Letter from the Executive Director
Jordan Read (he/him), Executive Director, CUAHSI
 CUAHSI creates and shares scaffolding that supports and empowers the water community to reach new research potential beyond our limits as individuals. These are tangible products that include training programs and data systems, in addition to our role in helping establish new connections across constituencies. What we build must address needs defined by the community and present familiar concepts that can be easily integrated into how people do their work. We also need to anticipate the unplanned and the unknown with flexibility; our scaffolding shouldn’t constrain innovation.
Today, I’m thinking about standardization and flexibility in our support and leadership of data work. I see two paths for data production and publication that we can continue to advance as a community: data created and published as an artifact of the research process, and data created primarily for future use by others. Additional flexibility in articulating objectives for data publishing can open up new ways to upskill data practices.
Data, in addition to code and configuration details, can be captured as an artifact of computationally reproducible science (read more about computational reproducibility in the 2019 NAS report here). This artifact can be published and linked to other elements of the work in HydroShare.org or other data or code repositories. We will continue working together to refine collaborative data workflows that promote open science and create efficiencies for projects.
Alternatively, some are building datasets intentionally for use by others, such as bringing together and quality assuring disparate but otherwise complementary data to set the table for new discoveries. This work involves special care to consider appropriate data formats, potential data access methods, and descriptive metadata to increase the potential for appropriate interpretation and use. There is innovation in how cloud-optimized datasets are built and how usability and accessibility factors are considered when data is the primary product.
I’m excited to see our continually evolving data scaffolding grow with the community potential for water science impacts.
Voices From The Community
Desneiges (Deni) Murray
Ph.D. Student; University of New Hampshire
A sense of community is a pathway for scientists to feel that our work is meaningful. As an early career researcher, I am constantly in search of my ‘et al.’, with milestones of success that range from knowing more than one person at a conference to feeling the momentum of the scientific collective. My involvement with CUAHSI has provided an opportunity for placing my science within a community. CUAHSI has funded my ideas, promoted my research, and provided a platform for my voice as a woman in STEM. In a world of productivity-based measures of success, building an academic CV with less than 10 years of research experience can feel glacially slow. The friendly faces of CUAHSI’s Veronica and Clara have created a sense of belonging and the quaint feeling of a small-town, where the degree of separation is narrowed to 1. I have found that it's one connection that can provide the key to others. For me, involvement with CUAHSI has been my catalyst for collaborations, projects, and people that seemed unattainable just 1 year ago.
In 2022, I was awarded the CUAHSI Hydroinformatics Innovation Fellowship to develop the open-source Critical Zone Data Pipeline (CZDP). This fellowship was the first that I applied to as a Ph.D. student, and my ideas felt half-formed and abstract. But with the help of my mentors (Dr. Adam Wymore and Dr. Laurel Larsen), this idea to leverage existing data sets collected by federal agencies (e.g., NASA, NOAA, NADP, USGS) and aggregate them in a new way for the hydrology and biogeochemistry communities, began to take shape. CUAHSI has supported my research from conception to dissemination, providing me with funds to attend the American Geophysical Union conference in 2022, giving a short talk on a webinar series, and will eventually host the final CZDP data product and source code on HydroShare.
CUAHSI supports efforts to advance water science in the community, and I am honored to have been selected as someone who may be able to contribute to such an endeavor through the development of the CZDP. Briefly, the CZDP aggregates timeseries of wet deposition chemistry, meteorology, stream chemistry, and earth attributes at the watershed scale across the continental U.S. The goal of this project is to produce timeseries datasets that synchronize watershed-scale critical zone attributes using a ‘top-down’ aggregation approach, preserving resolution of wet deposition chemistry and meteorology variables. Multiple data products can be accessed from the pipeline such as weekly NADP NTN wet deposition chemistry paired with daily Daymet meteorlogical variables from 391 sites spanning up to 44 years, or the data product of 50-1,500 paired wet deposition and stream chemistry observations from 119 watersheds across the U.S. Data products can address research questions regarding the exchange, connectivity, and drivers of water and solutes across the critical zone.
Twitter: @deni_trogen
Website: https://denimurraybgc.weebly.com/
General Announcements
Take Our Survey!
In November 2022, CUAHSI created a survey to understand the needs of faculty who teach water science to undergraduate students. We still need your input! Any college-level instructor, regardless of academic discipline, institution type, or appointment status, who teaches at least one undergraduate-level class related to water science may participate in the survey. Your feedback may inform the development of new CUAHSI programs and services.
If you meet the above qualifications and have not already taken our survey, we welcome your participation. After you have reviewed the informed consent information, you may begin the survey. The online form will take about 25 minutes to complete.
Don’t wait! The survey closes on April 1, 2023.
Introduction to HydroShare Webinar
Join us starting March 21st at 1pm ET to learn how to use, upload, share, and publish data on CUAHSI’s open source data repository HydroShare. Through HydroShare, CUAHSI lowers the barrier to entry for FAIR data practices by providing a general purpose, user friendly data repository to the water community. Whether you are completely new to HydroShare or just want a refresher on HydroShare’s new and old features, this webinar will cover the HydroShare data workflow from start to end.
This will be a free, bi-monthly webinar and all are welcome to join. During the hour-long event there will be a demonstration and time for Q&A. Please register here.
NSF-Funded REU
The Critical Zone Network has announced an NSF-funded REU opportunity to study critical zone science this summer! The REU will be managed by CUAHSI. Applications are due March 31st. This award comes with a stipend and many other perks! Undergraduate students affiliated with U.S. institutions are eligible to apply.
This program will place undergraduate students at one of the nearly 50 CZ Network research sites distributed in diverse geographic settings across the continental U.S. Critical Zone science is becoming more important as we try to understand the Earth’s living skin, from the top of the vegetation canopy to the depths of the groundwater and all the interactions taking place within that shape our environment and all life within it.
Please share with your students and networks. Visit the website for application details. Contact Veronica Sosa Gonzalez at vgonzalez@cuahsi.org with any questions.
Cyberseminar Series
Register here!
The series of eight interactive online webinars will include sessions on the logistics and organizational requirements to manage successful citizen science projects, methods-focused sessions to share best practices in water resources data collection and citizen science data use in decision-making, and sessions on integrating citizen science projects in educational settings.
Are you involved in citizen science? There are a limited number of spaces for 2-minute “pop-up” talks available within this series. View the call for presenters here!
Visit the website for more details including weekly topics and series objectives. You can also view past sessions in this series on our YouTube channel.
AGU Water Quality - Haiku Your Research
The AGU Water Quality Technical Committee held a #HaikuYourResearch competition and awarded five researchers with a Tiny Grant in the amount of $200! We are celebrating their works here! Please enjoy this featured poem by Isabela Baptista, Ph.D student, University of Tsukuba. You can find Isabela on Twitter at @isabela_silbap and the AGU Water Quality Technical Committee at @AGU_WQ.
Funding Opportunities
CUAHSI offers funding opportunities for students and researchers in the Water Sciences. While these awards and fellowships may be relatively small, the impact may be large. Get your application materials ready! The call for proposals is open now for both the Instrumentation Discovery Travel Grant and the Let's Talk About Water grant.
The deadline to apply is April 3, 2023.
You will find the links to apply in the information page for each of the grants (links above). If you have questions about any of CUAHSI funding opportunities, please contact Veronica Sosa Gonzalez at vgonzalez@cuahsi.org.
CUAHSI Standing Committee Volunteer Opportunity
Have you been looking for a way to provide leadership in the field of water sciences? The Education and Outreach standing committee is currently seeking new members. To apply for the committee you can fill out an application or contact Veronica Sosa Gonzalez at vgonzalez@cuahsi.org.
Upcoming Events
I Hack Water: A Hackathon
April 14 -16, 2023, Cambridge, MA
Register here
I Hack Water is a collaborative space for exploring water issues. Join us for a 3-day hackathon to explore solutions to local water issues through innovative science communication and data access.
We encourage participation from a wide range of backgrounds to broaden our collective understanding of water resources and deliver creative solutions that address local water issues. You will come away from I Hack Water with a better understanding of how to find, use, and communicate scientific data to inform local water issues and improve water literacy. This year’s event focuses on water issues local to the greater Boston area.
All backgrounds and skill sets are welcome. Whether you’re interested in coding, exploring new and innovative technologies, learning about water challenges, meeting and networking with new people, or learning new skills – we hope you'll join us!
Early-bird registration discounts until March 20, 2023.
CUAHSI Biennial Colloquium
We look forward to seeing you at the 2023 Biennial Colloquium taking place June 11-14, 2023 at the Granlibakken Resort in Tahoe City, CA!
Registration is open and the call for poster abstracts has been extended!
Register here!
Take advantage of the early-bird registration discounts available until April 15, 2023. A limited number of $500 travel grants are available to students affiliated with U.S. universities who present posters at the meeting. The deadline to submit abstracts has been extended to March 25, 2023!
Questions can be directed to Lisa Mucciacito at lmucciacito@cuahsi.org. More information is available on our website.
HydroShare
HydroShare Data Spotlight
Many would agree that water research at its best supplies meaningful data and solutions for communities and water managers who are impacted by the processes we study. This month we highlight a recently published but already highly visited resource in HydroShare “Southeast Texas Networked Flood Monitoring Sensors” that provides data and methods for reproduction in Lamar University’s collaboration with local agencies to provide critical flood mapping data to key community stakeholders and decision makers. Through the successful implementation of a robust and real time water stage sensor network, Lamar University's water researchers demonstrate the power of direct collaboration between academic researchers and local agencies.
Calendar Dates
Don't Miss These Opportunities
- Weekly Cyderseminar Series: Integrating Citizen Science with Water Resources Research Across the Globe - March 1 - April 19, 2023
- Let's Talk About Water & Mayors Make Movies celebrate NY Water Week - March 18, 2023
- World Water Film Festival: New York City - March 19, 2023
- UN Water 2023 Virtual Side Meeting - Monday March, 20, 2023
- CUAHSI Biennial Call for Posters and Lightning Talks - Deadline to submit March 25, 2023
- Navigating the NSF Hydrologic Sciences Program - March 27, 2023, 2pm ET
- Instrumentation Discovery Travel Grant - Deadline to apply April 3, 2023
- Let's Talk About Water - Deadline to apply April 3, 2023
- I Hack Water - April 14-16, 2023, Cambridge, MA
- ICRW8 - June 5-8, 2023, Corvallis, OR
- CUAHSI Biennial - June 11-14, 2023, Tahoe City, CA
|
|
|
|
|
