USDA Forest Service Deborah C Hayes USDA FS Research and Development 1400 Independence Ave., SW Mail Stop 1113, Rosslyn C 4th floor Washington, DC 20250 703-605-5284 deborahhayes@fs.fed.us deb@hayes-ent.com
USDA Agricultural Research Service David C. Goodrich USDA-ARS-SWRC 2000 E. Allen Rd. Tucson, AZ 85719 520-670-6381 ext. 144 dgoodrich@tucson.ars.ag.gov
US Geological Service Earl Greene 436 National Center 12201 Sunrise Valley Drive Reston, VA 20192 703-648-5048 eagreene@usgs.gov
Oregon State University Julia Jones Department of Geosciences Oregon State University Corvallis, OR 97331 541 737 1224 jonesj@geo.oregonstate.edu
The small watershed scale (ca. 10-100+ ha) of ecosystem research has been a powerful, natural medium for the science of hydrology, biogeochemistry, aquatic ecology, and environmental change for decades. Instrumenting small watersheds, as planned by NEON, can set the stage for integrating science across many of NEON’s themes. This work can benefit by strong NEON collaboration with existing, continent-spanning, but weakly coordinated small watershed research programs of USDAFS, ARS, USGS, NPS, NSF’s LTER network, and others.
This response to the NEON RFI describes how the more than 50 existing and any newly installed small watershed study sites located across the continent as well as Caribbean and Pacific Islands can be used to address many of the science components of NEON. Such an integrated NEON network could allow us to investigate this overarching science question: At the small watershed scale, how do different forcings of environmental change (i.e., changes in temperature, precipitation, atmospheric chemistry, land cover, invasive species) affect water quantity and quality, carbon sequestration, species composition (terrestrial and aquatic), and ecosystem productivity; and how do these forcings and responses develop over time in different environmental settings and ecosystem types? We offer several hypotheses concerning specific directions and paces of change. The existing small watershed studies have been used for local science and land management questions, but their continental distribution - spanning broad gradients of temperature, moisture, vegetation properties, pollution loads, etc. - positions them to address continental questions about the effects of broad-scale changes in forcings on important ecosystem properties.
The existing small watershed research programs of federal agencies offer to NEON: 1) a wealth of many decades of climate, ecohydrological, and vegetation data as well as experience in managing small watershed research programs; 2) significant, though limited cyberinfrastructure (e.g., the ClimDB/HydroDB data harvester systems); and 3) commitment to maintain many of the existing measurement programs in small watersheds. In turn, the Consortium for Small Watershed Science asks NEON to: 1) catalyze further development of a small watershed research network involving federal agencies and NEON in order to address continent-scale questions; 2) deploy NEON instruments to maximize potential for integrated investigation of NEON themes; and 3) contribute to the expansion of cyberinfrastructure for small watershed studies, such as building on ClimDB/HydroDB and developing a modeling toolkit and a system for model version control. The critical next step for NEON and these agencies is to build a collaboration of small watershed study programs to address common agency/NEON objectives.