EMBRACE-EAR-Growth: Evaluating the scale-dependent impacts of irrigation and water limitations on ecohydrological functioning of urban landscapes

A growing majority of people reside in cities, but knowledge of water in cities is limited in impactful ways. Water infrastructure in cities includes engineered systems for stormwater management, potable water delivery, and wastewater treatment. The flow of water outside of engineered infrastructure – such as through soils, plants, and the atmosphere – is often understudied, and the role that irrigation of urban lawns and parks plays in affecting water cycling is often ignored entirely.

The movement of water through urban landscapes is important because it influences ecosystem services that can mitigate the severity of city heat waves and their impact on public health. This project will improve understanding of the movement of water in cities throughout the landscape, the role of irrigation in changing the urban water cycle, and the impacts on ecosystems and residents.

The project will identify how these processes change across cities, in different climates, and under varying levels of water restrictions. The project will help inform water management and urban development for resilient cities and healthy communities, improve undergraduate education in hydrology through curriculum development and course-based undergraduate research experiences, and increase research capacity at a regional university with a majority undergraduate enrollment.

The dual objectives of this project are to (1) identify the impact of irrigation on the movement of water through the soils, plants, and the atmosphere in cities across different climates, spatial scales, and time periods and (2) evaluate how water restrictions, due to either natural drought or policy, influence water cycling through urban landscapes. Using targeted field research, the project will measure changes in hydrology and plant physiology across soils, plants, and air at four field sites in Illinois, Colorado, and Washington.

The project will use remote sensing data to identify relationships between satellite indices and hydrologic processes and to monitor changes in hydrology across cities. Finally, microclimate models will be created to predict how periods of water restrictions affect urban hydrology, plant health, and energy balances. The results of this project will improve our knowledge of how hydrology changes throughout urban landscapes during and after droughts, how these changes vary across spatial scales and climates, and how these changes affect the cooling capacity of urban landscapes during extreme heat events.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.