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1
Introduction
The United States faces widespread problems associated with
environmental resource degradation. Our air, land, and waters are subjected to
multiple human-induced stressors that alter their quality. These disturbances in-
turn lead to riparian ecosystem habitat loss, biogeomorphic landscape changes,
changes in water availability, and increased discharges of a variety of pollutants
over different temporal and spatial scales. All this is adversely affecting
economic productivity, human health, and ecosystem functioning.
To help address our current environmental problems, we need an improved
understanding of the fundamental processes that take place in large-scale
human-stressed environments over long time periods. This better understanding
can come from observing different environments at regional scales. We need to
monitor and measure how the characteristics and functioning of environmental
resources and ecosystems change and determine why they change to the extent
they do. This new knowledge should lead to improved predictive models and to
more effective adaptive management policies and practices. To accomplish this
we need improved sensors and measurement technology that can provide high
resolution and integrated data. This will require a cyberinfrastructure capable of
collecting, managing, and using very large integrated data sets. Having this
infrastructure will facilitate numerous research investigations aimed at obtaining
an improved understanding of interacting environmental system processes.
Altered hydrologic regimes and increased pollutant concentrations in our
air, soil, and water can adversely affect the quality of those resources, and their
value to humans, as well as the functioning of natural ecosystems. We need to
quantify these relationships so that the likely consequences of human decisions
can be predicted and possibly valued. Because pollutants cycle between air,
water, and land, we need to understand the interplay among these media and
how efforts to control pollutants in one medium, say water, affect the quality in
other media, say air or land. In addition, society needs more effective ways to
select among management strategies (e.g., promoting the use of alternative
materials versus developing enhanced waste treatment options) to address
complex environmental problems and develop short-term strategies that satisfy
long-term needs.
Contaminated water resources are a special concern, with major problems in
large rivers (e.g., the Mississippi, the Hudson), coastal waters (e.g., Gulf of
Mexico, Chesapeake Bay), groundwater aquifers (e.g., salt water intrusion along
coastal aquifers), small streams (e.g., those receiving the sediments from
mountain-top removal for coal mining or from poor agricultural or logging
practices) and lakes of all sizes (e.g. those subjected to nutrient enrichment from
development along their shores). Pathogenic microorganisms, such as
Cryptosporidium, are common in the nation's waters and threaten public health.
Organic chemicals and trace metals from municipal and industrial sources pose
risks to human health and to aquatic organisms, as do pharmaceuticals and
8
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Introduction 9
personal care products that increasingly are being detected in surface waters.
Challenges to understanding and management are exacerbated by linkage to
large-scale and long-term trends, such as global warming, economic
globalization, and growing energy scarcity. These and similar observations in
the U.S. and abroad have motivated the considerable attention given to the
concept of environmental sustainability.
To help scientists, engineers, and managers better understand, model,
forecast, and manage the quality of the environment and discover innovative
approaches for its improvement, the National Science Foundation (NSF) has
been planning several observatory networks designed to promote a greater
understanding of hydrologic, environmental, ecological, and related processes
affecting, and affected by, human activities. In particular, the Directorate for
Engineering has proposed the Collaborative Large-scale Engineering Analysis
Network for Environmental Research (CLEANER) to enable the identification
of more effective adaptive management approaches for human-stressed
environments based on enhanced observations, experiments, modeling, and
engineering analysis. Other proposed networks include the National Ecological
Observatory Network (NEON), being developed within the Directorate for
Biological Science; the Hydrologic Observatories initiative fostered by the
Consortium of Universities for the Advancement of Hydrologic Science,
Incorporated (CUAHSI), the Ocean Observatories Initiative (OOI), and the
Geosciences Network (GEON), which are supported by the Directorate for
Geosciences; and the Arctic Observing Network of the Office of Polar
Programs.
In late 2004, the NSF proposed the merger of CLEANER and CUAHSI's
Hydrologic Observatories into a joint, bi-directorate program. The CLEANER
and CUAHSI communities are currently collaborating to create a common
science plan (targeted for completion in late 2006) for the merged activity, the
Water Environmental Research Systems (WATERS) Network. Although all
aspects of this merger were not fully resolved during the period of this study,
which presented a "moving target" for our committee, this report has been
written in an attempt to be useful and relevant to CLEANER, or the WATERS
Network, or any observatory network focused on aquatic environments affected
by human activities, or, and preferably, the integration of these different
observatory initiatives. Generally, we refer to our subject matter as
"CLEANER" but the report should be equally relevant to the WATERS
Network.
CLEANER
CLEANER is to be an integrated network of environmental observatories
supporting both fundamental engineering research and outreach and education
on large-scale, water-related environmental problems in human-stressed
environments. CLEANER observatory sites will likely be some combination of:
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10 CLEANER and NSF's Environmental Observatories
(1) large watersheds selected to represent a range of climatic, geomorphic, and
land-use/land cover characteristics; (2) coastal sites; and (3) urban water
systems. The watersheds (scale of about 10-30 thousand square kilometers)
ideally would include the full range of human impacts from pristine or nearly
pristine areas to heavily urbanized and agricultural lands. They would be
instrumented in a nested arrangement to provide critical water-related
information across a range of spatial scales from small to higher order (larger)
catchments. The coastal sites would instrument important but threatened near-
shore environments such as Chesapeake Bay, Tampa Bay, and coastal areas on
the Great Lakes. Urban water observatories would provide water quality and
quantity information on both the natural and engineered water systems in urban
areas across a range of climatic zones. These urban areas would include their
infrastructure for drinking water treatment and distribution, wastewater
collection and treatment, and storm-water management (P. Brezonik, NSF,
personal communication, 2006).
The proposed observatories would provide researchers with access to linked
sensing networks, data repositories, and characterization and computational
tools for integrated assessment modeling, connected through high-performance
computing and telecommunications networks. CLEANER would potentially
provide a comprehensive engineering approach to forecasting and evaluating
regional environmental impacts, accounting for human influences on natural
biological, chemical, and physical processes. Such an approach should lead to
the establishment of cause-and-effect relationships with a feedback mechanism
for implementing change through innovative engineering and policy
interventions.
Origin
The CLEANER concept originated in 2001, and several workshops have
been held at various universities since then to develop it further. This proposed
program has been motivated not only by the need to better understand
environmentalhuman interactions and impacts, but also by the increasing
availability of new technology in sensors, communications, information
management, and computing. This technology presents opportunities for
learning how to better protect, restore, and manage the environment at spatial
and temporal scales that have not been previously possible. Participants in the
various workshops focused on the information needs of environmental scientists
and engineers, and on how such information is to be obtained, managed, and
converted to knowledge for the benefit of diverse groups of stakeholders, i.e.,
researchers, educators, policy makers, and the affected public.
The following key research elements for the CLEANER program emerged
as a result of these early planning efforts:
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Introduction 11
· learning how hierarchies (scale and complexity) of human-stressed
environmental systems and their linkages can be better understood through
integrated assessment models;
· understanding the functioning of large-scale, complex, perturbed
environmental systems by identifying the stressors that influence the outcomes
of interactions among system components, based on frequent observations
facilitated by real-time devices for sensing, data acquisition, data analysis, and
data display;
· identifying vital sign indicators based on functional understanding,
both for system condition and early warning; and
· learning how better to prevent and mitigate adverse environmental
impacts and better manage stressed environmental systems.
Goals
CLEANER aims to create a network of observatories and an advanced
cyberinfrastructure that will facilitate the collaboration of engineers, scientists,
policy makers, and community groups working across disciplines, across
temporal and spatial scales, and across different types of surface and subsurface
environments in watersheds subjected to a range of climatic conditions. This
collaborative work is to be focused on developing the ability to detect and
respond effectively to rapid changes in system functioning, to implement near
real-time decision-making supported by data collection that can be used to
anticipate future problems, and to develop innovative and effective engineering
solutions and management options.
Through CLEANER, the NSF seeks to "fundamentally transform and
radically advance" the scientific and engineering knowledge needed to address
the challenges of large-scale human-impacted complex environmental systems.
CLEANER would focus on stressed environments and on water and associated
environmental resources that are critical to economic productivity, human
health, and quality of life. Predictive understanding of these changes can lead to
more effective adaptive management approaches. CLEANER would provide a
focus for developing and/or defining user needs, system architecture, high
performance sensors, the operation of integrated sensor networks, and data
handling protocols and standards. The coupling of these capabilities with
advanced modeling would lead to greater integration of experimentation and
simulation. CLEANER would provide access to databases that promote the
development and validation of models by reducing the need to make
assumptions about mechanisms, by narrowing the uncertainty in parameter
values, and by providing better information about time variability of model
parameters.
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12 CLEANER and NSF's Environmental Observatories
Specifically, the goals1 of CLEANER are to:
· be an integrated system of distributed, networked facilities and
researchers to more readily identify knowledge gaps related to environmental
quality issues;
· enable the development of creative and effective engineering
approaches to complex, national-scale environmental problems;
· consist of (a) interacting field sites networked through
cyberinfrastructure; (b) groups of investigators studying landscapes stressed by
human activities and/or highly urbanized regions; (c) specialized personnel,
facilities, and technology that support the investigators, and (d) an analysis
network with common modeling platforms and analysis protocols that will serve
as the central organizational framework for collaborative investigations;
· support collection of critical environmental data with advanced sensor
array systems and in situ instrumentation;
· facilitate data mining and aggregation and provide analytical tools for
data visualization, exploratory data analysis, and predictive modeling of large-
scale dynamic environmental management strategies;
· enable more effective adaptive management approaches for human-
dominated environmental systems based on enhanced observations,
experimentation, modeling, engineering analysis, and design;
· enable participation from a broad engineering and science community,
including educators, students, practitioners, and public sector organizations and
individuals, who will have access to CLEANER's equipment, data, models, and
software; and
· transform engineering education and outreach by engaging the
academic community and the general public in large-scale and complex real-
world environmental management problems.
Status and Future Plans
The NSF Directorate for Engineering awarded $1 million in planning grants
in 2004 for 12 projects,2 involving principal investigators from 22 universities,
to plan the system cyberinfrastructure and the nature of the field facilities that
will constitute the network. A CLEANER project office was established in
August 2005 to coordinate and assist with (1) refining the key science questions
1http://www.nsf.gov/pubs/2005/nsf05549/nsf05549.htm.
2Further information on these projects can be found on-line at
http://cleaner.nacse.org/partners/index.html.
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Introduction 13
(grand challenges for environmental engineering) that CLEANER would
address and (2) developing a unified community vision for the facilities and
infrastructure needed to address these issues. A conceptual design that describes
the research, education, and outreach plans will be a natural consequence of
these activities. An important task of the CLEANER Project Office will be
developing a community consortium that has the capability to plan, design,
construct, and operate the CLEANER network.
As noted above, the NSF's Engineering and Geosciences Directorates are
currently planning to combine CLEANER with the CUAHSI Hydrologic
Observatories into what is now called the WATERS Network. This integrated
program would move forward as a single initiative to be presented for Major
Research Equipment and Facilities Construction (MREFC) funding in 2011.
Initial construction of the network would shortly follow, and be completed and
fully operational by 2015. This committee concurs with, and supports, the NSF
in their efforts to develop a more unified community vision for environmental
observatory facilities and infrastructure. Such integration brings both scientific
benefits as well as economic cost savings.
SCOPE AND PURPOSE OF THIS REPORT
The Directorate for Engineering is developing the CLEANER program
through a phased approach. The initial phase is to identify the science questions
that the network seeks to address. Subsequent phases would involve selecting
locations, and determining and building the infrastructure needed for the
collection of data that will address these issues. As part of the initial preparation
of the CLEANER science plan, the NSF sought the advice of the National
Research Council (NRC) on water related "grand challenges" that could be
addressed by the network and on the value of observatory networks in general.
In response to the NSF's request, the NRC's Water Science and Technology
Board (WSTB) assembled our committee of scientists and engineers with
backgrounds in environmental engineering, economics, hydrology and
hydrogeology, ecology, coastal and marine science, and computer science. The
committee's statement of task (Box 1-1) was negotiated and agreed upon by the
NSF and NRC. The timeframe for this study was short. The committee met
only once but worked prior to and after that meeting to produce the consensus
findings and recommendations stated in this report. Because the CLEANER
program is in the early stages of development and the science plan was still
being drafted during the committee's deliberations, the committee could not
conduct a detailed review of this plan.
This report contains a summary, four chapters, and two appendices.
Chapter 2 comments on the overall value of the observatory approach. Chapter
3 identifies and describes several "grand challenges" and particular water
research questions that the CLEANER program might address. Chapter 4
discusses aspects of the program implementation, including sustainability issues,
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14 CLEANER and NSF's Environmental Observatories
coordination and integration with existing programs and other observatory
networks, the network's infrastructure, and opportunities for dissemination,
education, and outreach.
BOX 1-1
Statement of Task
A committee formed by the Water Science and Technology Board
(WSTB) will advise the National Science Foundation on its Collaborative
Large-Scale Engineering Analysis Network for Environmental Research
(CLEANER) initiative with respect to (1) the science plan and (2) the
potential usefulness of the program. Regarding the science plan, the WSTB
will identify some (5-6) of the major issues in the area of water quality and
water resources that present "grand challenges" and that lend themselves to
being addressed by CLEANER, i.e., perhaps providing the targets for
observation and modeling efforts. Regarding the second issue, the WSTB
will comment on the overall value to engineering and other potentially
interested disciplines of networked environmental observatory facilities to
improve our understanding of complicated, large-scale water quality and
water resources problems and the development of cost-effective engineering
approaches to their solution. The scope of issues to be considered by the
WSTB will be limited to water quality and water resources; i.e., air will only
be considered to the extent that it affects water. Note that for purposes of
this study, a "grand challenge" is defined to mean a major scientific and/or
technological task that is compelling for both intellectual and practical
reasons, that offers potential major breakthroughs on the basis of recent
developments in science and technology, and that is likely to be feasible
given current capabilities and a serious infusion of resources.
Representative terms from entire chapter:
engineering analysis
