Future Water Priorities for the Nation - Directions for the U.S. Geological Survey Water Mission Area: The National Academies of Sciences Engineering Medicine

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The National Academies of Sciences Engineering Medicine published a September 2018 Consensus Study Report titled:

Future Water Priorities for the Nation: Directions for the U.S. Geological Survey Water Mission Area (“Report”)

By way of introduction, the Report notes the increasing importance of United States water resources and references pressure related to:

• Growing populations
• Climate change
• Extreme weather
• Aging water-related infrastructure
• Increasing demand for food, energy, and industrial production

Such pressures are considered threats to both water availability and quality by:

• Increasing exposure to hydrologic extremes and hazards
• Affecting economic and policy decisions
• Making tradeoffs between human and ecological water uses even more difficult

The U.S. Geological Survey (“USGS”) asked that the Report be produced and identify:

• The United States highest-priority water science and resource challenges over the next 25 years
• The water mission areas of USGS current water science and research portfolio
• Recommendations of strategic opportunities for water mission area water science and research that would address the highest-priority national water challenges

Challenges identified in the Report include:

• Understanding the role of water in the earth system
• Quantifying the water cycle
• Developing integrating modeling
• Quantifying change in the socio-hydrological system
• Securing reliable and sustainable water supplies
• Understanding and predicting water-related hazards

Recommendations include:

• Enhance data collection, include citizen science, develop web-based analytical tools
• Coordinate with agencies and organizations on data delivery
• Increase focus on the relationships between human activities and water
• Develop a robust water accounting system
• Collaborate with agencies and organizations on water-data standards and categories of use
• Ensure that monitoring networks provide adequate information to access changing conditions
• Focus on long-term prediction and risk assessment of extreme water conditions
• Develop multiscale, integrated, dynamic models that encompass the full water cycle
• Collaborate as appropriate both within and outside of USGS, including agencies in the private sector
• Build a workforce ready to take on new water challenges

A copy of the Report can be downloaded here.