Solving Water Availability Challenges through an Interdisciplinary Framework

When

All Day, Sept. 12 to 16, 2022

AGU Chapman Conference: Solving Water Availability Challenges through an Interdisciplinary Framework

https://www.agu.org/Chapmans-Water-Availability
What: 2022 American Geophysical Union (AGU) Chapman Conference: Solving Water Availability Challenges through an Interdisciplinary Framework
Dates: Sept 12-16, 2022
Location: Golden, CO
Description: Ensuring adequate water for people and the environment is one of the greatest challenges facing humanity in the 21st century. The availability of water depends on water quantity, quality, and timing. Water availability influences virtually all human activities and ecosystem functions. Consequently, increasing human demand and modification of the water cycle are at the root of many global challenges, including the decline of aquatic ecosystems, widespread water insecurity, and damaging water pollution. Despite the inherent complexity of water availability, the hydrologic cycle has historically been studied from narrow disciplinary perspectives, often isolated from societal context. Addressing the challenge of water availability requires understanding the issues holistically, bringing together the pieces of the puzzle held by different disciplinary perspectives. Our Chapman conference will uncover and make explicit divergent views, assumptions, data types, and research methods that make integration difficult.
Who Should Attend: We welcome a diversity of conference participants, both nationally and internationally, with disciplinary or interdisciplinary academic backgrounds or practice-based experience in water management and/or integrated assessment. Early career scientists and groups traditionally under-represented in science are particularly encouraged to attend.
Meeting Goals: The Solving Water Availability Challenges through an Interdisciplinary Framework Chapman Conference will uncover and make explicit divergent views, assumptions, data types, and research methods that can make integration difficult. This dialogue will lay the foundation upon which a community of practice to facilitate integrated assessments of water availability and move science forward can be built. The conference has three specific objectives:

Integrate definitions of water availability at the conceptual level
Identify metrics and methods to measure water availability in an integrated way
Propose best practices to translate the integrated understanding of water availability into decision making

Across the globe, water resources agencies responsible for assessing and modelling water availability are recognizing the need for new approaches (e.g. Australia’s National Water Account program; Integrated Water Availability Assessments Program at the U.S. Geological Survey). However, to date these programs are rarely able to integrate the full range of disciplines that can provide expertise regarding water availability. In particular, the integration of social drivers of availability that tend to be qualitative such as culture, institutions, and norms is often lacking in these efforts. This conference provides the opportunity to bring disciplinary experts, experts in the field of hydro-social integration, and water management practitioners together to develop a common language and framework for moving the science and practice of water availability forward.
How to Participate: The conference is designed to be highly interactive. All attendees are asked to choose from one of the following options for participating:

Submit an abstract for a session: The conference is organized into 6 topics that build upon one another. You may submit an abstract to be considered to speak in one of these sessions. Details of the sessions and the type of presentations we are looking for can be found on the Scientific Program page with more details about each session. Submit an abstract describing a multimedia “story” about water availability around the world and its impacts on human communities. See the Scientific Program tab for more details. Submit abstract here. 
Apply to be a conference assistant. This option (open only to graduate students or postdocs) will allow you to attend the conference and help the Program Committee to take notes and facilitate breakout groups during the Integration Workshop session. We hope it will be an exciting chance to meet a wide range of scholars and practitioners working in the field and gain exposure to cutting edge science and practice. Apply here. 
Attend the conference without presenting a poster or formal talk. If you are choosing this option, we will ask you to explain in your application how your professional or scientific background and/or current role will contribute to the conference objectives. We will also ask you to prepare a 2-3 minute “lightning talk” introducing yourself and your expertise to other attendees. Apply here.

      
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