Workshop: Community Integrated Environmental Models Location: University of California at Davis Date: Early 2015

University Of California-Davis, Davis CA

Investigators

Abstract

1464440 Medellin-Azuara Workshop: Community Integrated Environmental Models There is a persistent schism between scientific understanding and implications for management and policy in the California Bay-Delta. Advanced and progressing water supply and ecosystem models are typically siloed among various government, consultant, and university groups. Outputs are often narrowly framed, with little context and recognition of linkages to other processes. Model skill and sensitivity is seldom explored and uncertainty is not characterized in ways that decision makers can understand or react to. Open source repositories and integrated ecological and water supply modeling systems promise not only to link water system component models, but also foster deeper community collaboration and insights meeting common goals. Component model frameworks knit disparate members of the community together by improving communication between experts as insights and data are shared. An emphasis is placed in enabling Early Career researchers and modelers to participate in the development of the White Paper under the tutelage of senior mentors. This is important as young researchers will build their career around the framework and any future research center dedicated to this initiative. The symposium's objective is to produce strategies for open-source community data, shared model repositories, and interoperable component modeling systems for complex water system analysis and decision support. The symposium will produce a white paper to guide the future of integrated modeling for the California Bay-Delta system with relevance to the wider international modeling community. The paper will be published in the Journal of San Francisco Estuary and Watershed Science, an open-access peer reviewed journal. The symposium will host plenary comments from international leaders in integrated environmental modeling to educate and invigorate discussion. It will convene multiple group discussions on key topics like open source model repositories, component modeling systems, decision support systems for managers and decision makers, and effective institutional arrangements. The science community working on California Bay-Delta watershed issues has developed advanced statistical and deterministic tools for understanding physical, chemical, and biological processes. Yet the complexity of the system, and the societal desire to expand water supply while protecting the environment, demands strengthened connections between disparate process models for more integrative insights. Products from the symposium will directly inform and support new and more effective ways to use data and models for managing ecosystem restoration and water supply system operations.