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We need water to live - we need water for drinking,
agriculture, energy and health. In the Colorado
River Basin and the Intermountain West,
demands on our water supplies are changing.
Today, we know what our water needs are and are
beginning to understand our water supply, but we
need to know what they both will be like ten,
twenty, thirty years from now. Without a better
understanding our water resources, it will be
difficult to plan for the future to ensure that
there will be enough water to meet our changing
needs. CI-WATER has four main elements to help us
get a better idea of how much water we’ll have and
where it will be, so we can plan accordingly.
First, we need lots of data on water sources, on
how water moves through the landscape, and on how
climate change affects the availability of water.
Science is producing massive amounts of data.
We need computers and computers models to filter
the volumes of data and produce the detailed,
high-resolution forecasts that will be useful for
planning. The CI-WATER project is developing
computer models that can process these data and
generate forecasts of water availability.
CI-WATER is working on different types of
computer models to help us understand how water is
likely to behave in a certain area—such as the
Colorado River Basin—and also how factors such as
climate change and population growth are
likely to affect water systems. To run the
CI-WATER simulations and models, our researchers
need computer systems and networks that are faster
than ever before. Fortunately, Utah and
Wyoming have been working together on building the
capacity we need now and will need in the future to
analyze and share these data. This is where the CI
in CI-WATER comes in—it stands for
cyberinfrastructure. To run one of the CI-WATER
models, you need a computer that’s hundreds
of times more powerful than the typical desktop
computer you might have at home or at school. We get
that power by combining many of these computers
into large clusters and these clusters are housed
in special facilities such as the University of
Utah’s Downtown Data Center in Salt Lake City
and the NCAR-Wyoming Supercomputer Center in
Cheyenne. We also need networks to connect
researchers to these data and supercomputing
centers, so they can access the data, use the
models, and share the results more broadly, not
only with the scientific community, but also with
the water use community. Data, models and
infrastructure are useful only if we have people who
understand and are able to use them. To help prepare
for the future, CI-WATER is helping scientists,
educators, kids and young adults understand water
resource management, water science, computer science,
and related subjects. We’re developing
educational materials, we’re hosting science
events, we’re hosting national speakers, we’re
hosting teacher workshops and computer coding camps
for teens and young adults. Through these
education and outreach activities, CI-WATER is
helping the next generation of water
scientists and water resource managers have the
necessary tools and knowledge to manage our
resources for the future.