Jennifer Jacobs, PhD, PE 240 Gregg Hall Department of Civil Engineering University of New Hampshire Durham, NH 03824 603 862-0635 (tel) jennifer.jacobs@unh.edu
Hank Loescher Forest Science Oregon State University Corvallis, OR
Rosemary Knight Dept. of Geophysics Stanford University, Palo Alto, CA
John Selker Dept. Biological and Ecological Engineering Oregon State University, Corvallis, OR
William Bowden School of Environment and Natural Resources University of Vermont, Burlington, VT
Richard Hooper Consortium of Universities for the Advancement of Hydrologic Science (CUAHSI) Washington, DC
This response is to demonstrate a willingness to establish formal linkages between the Consortium of Universities for the Advancement of Hydrologic Sciences Inc. (CUAHSI) Hydrologic Measurement Facility (HMF) and NEON activities to best achieve our mutual objectives. Like NEON, the HMF is an infrastructure governed by overarching science questions.
Established in 2002, the goal CUAHSI-HMF is to facilitate access to advanced instrumentation and expertise to support hydrological sciences (broadly defined) and to transform watershed-scale hydrologic research by developing, prioritizing, and disseminating a broad-based research and education agenda for the hydrologic sciences. The underlying approach is derived from a continuous process that engages both research and applications professionals (mission statement #1) and facilitates access to advanced instrumentation and expertise in support of these endeavors (mission statement #2). This coordinated effort is organized around three general study areas: water cycle science, biogeochemistry, and geophysics, and has focused on enhancing hydrologic research to scale in time and space that has previously been unavailable to most investigators. This focus is integral in achieving both CUAHSI’s and NEON’s prime challenge questions.
CUAHSI’s mission, governance, vetted challenges to hydrologic science, and proposed suite of activities and instrumentation are the product of active and ongoing community involvement. They can be found at http://www.cuahsi.org/, and where relevant, outlined below.