GOVERNMENT
WATERS Network releases strategy for national environmental observatory network
The WATERS Network recently announced their draft strategy for building a large-scale, distributed environmental observatory network that will transform scientific understanding of the Earth's water environment. The science, education, and design strategy document is now available at www.watersnet.org. The WATERS team is seeking input on this document. Comments may be submitted at blog.watersnet.org/. 
"We don't know enough about today's unprecedented environmental changes and how they affect the water environment, or how we should re-orient ourselves to respond to these changes," says Barbara Minsker. "There's a real scientific and societal urgency to these problems. Because they have such a deep and broad impact, we want deep and broad insight into our plans and how the WATERS Network can help." Minsker is an environmental engineering professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and a research scientist at NCSA. She leads the WATERS Network Project Office, which is planning the WATERS Network. The WATERS Network will seamlessly integrate sensors, instruments, and other means of collecting information with modeling and cyberinfrastructure that researchers use every day—giving them an unparalleled view of this ever-changing resource and providing insight into the coupled human and natural processes affecting water at multiple scales. The data it illuminates will stretch from the tips of Earth's vegetation to the groundwater and will blanket many crucial regions throughout the United States. It will support the modeling of natural phenomenon like water's movement across the earth and biological processes within water. It will also supported educated decision making in areas like land development, water resource management, and sanitary design. The WATERS Network is a collaboration between the hydrologic and other surface earth science disciplines, environmental engineering, and social science research communities, funded by the National Science Foundation's Engineering and Geosciences directorates. NCSA manages the WATERS Project Office.
"We don't know enough about today's unprecedented environmental changes and how they affect the water environment, or how we should re-orient ourselves to respond to these changes," says Barbara Minsker. "There's a real scientific and societal urgency to these problems. Because they have such a deep and broad impact, we want deep and broad insight into our plans and how the WATERS Network can help." Minsker is an environmental engineering professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and a research scientist at NCSA. She leads the WATERS Network Project Office, which is planning the WATERS Network. The WATERS Network will seamlessly integrate sensors, instruments, and other means of collecting information with modeling and cyberinfrastructure that researchers use every day—giving them an unparalleled view of this ever-changing resource and providing insight into the coupled human and natural processes affecting water at multiple scales. The data it illuminates will stretch from the tips of Earth's vegetation to the groundwater and will blanket many crucial regions throughout the United States. It will support the modeling of natural phenomenon like water's movement across the earth and biological processes within water. It will also supported educated decision making in areas like land development, water resource management, and sanitary design. The WATERS Network is a collaboration between the hydrologic and other surface earth science disciplines, environmental engineering, and social science research communities, funded by the National Science Foundation's Engineering and Geosciences directorates. NCSA manages the WATERS Project Office. 
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