Cooperative Ecosystem Studies Unit, Southern Applachian CESU

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The USGS Tennessee Water Science Center (TNWSC) is offering a funding opportunity for research to collaborate on an analysis of water availability in the southeastern United States. The analysis will include consideration of physical, geographic, biological, and socioeconomic factors affecting the demand for and availability of water. The focus of this funding opportunity will be the socioeconomic component of the analysis. This funding opportunity is intended to benefit the CESU partner by contributing to the professional development of staff and by furthering the recipient’s mission of improving understanding of the human environment. Specific objectives The objectives of this funding opportunity are to: 1. Contribute socioeconomic expertise to an the analysis of water availability that integrates hydrologic, biological, geographic, and economic approaches and data; and 2. Actively participate in applying such an analysis to the southeastern United States in collaboration with USGS scientists and other . The successful CESU partner will collaborate with USGS scientists in cataloging existing and developing novel approaches to the synthesis of physical, geographic, biological, and socioeconomic information to develop an integrated conceptual model of water demand and availability in the southeastern United States. Within the collaborative research team, the CESU partner will have primary responsibility for the socioeconomic aspects of the analysis. Specific tasks include: • Review or annotated bibliography of relevant literature • Identification of existing socioeconomic data sets—particularly spatially distributed GIS layers—that are suitable for incorporation in the water-availability analysis. • Identification of socioeconomic data needs that are currently unmet but which could be filled with reasonable cost and effort • Integration of suitable socioeconomic data into one or more GIS layer(s) designed to fit into the existing analytical framework for water availability • Report results to the USGS in a form that can readily be incorporated in subsequent publications • Present results at an interagency workshop organized by the USGS

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