HR: 11:20h
AN: H12B-05 INVITED    [Abstracts]
TI: Implications of the NAS Decadal Review for international hydrology
AU: * Lettenmaier, D P
EM: dennisl@u.washington.edu
AF: University of Washington, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering Box 352700, Seattle, WA 98195, United States
AB: In early 2007, the U.S. National Academy of Sciences released the final report of the Decadal Review of Earth Science and Applications from Space (ESAS), a study charged with recommending to U.S. space agencies (NASA, NOAA, USGS) priorities over the coming decade for spaceborne earth science missions. Fifteen of the seventeen missions recommended by ESAS would be primarily under NASA's charge; of those fifteen, three are central to the hydrological sciences: SMAP (Soil Moisture Active Passive), SWOT (Surface Water and Ocean Topography), and SCLP (Snow and Cold Land Processes). The measurements that would result from these missions have the potential to fundamentally change the nature of hydrological sciences over the coming decades, by providing a global observational basis for hydrologic and related sciences that heretofore has never existed. In the case of all three of the ESAS hydrology missions– soil moisture, surface water, and snow, the missions would provide information about the space-time dynamics of key state variables that are now only observed via exceedingly sparse point in situ sampling. Along with the tremendous advances in basic observational data that these missions would bring will come a number of challenges. The ESAS suite of missions is costly, and to succeed international partnerships almost certainly will be essential. Key aspects of the missions – e.g., ground validation data and data downlink stations, to name just two, will require activities outside the U.S. On a more fundamental level, however, these missions will provide global observations of a nature never previously available to hydrologists, and this will make essential new ways of cooperating across the global hydrological community. These challenges, and ways in which they might be addressed, will be explored.
DE: 1899 General or miscellaneous
SC: Hydrology [H]
MN: 2007 Fall Meeting