USU Receives National Science Foundation Planning Grant

The National Science Foundation awarded a $150,000 planning grant to Utah State University to improve the understanding of the impacts of water resource management decisions on the hydrology and ecology of the West’s irrigated mountain valleys.

 

The proposal is one of nine selected for funding from among more than 200 applications submitted by research teams from across the country.

 

Douglas Jackson-Smith, associate professor in sociology at USU, is the lead investigator on the proposal that involves 14 collaborating scientists from seven departments, five colleges and three research centers at USU.

 

“Urbanization and climate change are shifting water management practices in this region,” said Jackson-Smith. “Our ability to scientifically understand and model the complex implications of these changes remains very limited.”

 

Over the next year, the NSF grant will support an intensive series of workshops to facilitate discussions among researchers from multiple disciplines and non-university water resource managers. During the workshops, scientists will highlight examples of their recent or ongoing research relating to the dynamics of local water systems. Additionally, key water stakeholders will talk about the challenges of water management in the real-world. The workshops also provide opportunities for discussions designed to develop a common approach to future scientific research on complex water systems.

 

The team of scientists and stakeholders supported by the grant will produce a research plan to guide future studies of the relationships among climate change, patterns of water use and the impacts of water-management decisions on local and watershed-scale hydrologic processes and ecological systems, Jackson-Smith said.

 

“Many of our scientific models are not able to represent real-world human behaviors that affect the flow of water through our landscape,” he said. “As a result, a major focus of the upcoming effort is to identify innovative methods that integrate the built human water infrastructure and changing patterns of water use within existing science models.”

 

The use of irrigation canals and converting irrigated agricultural fields to residential properties are examples.

 

The project will facilitate regular interactions between scientists and real-world water resource managers, users and stakeholders.

 

Beyond workshop discussions, the effort is designed to improve researchers’ understanding of the complexities and motivations that drive water management decisions. This also ensures that future integrated scientific research projects are better designed to generate answers to the problems faced by water resource managers, Jackson-Smith said.

 

Another aspect of the grant allows graduate students from multiple disciplines to interact and learn new ways of conducting research.

 

“With more federal research dollars demanding a more holistic and integrated research approach, the project will serve as a training ground for the next generation of interdisciplinary scientists,” Jackson-Smith said.

 

A key outcome of the one-year project will be an integrated science plan that will be the basis for future scientific research proposals and projects. The USU team plans to pursue a $5 million grant from the same NSF program to acquire resources necessary to carry out the plan.

 

The ambitious research team at USU represents the wave of the future for applied collaborative science projects.

 

“A growing number of federal scientific programs are establishing interdisciplinary and collaborative research projects, and this effort will serve as a model for developing teams capable of carrying out future long-term integrated science projects at USU,” said Brent Miller, USU vice president for research.

 

Source: Sociology Program, USU Department of Sociology, Social Work and Anthropology