A Prototype Environmental Observatory in Northern New Mexico

The NSF-funded Science and Technology Center SAHRA is leading a major, interdisciplinary effort to design, implement, and operate a long-term environmental observatory focused on the broad, interdisciplinary question. Currently, there are 18 investigators from 11 universities, governmental agencies, and research laboratories collaborating on the effort. Research disciplines include surface and subsurface hydrology, biogeochemistry, soil science, ecology, atmospheric science, and hydrometeorology with active efforts to engage other fields. Within this interdisciplinary context our research efforts are designed to create new or improved understanding of the complexities in the interactions between physical, biological, and human factors in semiarid environments. To foster coordination among researchers from multiple disciplines, we are organized around our broad vegetation change question with subsidiary research questions (e.g. how do ecohydrological interactions control the fluxes and storage of water, and how can these ecohydrological interactions, which are the outcome of processes that occur at the meter-to-hillslope scale, be represented at the scale of landscapes to basins) to coordinate measurement, modeling, and experimentation efforts. Our generalized approach consists of intensive, coordinated observations at key locations closely coordinated with fine- resolution process modeling. The result of this iterative process of measurement and modeling is a quantitative understanding of coupled physical and biological processes as well as information on the spatial and temporal distribution of data needed to represent these processes in distributed models. This observatory serves to 1) contribute to SAHRA's mission "to promote sustainable management of water resources by conducting water resources-related science, outreach, and education in the context of critical water management issues of semiarid and arid regions" and 2) to demonstrate the utility and value of a coordinated, interdisciplinary observatory effort in addressing both basic and applied science questions.