Water is essential for life. Across the globe, freshwater quantity and quality (FWQQ) are changing profoundly: we are facing a global water crisis. Thus, the socio-techno-eco-logical questions of where, how, and why changes in FWQQ dynamics are occurring are quintessentially important. Further, in recent years it has become increasingly clear that some of the most innovative, cross-disciplinary science will be accomplished by highly diverse, inspired teams. Thus, how these and other novel, big questions in ecological science will be answered in the future is also a frontier. We maintain that teams of scientists who have built supportive and creative partnerships, and who are trained to merge ideas and resources from diverse fields using next-gen tools and analytics, are best positioned to address the most complex of interdisciplinary environmental problems.
Results/Conclusions
The problems and questions associated with FWQQ are of intense importance, inherently interdisciplinary, and team-oriented. We illustrate, with examples from the grassroots Global Lake Ecological Observatory Network (GLEON), new frameworks for how to form, lead, and operate in effective, impactful, diverse teams to accelerate interdisciplinary discovery and advancing societally-relevant, freshwater science. Our GLEON experience underscores the value of network science to scientists: a recent member survey indicates that participation in the network results in emergence of new ideas (86%), new collaborations (82%), sharing of ideas (69%), and data (57%), tools, technologies (42%), as well as provides multiple leadership training opportunities. Building dynamic, global, inter-disciplinary communities (human networks) with the capacity to confront profoundly complex system problems and advance scientific discovery surrounding the global water crisis is an urgent need, and opportunity.