tools, and
applications; and
3. Scalability--the ability to add new computational resources to handle
increasing demands.
These goals can be accomplished by developing: (1) an open architecture based
on well-defined standards, (2) a common framework for application
development and integration, and (3) an integrated suite of tools for resource
discovery, access, and use. The requirement for an open architecture derives
from the fact that there are numerous heterogeneous infrastructure components
that are needed to satisfy the overall scientific mission. It is not reasonable to
presume (or mandate) a particular technology product (e.g., database,
geographic information systems (GIS), workflow package, analysis toolbox). In
addition, observation system resources come with differences in protocols and
performance. For example, there exists a large variety of sensor hardware
platforms and software elements (i.e., operating systems, networking protocols,
data base systems). Commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) sensors are equipped
with transducers for measuring variables ranging from pressure, temperature,
humidity, and light, to various complex environmental phenomena (e.g.,
dissolved oxygen, nutrient concentrations, current profiles). In addition, new
generations of biological sensors are being designed and developed. The
processing power of available COTS sensors ranges from 4 MHz to 400 MHz.
Their radio bandwidth varies from few kilobits/sec to several Megabytes/sec.
Typical operating systems available include TinyOS, MOS, Linux, and
2www.lookingtosea.org.
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42 CLEANER and NSF's Environmental Observatories
Windows CE. There are similar differences in the data center components and
computer programming applications (e.g., NET vs. Java web service stacks).
Accommodating these heterogeneous components (including legacy
resources and researcher/developer preferences [e.g., favorite tools]) dictate an
extensible architecture. A commitment to an open architecture is not a
commitment to open-source software products. Rather, it is an open set of
standards and protocols that specify the functional interfaces to various devices,
products, and services.
Data Availability and Sharing
This committee also recommends the selection of an open source standard
for data collection, storage, and sharing. There are two major advantages. First,
the data standard would support data sharing and analysis opportunities between
CLEANER locations. The more consistent the data protocols, the more
effectively the data can be shared among multiple CLEANER stations to
examine common trends and responses. Second, definition of an open standard
can more effectively expand the influence of the CLEANER program. Not all
data will be collected by the CLEANER program lead. Historic data bases
might need some conversion and migration to a common platform to provide a
basis for research. Even more important, other researchers, federal, regional,
state, and local government agencies, and institutes will continue to collect
information in or near the CLEANER site areas. Each data collection effort
provides an opportunity to expand the scope of the CLEANER data set. The
CLEANER program site leads might not have the authority to dictate everyone's
data collection protocols within their geographic footprint. However, the
availability of an open source standard, similar to those provided for software
developers, can encourage and promote consistency in data collection. The
open source standard could be provided and disseminated under the auspices of
the CLEANER program. The CLEANER network of data sets should be
available to all researchers with adequate recognition of those who collected
them. Data should be widely available and be shared among the research
community. Open standards and data sharing can be critical to the ultimate
success and long term success of CLEANER.
The current cyberinfrastructure approach to achieving application
integration is services-oriented architecture design, building on standards and
tools developed from the web/grid services communities (e.g., the World Wide
Web Consortium3). This approach is being developed for both NEON and
CUAHSI HIS.
A focused effort to coordinate these activities could play a significant role
in building a common cyberinfrastructure platform for integrating CLEANER
(including the CUAHSI HIS), and NEON (and others), i.e., in building EON.
3http://w3c.org.
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Implementing Environmental Observatories 43
DISSEMINATION, OUTREACH, AND EDUCATION
Large-scale national observatories to assess the status of environmental
resources provide opportunities to better understand environmental systems and
natural and human-induced perturbations to these systems. This increased
understanding should ultimately help water resource managers, for example,
forecast the conditions of environmental resources much like the National
Weather Service provides weather forecasts. Environmental forecasts might be
the status of beach areas due to concerns over pathogens or nuisance algae
blooms, adverse air quality events in urban areas (e.g., elevated ozone,
particulate matter), turbidity events in water supplies, or the impacts of
combined sewer overflows in waters adjacent to urban areas.
An improved forecasting capability should motivate increased interaction
and communication with resource managers and engagement with the public
about environmental resources and problems. This interaction and
communication can benefit from improved programs in environmental education
and outreach. If CLEANER and the other environmental observatory initiatives
fail to transform environmental education and outreach, then they will fail to
meet their full potential. The observatory initiative has the potential to make
knowledge of the status of environmental resources a basic component of day-
to-day life.
Given the level of investment and necessary commitment of funds and time
needed to design, implement and operate the environmental observatories, it
would seem critical that this large-scale science and engineering initiative
should be incorporated into science and engineering curricula at universities.
Such an educational initiative would seem to be necessary to train the next
generation of scientists and engineers on how to effectively use and to continue
to improve the environmental observing systems. Furthermore, these networks
will be able to convey and animate patterns and processes at spatial and
temporal scales not currently possible. This, together with new sensors and
other technologies associated with the environmental observatories, just might
capture the imagination of younger scientists and help attract them to the fields
of environmental engineering and science.
SOME NECESSARY CONDITIONS
The benefits derived from environmental observatories can only be realized
if these observatories are a long-term undertaking. While planning efforts
continue, it is important to consider and avoid pitfalls from such an undertaking.
The potential benefits have been outlined in the previous chapters. Here we
discuss possible "fatal flaws" to avoid should these environmental observatories
be implemented. Prior to implementing the environmental observatory network
program(s), it is critical to identify through scenario planning any flaw that
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44 CLEANER and NSF's Environmental Observatories
would make untenable all or part of the program. Examples of fatal flaws for
this observatory investment might include:
· lack of sufficient funding to create a network on a scale that is needed
and resources to maintain and upgrade it over time;
· software security failure resulting in data loss or major delays in
research;
· process failure in selecting research challenges;
· inappropriate location and scale of observatories (i.e., critical gaps in
geographical coverage, inefficient use of resources on large, complex systems);
· loss of public and political support due to inability to connect research
results with required actions and desired outcomes; and
· inability to train enough engineers and scientists with the
interdisciplinary breadth required to operate CLEANER and address the future
research challenges of CLEANER.
Fatal flaw analyses of possible scenarios such as these can help identify
potential "surprises" that could reduce the benefits coming from environmental
observatories. Such analyses can also help identify activities which if
undertaken might reduce the likelihood of these possible fatal flaws occurring.
For clarity, each of the above possible fatal flaw concerns are briefly discussed
below.
Lack of Sufficient Funding
Given the short-term pressures on the availability of funds, lack of
sufficient money to maintain these environmental observatories and the
databases through the long-term is a realistic concern (Merali and Giles, 2005).
The research community needs to be committed to the environmental
observatories so that there is a willingness to use programmatic funds, if
necessary, for their long-term maintenance and operation. Leveraging or cost-
sharing strategies may be necessary to better ensure both short- and long-term
funding. Every step must be taken to assure the public's return on the capital
investment by securing operating funds sufficient for long periods as part of the
capital plan. Expensive observing systems could quickly become useless if
operating and maintenance monies become insufficient or unavailable to
continue those observations on into the long-term future.
Also of potential concern is the source of such operating and maintenance
funding. If operating and maintenance monies must come from the research
budget of NSF normally available to individual investigators, it becomes a
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Implementing Environmental Observatories 45
tradeoff between the benefits derived from CLEANER and those derived by
individual scientists and engineers pursuing other research topics. Younger
professors in particular are vulnerable to any reductions in research funding that
is essential for graduate student support and hence to their professional careers.
If maintaining and upgrading the CLEANER environmental observatory
network takes away funds from individual research programs, will the gain in
understanding from CLEANER be worth any future loss to other environmental
science and engineering educational and research programs not directly tied to
CLEANER?
Software Storage and Security
The success of the observatory approach depends on reliable long-term
storage and management of time-series and other data. Plans for creating and
maintaining databases should consider the need to port databases to new
hardware as it is developed in the future and as current technology becomes
obsolete. It is critical that collaborators cooperate, share data, and make timely
entries into applicable databases. Quality assurance information should be
incorporated into the database maintenance program so proper interpretation of
observations is ensured. Another challenge is to maintain the accessibility and
flexibility of ever-increasing data and databases as well as the interfaces that
maximize their use. The security of these data is critical to the identification of
long-term trends, yet all databases need to be accessible to multiple users at
multiple sites.
Process Failure for Selecting Research Challenges
Selection of what to observe is an important issue. Failure to measure,
collect, and store the values of priority environmental parameters will restrict
future research opportunities. Considerable attention needs to be given to the
proper identification and selection of the data to be obtained over space and time
to address the important current and future environmental resource and
ecosystem management issues. In this regard it is critical that all relevant
disciplines be active participants in CLEANER (e.g., geochemistry,
environmental engineering, hydrology, microbiology, geomorphology, social
sciences) to ensure that there will be a comprehensive examination of the
problems that may need to be addressed and their data requirements. It is
always a challenge to know what data (that may be of little or no significance
today) we should be currently collecting for the benefit of researchers and
resource managers in the distant future.
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Mis-location of Observatories, Gaps in Geographical Coverage, and
Appropriate Scale for Site Selection
We must be certain that observatories are put in the "right" places and that
resources are used optimally. In a program such as CLEANER that focuses so
fundamentally on water and human interactions with our environment,
geographic coverage means that hydrology, and specifically water flows, may
determine to a large extent the geographic coverage of observatories. Large
river basins should be a focus of special emphasis for CLEANER because of
their impact on surface water flows, water quality, and ecosystem functioning.
(Furthermore, other observatory programs are not including them.) For
example, an important area might be a large agricultural region where
groundwater flows are critical to its economy. Major metropolitan areas are also
candidates for better understanding and predicting the environmental-human
interactions in our built environments. While it is likely that CLEANER will
focus on large aquatic systems, resources may not be adequate to study very
large, complex systems. There are important tradeoffs in site design and scale
relative to available resources that the principal investigators of CLEANER will
need to evaluate. Following the development of an important question to be
addressed, a system should be selected for study that is large enough to address
that question, but not too large to investigate effectively without wasting
resources. Another tradeoff is should one region be selected to address all
questions of importance, or should several regions be selected based upon their
potential to address one or two of the critical questions? All of this implies that
the CLEANER program should be driven by where the data will be of most
scientific value and where the available resources can be used most cost-
effectively, not just for geographical coverage.
Covering a range of spatial scales is also important. Smaller systems can
serve as more isolated laboratories. For example, the Lake Tahoe basin has a
long record of data collection, modeling, and research. This smaller system has
the benefit of a very distinct and enclosed watershed and a centralized high
alpine lake. For larger systems various "nested" monitoring approaches can be
designed to provide both the larger and smaller watershed laboratories. The
more detailed systems could be a size (<100 square miles) that is more
responsive and reactive. Smaller systems are likely to be more useful when
building and testing models and evaluating reactions to changing environmental
conditions. By "nesting" within larger systems the analysis of the larger scale
and far field impacts can also be evaluated concurrently.
Inability to Connect Research with Required Actions
All research proposals must be connected to an action plan that produces
results and tests hypotheses and eventually makes a positive difference to human
conditions. The sequence of converting data to information and then to
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Implementing Environmental Observatories 47
knowledge and action must be thoroughly considered and planned before
selecting from the many alternatives any particular scientific research program
to undertake. Analysis and use of data need to be stressed, rather than simply
collecting and archiving data. There is also a critical need to better
communicate scientific and engineering findings with resource managers and
the public. Public, and thus political, support for continuing these long-term
observatories will be essential for their long-term success. Improved linkages
with the social sciences will facilitate understanding the need for communication
and the communication of findings to important stakeholders.
While not the mission of CLEANER, an outcome many stakeholders might
wish from a successful and ongoing CLEANER program would be the
establishment of environmental monitoring and management centers. These
centers would have access to near real-time information and predictive models
that together would provide early warnings of potential adverse hydrologic and
environmental impacts due to natural or human activities. The establishment of
an early warning system based on observation data, especially of resources or
species under stress, could help identify emerging problems in time to change
land and water management policies to prevent further degradation if not permit
some restoration. Such an early warning system must be based not only on what
is being observed, i.e., current data, but also on the research stemming from the
long-term integrated data sets obtained from the environmental observatories.
In 1990, a multi-panel committee of the EPA's Science Advisory Board
developed a ranking of risks to natural ecology and human welfare. This
ranking turned out to be contrary to the public's perception of risks. From a
scientific viewpoint, loss of biological diversity was a higher risk than were
ground water pollution and presence of radionuclides (EPA, 1990).
Environmental observatories, and indeed these potential environmental
monitoring and management centers, must focus on the risks perceived by both
the public and the scientific community if emerging problems are to be detected
in a timely manner.
Inability to Train Enough Engineers and Scientists
As discussed above, training future engineers and scientists in the science of
remote observing systems and associated cyberinfrastructure will be critical to
the long-term success of CLEANER and other observing systems. Training is
the job of universities, and graduate programs in environmental subjects cost
money. Environmental and ecological engineering departments in universities
need to attract bright graduate students to undertake such studies. Training
grants and fellowships, perhaps similar to those provided by the public health
service that resulted in strong environmental engineering programs of the 1960s,
may need to be considered.
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48 CLEANER and NSF's Environmental Observatories
SUMMARY
Planning and development activities are underway by the NSF for several
national environmental observatory systems. These systems each have
somewhat different goals and missions, but there is also considerable overlap in
terms of scope and components of research and outreach activities. In addition,
there is a wealth of federal, regional, state, and local environmental monitoring
in the United States. These monitoring programs are typically closely linked to
the mission of the coordinating agency and are coupled with management of
natural resources. It is important for CLEANER to be well integrated into the
existing and planned networks of the NSF environmental observatories and
various federal, regional, state, and local monitoring activities as well.
CLEANER is in a unique position to catalyze linkages between the national
science-based observing systems and governmental monitoring efforts.
CLEANER is distinct from the other proposed environmental observatories due
to its focus on interactions between the natural environment and engineered
systems, and particularly human-stressed systems. As a result, CLEANER
should be closely aligned with applied issues that are of national significance
and associated with government environmental monitoring and assessment
programs. If properly coordinated, CLEANER could add considerable value to
ongoing government monitoring efforts through data management, and the
application of models and other analysis tools. In turn through proper
coordination and linkages, CLEANER could add value to the data obtained from
other observatories as it focuses on engineering and more applied issues.
To facilitate coordination of the national environmental observatories, the
NSF should strongly consider establishing a parent organization that could be
termed something like the "Environmental Observatory Networks" or EON,
which would be responsible for cyberinfrastructure development, educational
activities, outreach, and other shared activities across the NSF observatory
programs. EON (or some alternative entity, to be determined by the NSF)
would facilitate collaboration and coordination among the observatory programs
and minimize redundancy. To facilitate and improve linkages between
CLEANER and existing governmental assessment programs (federal, regional,
state, local), a series of workshops, inter-agency agreements, and other
collaborative activities is recommended.
There are several areas of common interest across the NSF environmental
observatories, including cyberinfrastructure (e.g., data, software, sensors,
models), education, and outreach. These activities and initiatives should be
coordinated and joint programs should be established among and involving all
observatories. A comprehensive approach to building an efficient, secure,
scalable, and extensible environmental observing system (or systems) will
require careful design across all three areas. A critical activity of national
environmental observatories will be outreach to water resource managers and
the public, as well as training the next generation of scientist and engineers in
the "science of environmental observing systems."
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Implementing Environmental Observatories 49
The committee supports the concept of CLEANER and recommends that it
proceed with planning and coordination activities. This planning should include
an analysis of potential "fatal flaws" that could limit, or possibly negate, the
benefits expected from CLEANER. Should the NSF become assured that these
potential pitfalls can be avoided or mitigated, CLEANER has the potential of
supplementing existing national science-based observing systems and
governmental environmental assessment efforts, especially those focused on the
interactions between the natural environment and engineered-human systems. A
successfully operating environmental observatory network could transform the
environmental engineering profession and increase its already considerable
contributions to society.
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Representative terms from entire chapter:
environmental engineering
