Date: Thu, 13 May 2004 14:56:28 -0400
From: "Andrew J. Miller" <miller@umbc.edu>
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To: Jim Smith <jsmith@Princeton.EDU>, Todd Scanlon <tscanlon@Princeton.EDU>,
Glenn E Moglen <gmoglen@usgs.gov>,
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"" <pd6v@tetra.mail.virginia.edu>,
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Erik Hagen <ehagen@icprb.org>, Ray Hoff <hoff@umbc.edu>,
Kevin McCann <kmccann@umbc.edu>, Rick Lawford <lawford@mail.umbc.edu>,
Andrew Miller <miller@umbc.edu>, Claire Welty <weltyc@umbc.edu>,
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rrmason@usgs.gov, Scott Phillips <swphilli@usgs.gov>,
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Earl Greene <eagreene@usgs.gov>, Cherie Miller <cvmiller@usgs.gov>,
Ted Brown <ewb@cwp.org>, Tom Schueler <trs@cwp.org>,
Keith.VanNess@montgomerycountymd.gov,
Steve Stewart <sstewart@co.ba.md.us>,
Bill Stack <Bill.Stack@baltimorecity.gov>,
Bob Summers <bsummers@mde.state.md.us>,
"M. Gordon Wolman" <wolman@jhu.edu>,
Ron Klauda <rklauda@dnr.state.md.us>,
Emery Cleaves <ecleaves@mgs.md.gov>, Rick Hooper <RHooper@cuahsi.org>,
Jon Duncan <jduncan@cuahsi.org>, batiuk.richard@epamail.epa.gov,
Claire Buchanan <CBUCHAN@icprb.org>, bob.wood@noaa.gov,
lowell.bahner@noaa.gov, Olson.Marcia@epa.gov,
Joe Hoffman <JHOFFMAN@icprb.org>, Carlton Haywood <chaywood@icprb.org>,
Cherie Schultz <CSCHULTZ@icprb.org>,
Stuart Freudberg <sfreudberg@mwcog.org>,
Edward Graham <egraham@mwcog.org>,
david kitzmiller <david.kitzmiller@noaa.gov>,
Steven Zubrick <Steven.Zubrick@noaa.gov>, Pedro.Restrepo@noaa.gov,
Edwin Pryor <Edwin.Pryor@noaa.gov>,
Peter Gabrielsen <Peter.Gabrielsen@noaa.gov>,
George Mckillop <george.mckillop@noaa.gov>,
Mary Lynn Baeck <mlbaeck@Princeton.EDU>,
Richard Fulton <richard.fulton@noaa.gov>, bradley.patricia@epa.gov,
pheiffer.tom@epa.gov, walbeck.eric@epa.gov
Subject: Hydrologic Observatory for the Mid-Atlantic region
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Dear Colleagues:

You are receiving this message as part of an initiative to build support for a federally-funded Hydrologic Observatory for the Mid-Atlantic region. The concept of the Hydrologic Observatory is an outgrowth of several years of deliberation by members of the Consortium of Universities for the Advancement of the Hydrologic Sciences, Inc. (CUAHSI) working together with the National Science Foundation. Many of you either attended our recent meeting on May 4 or were previously made aware of our current initiative, which is being hosted by researchers at UMBC with a community of partners at universities, research institutes, federal, state, and local agencies, and nongovernmental organizations. (For those of you already involved, please note that the general information provided here is for the benefit of those on our expanded mailing list who are hearing about this for the first time.) Our goal is to produce a prospectus that will be submitted in early August 2004 in the first phase of a national competition leading to an NSF proposal submission in April 2005.

There are probably about 10 to 15 teams around the country that are already preparing to enter this competition. The initial competition will result in two awards but the long-term objective is to build a national network analogous to the NSF-funded Long-Term Ecological Research (LTER) network. Each hydrologic observatory will be managed as a community resource with the goal of producing core hydrologic data for the benefit of the general public and to advance the hydrologic sciences with the ultimate goal of improving our understanding and predictive capability and to help meet critical societal needs. The minimum size of the area included in a hydrologic observatory is supposed to be on the order of 10,000 km2, with a nested watershed design being the most likely approach. The consensus of our initial meeting was to focus our efforts on an area including the Potomac River watershed, the upper western shore Chesapeake Bay drainage within the Maryland Piedmont, and the Rappahannock River watershed. The main issues raised in the discussion and the rationale for this choice are described in the attached documents.

This message is sent both to inform the wider community and also to provide followup for those who either attended the May 4 meeting or expressed interest in this project based on earlier communications. We are in the process of putting together a public web page that will be hosted by the UMBC Center for Urban Environmental Research and Education (CUERE), and this web page will include documents as well as a forum or discussion board for posting of comments in order to foster discussion that will help us to develop an effective plan. Attached to this message you will find (1) the abstract of a presentation describing the Hydrologic Observatory concept, to be delivered next week by Rick Hooper, Executive Director of CUAHSI, at the Spring 2004 meeting of the American Geophysical Union (note that the number of awards in the first round has been changed since the abstract was written); (2) a set of minutes from the May 4 meeting, courtesy of Claire Welty, Director of CUERE; and (3) a brief white paper written by Jim Smith of the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Princeton University, with some editorial additions by Andy Miller and Claire Welty of UMBC.

We welcome your participation in this process and urge you to forward this information to other colleagues who may be interested. One key criterion for a successful proposal will be the number of people who have some interest in conducting studies in the Hydrologic Observatory or in making use of the data. If there are names that should be added to our mailing list we would like to have that information. The current list includes university researchers, representatives of federal, state, and local agencies, and nonprofit organizations, but we may have missed some people who should be contacted. We will send out another message in the next few days providing the web site address and some guidelines regarding the next steps in the process.

Regards,

Andy Miller
UMBC Department of Geography & Environmental Systems and
Center for Urban Environmental Research and Education
Attachment converted: Macintosh HD:hooper abstract.doc (WDBN/MSWD) (0007872C)
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Attachment converted: Macintosh HD:cuahsi_white_paper.doc (WDBN/MSWD) (0007872E)