This abstract is submitted on behalf of the Hydrologic Information Science Committee of CUAHSI. The committee is attempting to advance integrative hydrologic science through the development of a hydrologic information system that can be implemented at universities throughout the United States. It involves collaboration between hydrologic scientists from the Consortium of Universities for the Advancement of Hydrologic Science, Inc (CUAHSI) and computer scientists from the San Diego Supercomputer Center, and supports a larger strategy at NSF to develop cyberinfrastructure to advance interdisciplinary study of environmental systems. The CUAHSI Hydrologic Information System will be built around a hydrologic data model that synthesizes data from diverse sources describing the water environment, and will support knowledge discovery through its own analysis and visualization tools and links to external modeling and software systems. The Hydrologic Information System will be built as a network so that data sources from many geographic locations can be automatically harvested and imbedded within a common data framework at the user’s location. A prototype system is p[roposed with the San Diego Supercomputer Center as the hub, and the experience thus gained used to define a request for proposals for a CUAHSI Center for Hydrologic Information which will be responsible for the long-term maintenance and support of this system.

Integrative hydrologic science will be addressed through a series of CUAHSI science driver questions posed first for a hydrologic observatory planning study of the Neuse River Basin, whose data will be synthesized into the CUAHSI hydrologic data model as a prototype Digital Watershed. Similar Digital Watersheds will be constructed using later CUAHSI planning studies for hydrologic observatories elsewhere in the nation, thus providing a comprehensive information base for comparative studies across different hydrologic regimes. These datasets will be made freely available through an internet interface, and the hydrologic data model will also be provided to hydrologic scientists who want to develop Digital Watersheds at other locations.

The status of this effort and opportunities for the community to get involved will be discussed in this presentation.