The Cooperative Ecosystem Studies Unit, Colorado Plateau CESU, is offering this grant for developing empirical models to predict water temperature in US rivers and streams.

NAWQA’s ENS Project is specifically seeking a recipient that has ongoing research interests and demonstrated capabilities in the development and application of empirical models for stream temperature at large regional spatial scales. ENS scientists will collaborate with the recipient by providing USGS data from sites with continuous temperature monitoring data from across the conterminous U.S. The recipient will then work with ENS to compile extensive GIS-based information on the watershed of each site, screen sites to identify reference sites, and model development and validation.

Once completed, the temperature models will be critical to scientists, managers, and policy makers involved in water quality investigations at a variety of spatial scales. These models are anticipated to be useful for site-specific, regional, and national-scale assessments of the degree to which water temperatures are influenced by human activities. In addition, these models will facilitate predictions about the anticipated thermal changes to rivers and streams stemming from projected climate change scenarios.