Abstract

Abstract—Cyberinfrastructure is enabling ever-more integrative and transformative science. Watershed reanalysis is an objective quantitative method of synthesizing all sources of hydrologic variables (historical, real-time, future scenarios, observed and modeled), which requires intensive data sharing and collaborations of interdisciplinary geosciences research. In this context, a task-centered collaboration strategy was implemented to carry out watershed-based historical climate simulations (reanalysis) at the Shale Hills Critical Zone Observatory. The collaboration was carried out using cyberinfrastructure developed under the Organic Data Science project (www.organicdatascience.org) which involved setting up on-line team tasks for creating workflows that included: accessing national watershed data, setting up the model grid and initial parameters, conducting historical watershed simulations forced by climate reanalysis, calibrating the model, and finally applying the model to IPCC climate scenarios. Collaborative science is becoming a de-facto strategy for earth science research (ref CZO national, NEON, etc.). Earth and environmental sciences can benefit from advances in cyber-science through implementation of collaboration software that improves our ability to access and share data, allow collective development of science hypotheses, supports building models as via team participation, and offers simplified access to data analytics and visualization software.