Location: Agroclimate and Hydraulics Research Unit
Project Number: 3070-13000-014-020-A
Project Type: Cooperative Agreement
Start Date: Jul 1, 2025
End Date: Jun 30, 2026
Objective:
This Agreement provides funding to the cooperator as required to support the ARS project plan titled: “Development of a Monitoring Network, Engineering Tools, and Guidelines for the Design, Analysis, and Rehabilitation of Embankment Dams, Hydraulic Structures, and Channels”. The Cooperator will assist ARS with the following objectives:
1) Developing hydrologic and hydraulic models for watersheds, and incorporating machine learning including deep learning, artificial intelligence (AI) and other novel algorithms to offer innovative solutions to problems pertaining to water availability and watershed management.
2) Compiling existing instrumentation and monitoring technologies and developing data integration technologies to aid in testing, validating, and improving model simulations.
3) Assessing the economic benefits of water resources infrastructure (e.g., dams, reservoirs, levees, irrigation canals, green and hard infrastructure) on mitigation and risk reduction of short and long-term droughts or floods and soil erosion; and enhance public access to water supplies and sanitation.
4) Developing cost-effective field instrumentation (e.g. sensors) and cloud-based data visualization technologies to monitor, estimate, and predict ecosystem fluxes across multiple landscapes.
5) Developing holistic analytical decision support tools and optimization models that account for water use, conservation practices, and impacts of short and long-term weather patterns to evaluate new technologies for aiding sustainable resources management and precision agriculture and for assessing cost-benefit analysis of water resource development and rehabilitation.
6) Identifying and compiling institutional barriers (e.g. policies, regulations, etc.) through stakeholder engagement (e.g., mail and online surveys, interviews) and consultation for the adoption of these holistic technologies and other decision tools to improve/increase (i) water use efficiency, (ii) environmental conservation, (iii) drought and flood mitigation, and (iv) awareness of available decision support tools to minimize risks of long-term drought or flood to individual farmers and producers, agricultural industries, and infrastructure.
7) Training partners, specialists, educators, and students (e.g. K-12 through collegiate) through extension and outreach activities by disseminating information and technologies through a decision support informatics platform, hands-on learning, in-person and/or virtual meetings (e.g. symposiums, workshops, webinars), social media, websites, and videos. Specifically, the cooperator will provide training as needed for ARS scientists and staff on field instrumentation and models as it relates to atmospheric sciences.
8) Developing and refining semi-automated QA/QC tools for processing incoming data with the goal of completing the QA/QC as rapidly as possible, while ensuring that the datasets are scientifically sound.
9) Assisting with the development of the appropriate meta data, USDA ontologies, and data for Geospatial Data Act and National Archives and Records Administration compliance related to radar, UAS, and IoT data that the team plans to collect.
Approach:
The Cooperator will partner with ARS to assist with the defined objectives. Specifically, the Cooperator will provide technical support and expertise for revising and writing guidance documents and developing new and/or enhanced hydrologic and/or hydraulic models, engineering tools, standards and protocols, methodology, and decision support tools. Instrumentation including UASs, sensors, cloud-based data visualization technology, and other engineering tools will be utilized to collect, store and disseminate data from research sites. They will assist ARS in the development and release of information through various formats (e.g. refereed journal publications, decision support informatics platform, hands-on learning activities, symposiums, webinars, workshops, videos, field demonstration days, guidance documents, etc.) and contribute to a communications plan through extension and outreach related activities involving the outlined objectives.