University of FloridaDepartment of Agricultural & Biological Engineering

 

Water Sustainability in the Tempisque Basin, Costa Rica

Participants:Rafael Muñoz-Carpena, Carolina Murcia, Elizabeth Losos, Andrea R. Albertin, Wendy D. Graham, Ray Huffaker, Gregory A. Kiker, and Peter R. Waylen

Timeline: 2011-2021

Funding Agencies:

  • NSF-CNIC 1132832 and 1132840, (2011-2013).” Catalyzing New International Collaborations: Interdisciplinary workgroup on water sustainability in the Tempisque Basin, NW Costa Rica”,
  • UF  Water Institute NEXUS proposal support.
  • UF-Water Institute Graduate Fellowship Program
  • 2016 CUASHI Field instrumentation grant
  • 2015 Organization for Tropical Studies Field Travel Grant
  • NSF Instrumentation grant.

Download: 2013 Project prospectus (PDF)

Project Summary

Intellectual Merit. Science-based resource management is often severely constrained by limited information, uncertainty in the forecasts of resources demand and supply, and by socio-economical, institutional and legal conditions. We address these constraints by enriching the information base through data mining and reanalysis of gray literature, discussion with international experts, and through a highly interactive multidisciplinary workshop. To structure the group discussion we will build a conceptual model of the system that will be iteratively instantiated into an object-oriented, spatially and temporally explicit modeling system that integrates biophysical characteristics and interlinked socio-ecological features. This flexible and iterative process will allow us to refine the conceptual model and identify critical gaps to guide further research proposal development and submission.
Broader Impacts. Increasing demand for water along with possible diminishing supplies due to climate change creates several vulnerabilities within Pacific Mesoamerica, such as declining agricultural productivity, biodiversity losses, and limits to economic growth. A general decline in economic growth could have important implications for trade. In 2006, the U.S. exported $19.6 billion worth of goods to Central America and imported nearly $19 billion worth of products, mostly agricultural, from the region. Erosion of labor-intensive agriculture could contribute to increases in labor migration. Declining biodiversity would erode the region’s rich natural heritage and declines in Neotropical migrant birds would significantly affect avian biodiversity in the U.S. As these vulnerabilities emerge as realities, the region will need to invest in adaptive responses and new intellectual capital. The interdisciplinary collaboration that is a hallmark of this proposal will facilitate these investments and improve their effectiveness.

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Project Outcomes/Impacts

Increasing demand for water, along with possible diminishing supplies due to climate change, creates several vulnerabilities within Pacific Mesoamerica, such as declining agricultural productivity, biodiversity losses, and limits to economic growth. A general decline in economic growth could have important implications for trade. For example, in 2006 the U.S. exported $19.6 billion worth of goods to Central America and imported nearly $19 billion worth of products, mostly agricultural, from the region. Erosion of labor-intensive agriculture could contribute to increases in labor migration. Declining biodiversity would erode the region’s rich natural heritage and declines in Neotropical migrant birds would significantly affect avian biodiversity in the U.S. As these vulnerabilities emerge as realities, the region will need to invest in adaptive responses and new intellectual capital. Current water use in the region is unsustainable and will become worse as global and regional climate models forecast a warmer and dryer future. This generates management challenges in both natural and human systems, already strained beyond their limit of economic and biological sustainability.
The 5404 km2 Tempisque basin in NW Costa Rica is a good biophysical proxy for the region and the focal site for our work. It contains not only many of the land and water challenges found across the region (including a wetland recognized worldwide as a Ramsar site), but it also contains a strong institutional framework necessary to support a complex project that will allow our work to be effective and have significant impacts. The long-term goals (10 years) of this effort are to: (1) Conduct an in-depth quantitative analysis of the sustainability of water supply and demand in the Rio Tempisque/Bebedero basin in NW Costa Rica. (2) Explore, through empirical data and stakeholder input integration and model-based scenarios analysis, how climate change may affect ecosystem services through changes in water availability, land use and biodiversity. (3) Use the basin as a representative site of Pacific Mesoamerica to investigate what actions may be taken, from policy to practice, to help maintain or improve water availability and ecosystem services in future years. The specific objective of this international collaboration grant was to consolidate an international multi-disciplinary team composed by 11 researchers from University of Florida, 3 from Arizona State University's Global Institute of Sustainability, 2 from the Duke-based Organization for Tropical Studies (OTS), 1 from Columbia University, and 5 Costa Rican collaborators from Universidad de Costa Rica, Instituto Tecnológico de Costa Rica, MarViva, Texas A&M's Soltis Center and ProDesarrollo Internacional, that will tackle the long-term goals.
This multi-disciplinary team addresses collectively the intersection of land and water use in the context of climate change through the integrated disciplinary perspectives of ecology, hydrology, climatology, economics, law, anthropology and rural sociology. In two workshops (one held in the US and one in Costa Rica) the team built a conceptual model of the complex Tempisque Basin system that integrates biophysical characteristics and interlinked socio-ecological features. To integrate the information that will be eventually generated by this team, they have drafted a computational spatially and temporally explicit model with a friendly graphic interphase (QnD). QnD will ultimately allow researchers, stakeholders or anyone in particular to explore the relative impact of different decisions on the management of the region. In the process of building of the conceptual model, the multi-disciplinary team identified critical integrated research gaps that have guided them in the process of preparing several grant proposals.
The group also initiated a pilot study to start gathering data on the hydrology of the lower portion of the Basin, at the Palo Verde Biological Station in the Palo Verde National Park. This will be the basis of one of the research modules that seeks to understand how the water level in the wetland is related to the water management activities upstream and the climate.
Another product of this specific grant was the compilation of all available information on this basin. This included bibliographic data, with a total of 130 documents and all biophysical and socioeconomic aspects, and which are referenced in a bibliographic database. In addition all climate and hydrological data, which were generated by several Costa Rican Institutions were compiled, revised for quality, and integrated into a database at University of Florida UF–Hydrobase.
Often groups are created ad-hoc for integrative research proposals, without prior experience as a team. This NSF-CNIC funding created a unique and well-integrated multidisciplinary and international team. A strong record of proposal submission (7 in one year, including 3 NSF), preparation of several team publications, students’ recruitment (Ms. A Alonso), and ongoing smaller projects attest to our new group ́s coherence. Our Tempisque working group represents a major outcome of this project, breaking one of the largest barriers to sustainability research: the capacity to communicate and collaborate across many disciplines.

2017 UF Water Institute Graduate Fellowship Program

A  transdisciplinary cohort of 6 PhD fellowships in Water awarded by the 2017 UF Water Institute Graduate Fellows program. The project takes a comprehensive systems perspective on an interbasin water transfer project in Costa Rica, addressing climate, hydrology, ecology, social, cultural, and legal aspects of the system. Read more....

Resource Links

Publications

(Graduate student*, Postdoctoral Associate/Visiting Scholar** with Dr. Muñoz-Carpena)

Refereed Publications

  • Alonso, A.*, R. Muñoz-Carpena, K. Robert and C. Murcia. 2016. Wetland landscape spatio-temporal degradation dynamics using the new Google Earth Engine cloud-based platform: opportunities for non-specialists in remote sensing. Trans. ASABE 59(4). doi:10.13031/trans.59.11608
  • Convertino**, M., R. Muñoz-Carpena, and C. Murcia. 2015. "Reading the minds" for quantitative sustainability: Assessing stakeholder mental models via probabilistic text analysis. In: J. Zhang, L. F. Luna-Reyes, T. A. Pardo and D. S. Sayog (editors). Information, models, and sustainability - Policy informatics in the age of big data and open government. Springer. doi:10.1007/978-3-319-25439-5
  • Murcia, C., R. Muñoz-Carpena and M. Sasa. 2012. Integrated Climate Change and Socio-economic Modeling in the Sustainable Management of Water Resources in the Arenal-Tempisque Basin: A Multidisciplinary Approach. Trop J Environ Sci (Revista de Ciencias Ambientales) 43(1): 47-62. DOI: 10.15359/rca.43--1.5
  • Alonso, A.*, R. Muñoz-Carpena and D. Kaplan. Wetness Status Spectral Identification Rule coupling high-resolution field monitoring and remote sensing data for reconstructing wetlands historical hydroperiod. Remote Sensing of Environment (Submitted Nov. 2017, manuscript ID: RSE-D-17-01458).
  • Alonso*, A., Muñoz-Carpena, R., & Murcia, C. 2017. A hydro-meteorological and ecological database to unravel the effects of an inter-basin water transfer project on the Tempisque watershed and downstream palo verde wetland. (Scientific Data, In preparation).
  • Alonso*, A., Muñoz-Carpena, R. Valle-Levinson, A. 2017. Paradoxical evidence of increasing flooding in a coastal wetland caused by upland overuse and drying of a river (In preparation) .

Dissertations and thesis

Reports

Presentations & Posters

  • Alonso, A., Muñoz-Carpena, R., Campo-Bescós, M.A., Huffaker, R.2014. Towards Sustainable Management of Water Resources in Complex Engineered Water Systems: a Case Study in a NW Costa Rican Watershed. FASABE Annual Conference. June 2014. Naples, FL..
  • Muñoz-Carpena, R. 2014. Ingeniería de la resiliencia socioecólógica de una cuenca compleja con subsidio de agua: El caso del Tempisque-Bebedero y sus controles, propiedades emergentes, decisiones en cascada y consecuencias imprevistas. Universidad de Costa Rica. Escuela de Ingeniería Agricola. Mayo 2014. Invited.
  • Alonso, A., Muñoz-Carpena, R., Campo-Bescós, M., Murcia, C., Sasa, M.. 2014. Hydrological Data Collection in a Costa Rican Watershed and its Downstream Remote Wetland: Challenges, methodology and lessons learned. Virtual Workshop on Field Data Management Solutions by CUAHSI. October 2014. http://www.scribd.com/doc/244917438/
  • Alonso, A., Muñoz-Carpena, R., Campo-Bescós, M.A., Kiker, G.A., Huffaker, R.2014. Unintended Consequences of Complex Engineered Water Systems: A Case Study in a NW Costa Rican Watershed. UF Water Institute Symposium. February 2014. Gainesville, FL.
  • Alonso, A., Muñoz-Carpena, R., Campo-Bescós, M.A., Kiker, G.A.2013. Towards a Sustainable Management of Water Resources: Understanding the Interactions between Anthropogenic Activities and Natural Systems: A Case Study in the Tempisque-Bebedero Watershed, NW Costa-Rica Project Overview and First Steps. FASABE Annual Conference. June 2013. St-Augustine, FL.

General audience

Videos

Data

  • Project database stored in the UF HydroBase online SQL database

Software, and models

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This page was last updated on July 13, 2019.