EPSCoR Research Fellows: NSF: Using Next-Gen Network-Scale Models to Predict Ecosystem Responses to Hydrologic Disturbance

This project will provide a fellowship to an Assistant Professor and training for a graduate student at the University of Alabama. This work will be conducted in collaboration with Drs. Natalie Griffiths, Marie Kurz, and Saubhagya Rathore at the Department of Energy Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL). Through the fellowship, the principal investigator will collaborate with ORNL’s Watershed Dynamics and Evolution Science Focus Area research team to represent streamflow using a state-of-the-art hydrologic model, the Advanced Terrestrial Simulator (ATS). Through this project, the principal investigator and graduate student will gain expertise in generating and interpreting ATS model outputs. Further, the integration of stream chemistry data and advanced hydrologic modeling techniques will result in improved understanding of how headwater stream networks expand and contract in response to intensifying hydrologic disturbance. By developing predictive modeling expertise, the project will advance the knowledge and capabilities that will be required to protect Alabama’s surface water quality, habitat sustainability, and drinking water security. Intensifying disturbance regimes, including amplified duration of droughts, have significant consequences for the functional integrity of freshwater ecosystems. However, we lack predictive understanding of how disturbance regimes will alter headwater stream networks and their resulting function. Such understanding will require both empirical observations of surface water and advanced modeling approaches to fully characterize hydro-biogeochemical processes. Through this project, the principal investigator and a graduate student will collaborate with researchers in the Watershed Dynamics and Evolution Science Focus Area at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. The project goal will be to assess how stream network function, as whole-stream metabolism, responds to dynamic network expansion and contraction. The research team will develop a distributed flow simulation model for a watershed in central Alabama using the Advanced Terrestrial Simulator (ATS). The team will use ATS outputs to test how watershed expansion and contraction drive network function. By gaining a deeper understanding of ATS, this project will advance predictive capabilities in an understudied region of the United States. The project will also strengthen research collaborations between the University of Alabama and Oak Ridge National Laboratory. This project is supported by the EPSCoR Research Infrastructure Improvement Program: EPSCoR Research Fellows, which supports early- and mid-career investigators in eligible jurisdictions to develop collaborations at the nation’s private, government or academic research institutions. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.