Catchment Science – Connecting the Dots from Monitoring to Process Understanding

The catchment community has recently organized its efforts to promote and sustain catchment science, showcasing the inherent scientific and societal value of more than 200 catchment studies that span the globe. This town hall builds on these recent efforts by facilitating an interactive discussion on how to carry out an effective collaborative data synthesis workshop. As a starting point for analysis, we will ask participants to craft a perceptual model of their catchment, led by examples from several catchments. We will conduct a brief collaborative analyses by computing and comparing monthly and annual precipitation – runoff (P-Q) budgets, for which virtually all sites have data. In a future workshop, we anticipate that the sheer number of catchments and their geographic range may reveal novel climatic, geological, or biological factors that drive catchment groupings and reframe perspectives in a global context. As an example, sub-groups of catchments with appropriate data may focus on computing catchment water storage and analyzing factors that shape differences in catchment storage over time and space. We welcome your participation and ideas on designing a future workshop.