中文摘要：

多学科数据的收集和积累、多学科模型的集成以及现代化的观测系统是发展流域科学的必要前提。“数字黑河”是为黑河流域科学研究和流域集成管理而搭建的集数据、模型和观测系统于一体的信息化平台，是“数字地球”在流域尺度上的一次实践性尝试。数字黑河由数据平台、模型平台和数字化观测系统组成，其核心是观测、数据和模型平台中的信息基础设施建设，但同时也外延而扩展为以流域综合模型为骨架的各种应用。“数字黑河”已阶段性地完成了数据集成，在线数据量超过1000GB，并实现了完全共享，有力地支持了黑河流域的各项研究工作；在模型集成方面已初步建成了流域综合模型和空间决策支持系统。“数字黑河”的进一步构想是在e-Science的框架下将数据系统、观测系统、模型系统、信息发布系统、高性能计算及科学计算可视化集成为一个整体。

英文摘要：

Digital River Basin, as an information infrastructure for the watershed science, is a research environment that supports advanced data acquisition, storage, management, integration and visualization as well as other computing and information processing services over the Internet in the river basin scale. The ＂Digital Heihe River Basin＂ can be considered as an implementation of the Digital Earth concept in the Heihe River Basin, the second largest inland river basin of China. The Digital Heihe River Basin is composed of an information cyberinfrastructure and its applications. The former is further buih up by a data integration platform, a modeling system and an automatic observing system, and the latter are various applications using integrated models and decision support systems. The first paper of these series papers provides an overview on the Digital Heihe River Basin. The data acquisition and integration of the Heihe River Basin have been partially completed; more than 1000 GB science data are available on the Internet with ＂full and open＂ data sharing policy, which supports various kinds of research work in the river basin successfully. A primary integrated model and a spatially explicit decision support system have been developed. For the next step, the data integration, modeling, automatic observing, information distribution, high performance computing, and scientific computing visualization are proposed to be integrated as a system of systems in the framework of e-science, to support the watershed science studies in the Heihe River Basin.