The North Olympic Peninsula Solutions Network: Extending NASA Tools Beyond the Research Community to Resource Management User Groups

The North Olympic Peninsula Solutions Network (NOPSN) is extending the tools, knowledge, and results of National Aeronautical and Space Administration's (NASA) Applied Sciences Program beyond the science and research communities to contribute to national priorities with societal benefits, such as in ecological forecasting, water management, and agricultural efficiency. NOPSN is interacting with local, state, regional, and national user groups to identify new opportunities to use NASA tools and technology; our overall approach will be to leverage these relationships and extend them to include the use of NASA tools and technologies. This paper explains our Solutions Network and its initial project developing improved streamflow forecasting in a rain-and-snow-dominated watershed in western Washington State. Many of the tools and concepts we are employing can be readily extended to regional and national scales, so there are opportunities for developing discussion partnerships with NOSPN to determine the best way to provide NASA tools and technologies to other user groups to improve existing or future decision-support systems or tools, to assess and manage ecological impacts across regional, national, and international borders.