HR: 0800h
AN: H31C-0398 INVITED     [Abstracts]
TI: The Pacific Northwest Hydrological Observatory (PNW HO): Hypothesis and model testing power through diversity
AU: * McDonnell, J J
EM: jeff.mcdonnell@orst.edu
AF: Dept. of Forest Engineering, Oregon State University, Corvallis, OR 97331 United States
AU: Grant, G
EM: gordongrant@oregonstate.edu
AF: USDA Forest Service, Pacific Northwest Research Station , Corvallis, OR 97331 United States
AU: Hulse, D
EM: dhulse@uoregon.edu
AF: Dept. of Landscape Architecture, University of Oregon, Eugene, OR 97403 United States
AB: The Pacific Northwest Hydrological Observatory (PNW HO) is a proposed national facility for the examination of the linkages between hydrologic and biogeochemical cycles, sustainability of water resources in the face of increasing human demands and climate change, hydrologic and ecosystem interactions, and hydrologic extremes. The PNW HO infrastructure will support research that examines forcings, feedbacks and couplings across hydro-eco-climatic interfaces, process scaling, and development of new predictive schemes and methods to reduce predictive uncertainty. Much of the data collection infrastructure is already in place, in the form of USGS gauging, local and State data recording. The PNW HO includes a novel experimental design that twins two neighboring watersheds-the humid Willamette and arid Deschutes River Basins-that represent a full range of landscape gradients and societal problems relating to water quantity and quality. Workers at the PNW HO will be able to build upon existing synthesis documents in the form of the Willamette River Basin Planning Atlas and recent AGU Monograph on the Deschutes River Basin. The PNW HO design builds upon the HJ Andrews LTER site in the headwaters and recent listing of the Willamette River Basin as a UNESCO HELP international observatory. The PNW HO has access to one of the richest SNOTEL datasets in North America along the divide between the Willamette and Deschutes Basins. The Willamette is a USGS NAWQA basin and the Deschutes has been the focus of a major USGS groundwater investigation, and is one of five sites nationally in the Fire Learning Network. Finally, and perhaps most importantly for technology transfer of HO science to policy and practice, the PNW HO enjoys a rather unique combination of Oregon's state-based land use planning and doctrine of prior appropriations water law (land use planning and water rights). While there are certainly areas in the West where human populations are growing as fast or faster, none of these places have the institutional constructs of powerful state-level ability to steer growth the way Oregon does. This will enable the PNW HO to have direct feedback into State and regional planning in the lower Columbia River Basin.
DE: 1860 Runoff and streamflow
DE: 1866 Soil moisture
SC: Hydrology [H]
MN: 2004 AGU Fall Meeting