Jeffery S. Horsburgh

• PhD
• Professor at Utah State University

Critical Zone (CZ) scientists study the coupled chemical, biological, physical, and geological processes operating across scales to support life at the Earth’s surface. In 2020, the U.S. National Science Foundation funded a network of Thematic Cluster projects called “CZ Net” to work collaboratively in answering scientific questions related to effe...

Much of modern science takes place in a computational environment, and, increasingly, that environment is programmed using R, Python, or Julia. Furthermore, most scientific data now live on the cloud, so the first step in many workflows is to query a cloud database and load the response into a computational environment for further analysis. Thus, t...

Recent decades have witnessed a massive increase in the volume and quality of hydrologic data available to aid water resources decision makers, managers, and scientists. This has been accompanied by exponential growth in both desktop and cloud computing, as well as data storage capabilities. As a result, there are abundant opportunities to drastica...

Residential water end-use events (e.g., showers, toilets, faucets, etc.) can be derived from high temporal resolution (<1 min) water metering data. Past studies have collected data at different temporal resolutions (e.g., 4 s, 5 s, or 10 s) without assessing the impact of the temporal aggregation interval on end-use event features (e.g., volume, fl...

At a minimum, standardised, community accepted vocabularies are necessary for effective data discovery. Further, they can assist with large scale and reproducible analyses. There are some attempts to define the characteristics of a vocabulary which (a) make it most useful to a particular scientific domain, and (b) what characteristics will make it...

Hydroinformatics and water data science topics are increasingly common in university graduate settings through dedicated courses and programs as well as incorporation into traditional water science courses. The technical tools and techniques emphasized by hydroinformatics and water data science involve distinctive instructional styles, which may be...

Hydroinformatics and water data science topics are increasingly common in university graduate settings through dedicated courses and programs as well as incorporation into traditional water science courses. The technical tools and techniques emphasized by hydroinformatics and water data science involve distinctive instructional styles, which may be...

Sensors measuring environmental phenomena at high frequency commonly report anomalies related to fouling, sensor drift and calibration, and datalogging and transmission issues. Suitability of data for analyses and decision making often depends on manual review and adjustment of data. Machine learning techniques have potential to automate identifica...

We present a new, open source, computationally capable datalogger for collecting and analyzing high temporal resolution residential water use data. Using this device, execution of water end use disaggregation algorithms or other data analytics can be performed directly on existing, analog residential water meters without disrupting their operation,...

Sensors measuring environmental phenomena at high frequency commonly report anomalies related to fouling, sensor drift and calibration, and datalogging and transmission issues. Suitability of data for analyses and decision making often depends on manual review and adjustment of data. Machine learning techniques have potential to automate identifica...

Collecting and managing high temporal resolution residential water use data is challenging due to cost and technical requirements associated with the volume and velocity of data collected. We developed an open-source, modular, generalized architecture called Cyberinfrastructure for Intelligent Water Supply (CIWS) to automate the process from data c...

The Logan River watershed, located in Northern Utah, USA, consists of a relatively pristine, mountainous area that drains to a lower elevation, valley area influenced by both urban development and agriculture. The Logan River Observatory has been collecting aquatic (streamflow and water quality) and climate data throughout the Logan River watershed...

In this synthesis, we assess present research and anticipate future development needs in modeling water quality in watersheds. We first discuss areas of potential improvement in the representation of freshwater systems pertaining to water quality, including representation of environmental interfaces, in-stream water quality and process interactions...

Cyberinfrastructure needs to be advanced to enable open and reproducible environmental modeling research. Recent efforts toward this goal have focused on advancing online repositories for data and model sharing, online computational environments along with containerization technology and notebooks for capturing reproducible computational studies, a...

We present a low-cost (≈$150) monitoring system for collecting high temporal resolution residential water use data without disrupting the operation of commonly available water meters. This system was designed for installation on top of analog, magnetically driven, positive displacement, residential water meters and can collect data at a variable ti...

Web based applications, web services, and online data and model sharing technology are becoming increasingly available to support hydrologic research. This promises benefits in terms of collaboration, computer platform independence, and reproducibility of modeling workflows and results. In this research, we designed an approach that integrates hydr...

In hydrologic research, there is a need to manage, archive, and publish data in a discoverable way to increase data reuse, transparency, and reproducibility. Multidimensional space-time data are commonly used in hydrologic research, and systems are needed for sharing and exchanging such data. Simply exchanging files may result in loss of metadata i...

Many have argued that datasets resulting from scientific research should be part of the scholarly record as first class research products. Data sharing mandates from funding agencies and scientific journal publishers along with calls from the scientific community to better support transparency and reproducibility of scientific research have increas...

There are now many ongoing efforts to develop low-cost, open-source, low-power sensors and datalogging solutions for environmental monitoring applications. Many of these have advanced to the point that high quality scientific measurements can be made using relatively inexpensive and increasingly off-the-shelf components. With the development of the...

Many recent modeling efforts have employed component-based modeling frameworks to take advantage of the flexibility they provide in representing systems more holistically. Despite the benefits that are driving this adoption, conducting model parameter estimation, uncertainty analysis, sensitivity assessment, and other simulations of this nature wit...

The use of existing component-based modeling frameworks for integrated water resources modeling is currently hampered for some important use cases because they lack support for commonly used, topology-aware, spatiotemporal data structures. Additionally, existing frameworks are often accompanied by large software stacks with steep learning curves. O...

Transitioning from the traditional approach of executing water resources models on single desktop computers to increasingly ubiquitous High Performance Heterogeneous Computing (HPC) infrastructure introduces efficiencies that could help advance the degree of fidelity of models to the underlying physical processes they simulate. For example, model d...

Collection of high resolution, in situ data using environmental sensors is common in hydrology and other environmental science domains. Sensors are subject to drift, fouling, and other factors that can affect the quality of the measurements and their subsequent use for scientific analyses. The process by which sensor data are reviewed to verify val...

Environmental data are growing in complexity, size, and resolution. Addressing the types of large, multidisciplinary problems faced by today's environmental scientists requires the ability to leverage available data and information to inform decision making. Successfully synthesizing heterogeneous data from multiple sources to support holistic anal...

Stormwater runoff in urban areas can contribute high concentrations of dissolved organic matter (DOM) to receiving waters, potentially causing impairment to the aquatic ecosystem of urban streams and downstream water bodies. Compositional changes in DOM due to storm events in forested, agricultural, and urban landscapes have been well studied, but...

We present an inexpensive, open source, water metering system for measuring water use quantity and behavior at high temporal frequency. We demonstrate this technology in two high-traffic, public restrooms at Utah State University before and after installing high efficiency, automatic faucets and toilet flush valves. We also integrated an inexpensiv...

Integrating social and hydrologic sciences for understanding water systems is challenged by data management complexities. Contemporary mandates for open science and data sharing necessitate better understanding of the implications of social science data types. In the context of an interdisciplinary water research program that endeavors to integrate...

Water resources are increasingly impacted by growing human populations, land use, and climate changes, and complex interactions among biophysical processes. In an effort to better understand these factors in semiarid northern Utah, United States, we created a real-time observatory consisting of sensors deployed at aquatic and terrestrial stations t...

Environmental modelers rely on a variety of computational models to make predictions, test hypotheses, and address specific problems related to environmental science and natural resource management. Scientists and engineers must devote significant effort to preparing these computational models. While significant attention has been devoted to sharin...

Water quality in urban streams and stormwater systems is highly dynamic, both spatially and temporally, and can change drastically during storm events. Infrequent grab samples commonly collected for estimating pollutant loadings are insufficient to characterize water quality in many urban water systems. In situ water quality measurements are being...

One approach for performing uncertainty assessment in flood inundation modeling is to use an ensemble of models with different conceptualizations, parameters, and initial and boundary conditions that capture the factors contributing to uncertainty. However, the high computational expense of many hydraulic models renders their use impractical for en...

Dissolved organic matter (DOM) plays an important role in the aquatic environment and can have significant effects on aquatic organisms. Characterizing the composition of DOM within urban receiving waters and the contributions of DOM from urban stormwater runoff is important for understanding potential downstream water quality effects. We conducted...

Earth Science researchers require access to integrated, cross-disciplinary data in order to answer critical research questions. Partially due to these science drivers, it is common for disciplinary data systems to expand from their original scope in order to accommodate collaborative research. The result is multiple disparate databases with overlap...

Understanding human motivations and actions related to environmental problems is central to modeling complex, human-natural systems. However, social science survey data on environmental issues are often presented in relatively static reports and figures and are not easily accessible for participatory deliberation. Federal data sharing mandates moti...

Applying modern software engineering to scientific software development has many challenges. These include lack of time or incentives to learn software engineering best practices, a lack of understanding or appreciation of the value of modern software engineering, and a shortage of mechanisms to more broadly change the software engineering culture...

Water quality in urban streams and stormwater systems is highly dynamic. In-stream concentrations of common pollutants, such as total suspended solids (TSS) and total phosphorus (TP), can change drastically during storm events. Continuous and unbiased pollutant load estimates require water quality and quantity measurements at a frequency less than...

Abstract HydroShare is an online collaborative system under development to support the open sharing of hydrologic data, analytical tools, and computer models. With HydroShare, scientists can easily discover, access, and analyze hydrologic data and thereby enhance the production and reproducibility of hydrologic scientific results. HydroShare also t...

HydroCouple is a cross-platform, component-based modeling interface definition that largely follows the Open Modeling Interface 2.0 (OpenMI) specification. HydroCouple provides advancements to better facilitate those experimental model investigations that fall into the so-called " embarrassingly parallel " class of simulations, including uncertaint...

Dissolved organic matter (DOM) in the aquatic environment originates from living and decaying organisms and anthropogenic sources. DOM plays a significant role in the availability of dissolved nutrients, sequestration of metals from the environment, and optical properties in aquatic ecosystems, all of which affect aquatic organisms. For example, DO...

Integrated access to and analysis of data for cross-domain synthesis studies are hindered because common characteristics of observational data, including time, location, provenance, methods, and units are described differently within different information models, including physical implementations and exchange schema. We describe a new information...

Water quality in urban streams and stormwater systems is highly dynamic. In-stream concentrations of common pollutants, such as total suspended solids (TSS) and total phosphorus (TP), can change drastically during storm events. Continuous and unbiased pollutant load estimates require water quality and quantity measurements at a frequency less than...

Many hydrologists devote a significant amount of time to applying computational models. Sharing the results of these efforts broadly would benefit the community because scientists could, when appropriate, verify, extend, and refine existing models created by others rather than creating new models from scratch. While recent attention has been devote...

Abstract In making the decision whether to use component-based modeling, its benefits must be balanced against computational costs. Studies evaluating these costs using the Open Modeling Interface (OpenMI) have largely used models with simplified formulations, small spatial and temporal domains, or a limited number of components. We evaluate these...

The types of data and models used within the hydrologic science community are diverse. New repositories have succeeded in making data and models more accessible, but are, in most cases, limited to particular types or classes of data or models and also lack the type of collaborative and iterative functionality needed to enable shared data collection...

It is common for in situ hydrologic and water quality data to be collected at high frequencies and for extended durations. These data streams, which may also be collected across many monitoring sites require infrastructure for data storage and management. The Observations Data Model (ODM), which is part of the Consortium of Universities for the Adv...

The traditional iRODS mechanisms for file sharing, including user groups, often require some form of iRODS administrative privilege. In the HydroShare project for enabling hydrology research, we perceived a need for more flexible file sharing, including unprivileged creation and management of user groups according to policies quite distinct from th...

It is common for hydrology researchers to collect data using in situ sensors at high frequencies, for extended durations, and with spatial distributions that produce data volumes requiring infrastructure for data storage, management, and sharing. The availability and utility of these data in addressing scientific questions related to water availabi...

Urbanization, climate, and ecosystem change represent major challenges for managing water resources. Although water systems are complex, a need exists for a generalized representation of these systems to identify important components and linkages to guide scientific inquiry and aid water management. We developed an integrated Structure-Actor-Water...

HydroShare is an online, open-source, collaborative system being developed for sharing hydrologic data and models as part of the NSF’s Software Infrastructure for Sustained Innovation (SI2) program. The goal of HydroShare is to enable scientists to easily discover and access hydrologic data and models, retrieve them to their desktop, or perform ana...

HydroShare is an online, collaborative system being developed for open sharing of hydrologic data and models. The goal of HydroShare is to enable hydrology researchers to easily discover and access hydrologic data and models, retrieve them to their desktop for local analysis and perform analyses in a distributed computing environment that may inclu...

Hydrology researchers are collecting data using in situ sensors at high frequencies, for extended durations, and with spatial distributions that require infrastructure for data storage, management, and sharing. Managing streaming sensor data is challenging, especially in large networks with large numbers of sites and sensors. The availability and u...

Anticipated changes to climate, human population, land use, and urban form will alter the hydrology and availability of water within the water systems on which the world's population relies. Managing water resources, as well as maintaining associated capacity to provide ecosystem services (e.g., regulating flooding, maintaining instream flow during...

Abstract This paper presents a prototype software system for visualization and analysis of hydrologic data that provides interoperability between the Consortium of Universities for the Advancement of Hydrologic Science, Inc. (CUAHSI) Hydrologic Information System (HIS) and the R statistical computing environment. By linking these two systems within...

Abstract The ability to discover and integrate data from multiple sources, projects, and research efforts is critical as scientists continue to investigate complex hydrologic processes at expanding spatial and temporal scales. Until recently, syntactic and semantic heterogeneity in data from different sources made data discovery and integration dif...

The use of interactive video conferencing (IVC) and related technologies to teach courses over the Internet is becoming more common. The typical model for a distance-learning course is a single instructor teaches students distributed in remote locations connected via IVC technology and a web-based learning management system to facilitate interactio...

The determination of sediment and nutrient loads is typically based on the collection and analysis of grab samples. The frequency and regularity of traditional sampling may not provide representation of constituent loading, particularly in systems with flashy hydrology. At two sites in the Little Bear River, Utah, continuous, high‐frequency turbidi...

The rapid growth of diverse data types and greater vol-umes available to environmental sciences prompts the scientists to seek knowledge in data from multiple places, times, and scales. To facilitate such need, ONEMercury has recently been implemented as part of the DataONE project to serve as a portal for accessing environmental and observational...

This document presents an initial EarthCube roadmap from the perspective of the Layered Architecture Concept Award. Tasks are defined for the integration of cyberinfrastructure tools developed within multiple Geoscience communities into effective scientific collaboration environments for diverse teams of geoscientists. Like the roadmaps from other...

Discovering and accessing hydrologic and climate data for use in research or water management can be a difficult task that consumes valuable time and personnel resources. New advances in cyberinfrastructure and in semantic mediation technologies have provided the means for creating better tools supporting data discovery and access. In this paper we...

The National Drought Information System (NIDIS) Upper Colorado River Basin pilot study is investigating and establishing capabilities for better dissemination of drought information for early warning and management. As part of this study we are using and extending functionality from the Consortium of Universities for the Advancement of Hydrologic S...

Observational data are fundamental to hydrology and water resources, and the way they are organized, described, and shared either enables or inhibits the analyses that can be performed using the data. The CUAHSI Hydrologic Information System (HIS) project is developing cyberinfrastructure to support hydrologic science by enabling better access to h...

Hydrologic information is collected by many individuals and organizations in government and academia for many purposes, including general monitoring of the condition of the water environment and specific investigations of hydrologic processes. Comprehensive understanding of hydrology requires integration of this information from multiple sources. T...

The Consortium of Universities for the Advancement of Hydrologic Science, Inc. (CUAHSI) has been established to promote research infrastructure that advances Hydrologic Sciences. Hydrologic Information Systems (HIS) are part of this infrastructure. Hydrologic information is collected by many individuals and organizations in government and academia...

Advanced in situ optical water-quality sensors and new techniques for data analysis hold enormous promise for furthering scientific understanding of aquatic systems. These sensors measure important biogeochemical parameters for long deployments, enabling the capture of data at time scales over which they vary most meaningfully. The high-frequency,...

Spackman Jones, Amber, David K. Stevens, Jeffery S. Horsburgh, and Nancy O. Mesner, 2010. Surrogate Measures for Providing High Frequency Estimates of Total Suspended Solids and Total Phosphorus Concentrations. Journal of the American Water Resources Association (JAWRA) 1-15. DOI: 10.1111/j.1752-1688.2010.00505.x Abstract: Surrogate measures like t...

Recently, an initiative within the hydrologic science and environmental engineering communities has emerged for the establishment of cooperative, large-scale environmental observatories. Scientists’ ability to access and use data collected within observatories to address broad research questions depends on the successful implementation of cyberinfr...

Process-based understanding of short and longer-term behavior of catchments is important to our ability to predict hydrologic system response. The time scale of many processes is on the order of minutes to hours, not weeks to months, and understanding the linkages between catchment hydrology and hydrochemistry requires measurements on a time scale...

Academic researchers who manage experimental watersheds, observatories, and research sites need the ability to effectively collect, manage, and publish hydrologic data. This often requires the ability to control and document access to the data. One current mechanism for publishing data from experimental sites uses the Consortium of Universities for...

A growing number of hydrologic information servers are being deployed by government agencies, university networks, and individual researchers using the Consortium of Universities for the Advancement of Hydrologic Science, Inc. (CUAHSI) Hydrologic Information System (HIS). The CUAHSI HIS Project has developed a standard software stack, called HydroS...

The CUAHSI Hydrologic Information System (HIS) is an internet based system that supports sharing of hydrologic data. HIS consists of databases connected using the Internet through Web services, as well as software for data discovery, access, and publication. The HIS system architecture is comprised of servers for publishing and sharing data, a cent...

There is growing interest in evaluating the impacts at the watershed scale of agricultural best management practices (BMPs) designed to improve water quality. Many approaches to impact assessment require detailed information about actual BMP use by farm-ers and landowners in a watershed. This paper examines the strengths and weaknesses of using for...

Observations are fundamental to hydrology and water resources system studies and the relationships between the elements of the hydrological cycle can be found from the observations. Hydrologic observations are usually measured by one or more public initiatives and serve the users. While the combination of inexpensive sensors, satellites, and intern...

The Consortium of Universities for the Advancement of Hydrologic Science, Inc (CUAHSI) Hydrologic Information System (HIS) project is developing CyberInfrastructure (CI), and services to support the advance of hydrologic science in the United States. CUAHSI HIS developed CI supports storage of water observations data in a relational database, p...

Characterizing spatial and temporal variability in the fluxes and stores of water and water borne constituents is important in understanding the mechanisms and flow paths that carry constituents to a stream and through a watershed. High frequency data collected at multiple sites can be used to more effectively quantify spatial and temporal variabil...

The Consortium of Universities for the Advancement of Hydrologic Science, Inc. (CUAHSI) is developing a Hydrologic Information System (HIS) that supports sharing of distributed hydrologic data through Web services and tools for data discovery, access, and publication. HydroServer is a computer server that contains a collection of databases, Web ser...