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Land Management in Latin America Client Dan Auerbach Background The client is a post-doctoral fellow funded by The Nature Conservancy. He is working with groups in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, and in Biological and Environmental Engineering to study water and the myriad challenges at the intersection of human and ecosystem needs. The research uses simulation modeling to examine how improved land management in Latin American watersheds could benefit both people and nature. Project Requirements The project is to create a suite of programs that would allow a user to examine alternative scenarios of watershed management in terms of their effects on water quantity and quality. The package would combine and modify several existing applications (a scenario generator, a hydrologic process model, various calibration/uncertainty routines, and results access/visualization). The client has a fairly well-defined workflow, but there are numerous technical hurdles (from data access and handling to the user interface) and he is very receptive to new ideas from the project team. One very compelling direction might be “serious gaming” (see, for example, AquaRepublica). This project could lead to opportunities to continue the work beyond the fall semester. |