Efforts to observe humans in relation to nature over time and at large scale are few and disjointed in ways that impede progress in building scientific foundations for sustainability. Two water-oriented national-scale case studies highlight the challenges of integrating existing natural system and social system data: one concerns the influence of environmental attitudes and water quality on water conservation efforts; the other explores relationships between environmental attitudes, water quality and recreation behavior. The case studies show that coupled research conducted at large scale can yield new insights, but uncoordinated data limit meaningful inference. We propose salient features of a coordinated observation program for water.
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