End-to-End Cyberinfrastructure for Decision-Making Support in Watershed Management

Over the past decade, water-centric research has increasingly taken into consideration the interactions between the water cycle and the social, economic, and biogeophysical processes that drive watershed dynamics. In parallel, water management has made great strides in data sharing and collaborative modeling that support decision making through integrated planning and stakeholder involvement. Both research and management communities require data and simulation models that cover large spatial scales and workflows that enable investigations and decision making in real time with participation of multiple watershed actors. To efficiently accomplish their goals, these two communities are tapping into the capabilities of advanced cyberinfrastructure (CI) platforms that facilitate an understanding of watershed processes, knowledge management, visualization, interaction, and collaboration in multiple watershed science and engineering disciplines. This paper illustrates an implementation of an end-to-end CI system for understanding of the ecological threats, shifts in soil conservation practices, and public perception of environmental health with preservation of the economic benefits of agricultural production at the watershed scale. The systems were implemented in a 270 km2 Clear Creek catchment in eastern Iowa.