EPSS Colloquium Winter-2018

Climatic trends and intensive exploration of landscapes are changing water cycle dynamics in unprecedented and often unfavorable ways. In this talk I will use as example a prototype intensively managed agricultural landscape in the Midwestern US where agricultural production is thriving but threatening the health of receiving waters from the local basin scale to the Gulf of Mexico hypoxic zone. The scientific challenges, and our approach in meeting them, will be presented including 1) the multiple processes that need to be modeled in minimally parameterized models (hydrology, sediment production and transport, river biota, nitrogen exports) 2) the wide range of temporal and spatial scales over which system understanding is needed 3) the need to identify process thresholds that can trigger unsustainable change 4) the need for a comprehensive and strategic program of field monitoring, laboratory testing, and multi-scale modeling to gain system understanding and 5) the challenge of putting science into practice to suggest effective management and policy options.