Facilitating Water Research and Management through Development of the AmeriFlux and California Water Data Portals

Microsoft eScience Project

Meeting the water needs of humans is perhaps one of the greatest challenges of the 21st century. Over the last decade, it has become increasingly clear that hydrological, meteorological, and biogeochemical processes are coupled and highly dynamic over various spatial and temporal scales. Understanding these processes with sufficient accuracy and in the face of anthropogenic and global changes is a prerequisite to successful management of water resources. Development of such an understanding requires cyber-infrastructure that can allow researchers and water managers to assimilate complex, multi-scale datasets collected from networked micro-sensors to global satellite platforms, and to use that data with modeling or mining tools to test hypotheses and to develop optimal management strategies.               

The Microsoft eScience Project will demonstrate an advanced approach for tackling 21st Century water challenges by leveraging web services concepts, technologies, and information technology expertise. The Microsoft eScience Project will develop prototype data portals for two different water-related communities: the Ameriflux community and the hydrology community focused on understanding and managing water resources within California. The projects will demonstrate what modern commercial data handling tools and practices can bring to carbon and water resources investigations and management. The development is being performed in close collaboration with scientific research leaders, and the value of both prototypes will be tested through relevant end-to-end demonstrations.

The projects are being led by Catharine vanIngen of Microsoft Research, in close collaboration with BWC researchers such as Deb Agarwal and Susan Hubbard of LBNL. Working groups, comprised of water-carbon scientists, computer scientists, and programmers, are being developed to guide the project teams. Members of the working groups include leaders in carbon and California water, such as Bev Law (OSU), Dennis Baldocchi (UCB), Ken Belitz (USGS), and Greg Smith (DWR).

More information about the Microsoft eScience Project can be found by clicking HERE.