The Institute for Resilient Environmental and Energy Systems, the Data Institute for Societal Challenges, and the Institute for Community and Societal Transformation have awarded $30,000 in seed grant funds to three transdisciplinary teams. The funding will be used for projects to help build convergent teams to study socio-ecological systems, especially weather and climate-related threats to SES, nature-based climate solutions and bio-based energy and products.
The OU Microplastic Research Center: The Importance of Soil Environments and Climate Change
Led by Tingting Gu, an assistant professor in the School of Biological Sciences, this project will receive $12,500 to broaden and form an OU transdisciplinary team for developing a Microplastic Research Center at OU. The overarching goal of the Center is to prevent or reduce the negative impacts of microplastics on dryland environments and human health and to promote solutions by engaging diverse research and community partners. The initial effort of the research center is on agricultural soils amended with biosolids. The team will document and expand methods for automated microplastic quantification and identification in biosolid-amended soil samples. The team will also identify other OU collaborators and develop proposals for external funding. Co-PIs include Mark Nanny, professor in the School of Civil Engineering and Environmental Science, and Ji Hwan Park, assistant professor in the School of Computer Science.
Producer knowledge and perceptions of biochar for improving soil health and combating the invasive Easter Redcedar in rural Oklahoma
Oklahoma’s natural and agricultural lands are under immense threat due to anthropogenic climate change and environmental degradation. Biochar is a nature-based solution for regenerative agriculture. Led by Lori Han, an assistant professor in the School of Civil Engineering and Environmental Science, this project will receive $12,500 to conduct focus groups and a pilot survey with the goal of better understanding agricultural producer knowledge and perceptions of biochar, with the central objective of discovering the barriers to adoption of this nature-based solution. The team will also identify more collaborators and develop proposals for external funding. Co-PIs include postdoc Laura Bray from the Center for Applied Social Research and Robert Nairn, David L. Boren Professor in the School of Civil Engineering and Environmental Science.
A Deep Learning Approach to Identify Center Pivot Irrigation in the High Plains Aquifer and Quantify Hydrological Dynamics
Agriculture in dryland regions is fraught with perils due to vulnerabilities associated with infrequent, seasonal, and highly variable precipitation; drought; climate change; and land and water degradation due to misuse of scarce resources in these fragile ecosystems. The High Plains Aquifer system is one dryland region that has seen the prolific growth of irrigated agriculture over the past 75 years. Led by Todd Fagin, executive associate director for the Center for Spatial Analysis, and Jason Vogel, professor of Civil Engineering and Environmental Science, this project will receive $5,000 to expand on fifteen years of socio-ecological research in the Southern Great Plains and is a very small facet of additional work that the PIs, as well as a number of other colleagues, are embarking on involving the HPA, specifically, and grasslands regions more generally. The goals of this project are to refine their remotely sensed, deep learning models to improve the accuracy of Center Pivot Irrigation detection in the HPA and beyond; second, to identify the patterns of CPI throughout the HPA both over time and space to later link to other factors contributing to the observed special patterning; and, third, to test the efficacy of using these data to estimate other parameters, such as water use and evapotranspiration.
