Postdoctoral Fellowship: EAR-PF: Evaluating spatiotemporal dependence in groundwater-dependent ecosystem processes

博士后奖学金：EAR-PF：评估地下水依赖的生态系统过程的时空依赖性

• 批准号: 2305449
• 负责人: Matthew Lurtz
• 金额: $ 18万
• 依托单位: Lurtz, Matthew R
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Fellowship Award
• 财政年份: 2023
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2023-09-01 至 2025-08-31
• 项目状态: 未结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=2305449&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Postdoctoral; Fellowship; EAR; PF; Evaluating

Dr. Matthew Lurtz has been awarded an NSF Earth Sciences Postdoctoral Fellowship to carry out research and professional development activities at Colorado State University under the mentorship of Dr. Michael Ronayne and at the University of Technology Sydney under the mentorship of Dr. Alfredo Huerte. Throughout the western United States and elsewhere, inland groundwater dependent ecosystems (GDEs) occur alongside many rivers and lakes where the water table is close to the land surface. These ecosystems host a variety of native and nonnative vegetation that provide benefits such as: reduce agricultural-borne pollutants, protect species habitat, and stabilize stream sediment transport. The vegetation communities utilize water (i.e., plant transpiration), representing an important water budget component for the integrated surface-groundwater system. Therefore, GDEs can be used to identify the groundwater supply connected to vulnerable river systems. In this study, water uptake by GDEs in different climatic regions will be quantified using a combination of site instrumentation, remote sensing methods, and numerical groundwater modeling. By increasing the scientific understanding on GDEs, it is possible to enhance the knowledge base surrounding groundwater supply which is key to human and environmental sustainability. The importance of this work will be realized by engaging with beneficiaries in the water conservancy districts of southeastern Colorado and Arizona, where the field research will be conducted. This project will benefit the next generation of scientists by using place-based education and synthesizing water conservation strategies employed by inhabitants of American and Australian territories. The project will rely on Colorado State University’s (CSU) educational outreach programs to communicate scientific findings and conservation methodologies, including traditional indigenous methods. Data acquired, and models and mapped products created during the fellowship will be shared on local-to-international scales.Groundwater dependent ecosystems play a dominant role in supporting flora and fauna, but little information is available to help quantify GDE health (i.e., evapotranspiration) with varying time, space and climatic scales. The main goal of the study is to uncover temporal and spatial dependence in GDEs using remotely-sensed and numerical modeling methodologies. This study will utilize hypothesis testing to investigate how small scale GDE processes translates to larger spatial scales which will bolster predictive models used to address national water challenges. On a temporal basis, the trend direction between GDE health and groundwater availability will be investigated by collecting environmetrics on plant functional groups found in GDEs under varying groundwater and climatic conditions with data in the western United States. A dimension reduction method will be applied to the environmetric data to infer the trajectory of groundwater dependent ecosystems with reductions in groundwater supply. From a spatial-scale perspective, this work will begin by deriving the function form to describe the relationship between GDE health and groundwater availability at the point scale using a Bayesian regression framework. To examine spatial structure in GDEs beyond the point scale, this work will use the derived function as a subroutine in a spatially distributed parameter modeling scheme to build a scale-enlightened numerical model. This project will result in a more accurate representation of GDEs in water resource models using a research framework that is hypothesis-driven, based on the current state of science, and informed by sustainable engineering concepts.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

Matthew Lurtz博士在科罗拉多州立大学的迈克尔·罗纳尼（Michael Ronayne）博士和悉尼大学的心态下，在科罗拉多州立大学（Colorado State University）授予了NSF Earth Sciences博士后奖学金，在科罗拉多州立大学进行了研究和专业发展活动。在美国西部和其他地方，内陆地下水依赖的生态系统（GDES）出现在许多河流和湖泊附近的河流和湖泊旁边。这些生态系统拥有各种本地和非本地植被，可提供益处：减少农业污染物，保护物种栖息地并稳定河流沉积物的运输。植被群落利用水（即植物翻译），代表了综合地面 - 地面水系统的重要水预算成分。因此，GDE可用于识别与脆弱河流系统相关的地下水供应。在这项研究中，将使用现场仪器，遥感方法和数值地下水建模的组合来量化不同民用区域中GDE的水吸收。通过提高对GDE的科学理解，可以增强地下水供应周围的知识库，这是人类和环境可持续性的关键。这项工作的重要性将通过与科罗拉多州东南部和亚利桑那州水保护区的受益人互动，在那里进行实地研究。该项目将通过使用基于地位的教育并综合美国和澳大利亚领土居民采用的节水策略来使下一代科学家受益。该项目将依靠科罗拉多州立大学（CSU）的教育外展计划来传达科学发现和保护方法，包括传统的土著方法。在奖学金期间创建的数据，模型和映射的产品将在本地到国际量表上共享。地面依赖水的生态系统在支持动植物方面起着主要作用，但是很少有信息可以帮助量化GDE Health（即蒸发量），并具有空间，空间和高度尺度。该研究的主要目的是使用远程感知和数值建模方法在GDE中发现临时和空间依赖性。这项研究将利用假设检验来研究小规模的GDE过程如何转化为较大的空间尺度，这将加强用于应对国家水挑战的预测模型。临时，将通过在不同的地下水和气候条件下与美国西部的数据一起收集在GDES中发现的植物功能组的环境指标，从而研究GDE健康与地下水可用性之间的趋势方向。降低方法将应用于环境数据，以推断地下水供应减少的地下水依赖生态系统的轨迹。从空间尺度的角度来看，这项工作将开始得出功能形式，以使用贝叶斯回归框架在点尺度上描述GDE Health和地下水之间的关系。为了检查超出点尺度的GDE中的空间结构，该工作将在空间分布的参数建模方案中使用派生的函数作为子例程，以构建规模启动的数值模型。该项目将使用基于当前科学的研究驱动的研究框架在水资源模型中更准确地代表GDE，并由可持续工程概念所启发，并由可持续工程概念所告知。该奖项反映了NSF的法定任务，并被认为是通过基金会的智力和更广泛影响的评估来审查Criteria，通过评估来通过评估来获得支持。