2002 — 2006 |
Kunz, Thomas (co-PI) [⬀] Woodcock, Curtis (co-PI) [⬀] Phillips, Nathan Rubendall, Robert |
N/AActivity Code Description: No activity code was retrieved: click on the grant title for more information |
Environmental Data Acquisition and Communications Improvements At Sargent Center, New Hampshire @ Trustees of Boston University
Abstract - NSF Proposal 0224822 (Phillips, Kunz, Rubendall, Woodcock)
A grant has been awarded to Boston University, under the direction of Dr. Phillips, Dr. Kunz, Mr. Rubendall, and Dr. Woodcock, to make physical improvements in environmental data acquisition and communications infrastructure at Sargent Center for Outdoor Education (SCOE), a field station of Boston University located in southern New Hampshire. SCOE is a unique environment for field studies, containing a wide range of terrestrial and aquatic habitats, but this field station is currently under-exploited for research and education. The goal of this project is to utilize data acquisition and communications improvements to enhance ecological research and education opportunities at SCOE. The scope of the project is broad both in terms of providing data coverage from four distinct terrestrial and aquatic habitats, and in terms of making these data available to a large and diverse range of students, educators, and researchers from the New England region and around the world. This project will greatly further the central goal of SCOE, to facilitate greater understanding and appreciation of the human relationship to the environment, and contribute to making a difference in the world's social and environmental future.
The exact work to be done is as follows. The principal investigators will direct the installation of a state of the art, spatially distributed system for automatically collecting and transmitting environmental data from a wide variety of habitats to a central base receiving station at SCOE. The base station will be linked to the Internet for remote data access and display for off-site education and research. The main elements of this system are: (1) environmental sensors and data loggers for data collection from four major habitats at SCOE (forest, meadow, aquatic, and small mammal habitats); (2) radio telemetry units to send data from all habitats to a central base station; and (3) a radio base station and a web-connected computer server to receive, manage and disseminate data both within a local area network and to the Internet. In addition, to provide physical access to the forest canopy in support of automated data acquisition, in situ research, and educational activities, NSF funds will support the construction of a secure walk-up canopy access tower. This canopy access tower will provide a unique facility at SCOE to study the spatial and functional complexity of forest ecosystems from a wide range of academic perspectives.
With funding for this proposal, scientists from Boston University and outside collaborators will be able to pursue ecological research and integrated ecological education at SCOE. These activities will include research training for graduate students, research experiences for undergraduate students, and educational outreach for school children from diverse backgrounds. At the graduate level, a recently developed, interdepartmental field course at SCOE, entitled "Measuring and Monitoring Biodiversity", will benefit greatly from the proposed improvements. At the undergraduate level, the requested equipment and infrastructure will directly benefit 16 courses within the Environmental Science major at Boston University. The proposed improvements will also be used to improve educational outreach to school children participating in five specific Environmental Studies courses currently offered at SCOE. In all of the above educational and research applications, the equipment requested will be used to investigate how critical environmental variables control a diversity of ecological processes, including small mammal function and reproduction in shelter habitat; environmental and biophysical variables important for land-atmosphere interactions in forest habitat, including light, temperature, humidity, and their gradients from canopy top to soil; forest structural variables that control forest carbon gain, including leaf area and phenology; soil science and biogeochemistry; and environmental variables critical to aquatic and amphibian species survival, reproduction, and conservation.
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0.915 |
2005 — 2007 |
Kunz, Thomas (co-PI) [⬀] Little, Thomas Phillips, Nathan Saligrama, Venkatesh (co-PI) [⬀] Alanyali, Murat (co-PI) [⬀] |
N/AActivity Code Description: No activity code was retrieved: click on the grant title for more information |
Nets - Noss:Semantic Internetworking of Sensor Systems For Efficient in-Network Information Processing @ Trustees of Boston University
Proposal Number: 0435353 PI: Thomas Little Institution: Boston University Title: Semantic Internetworking of Sensor Systems for Efficient In-Network Information Processing
Abstract:
Advances in sensor and computing technologies provide impetus for deploying wireless sensor networks in diverse applications ranging from environmental and habitat monitoring, power systems and manufacturing. Successful realization of such systems hinges on systematic methodologies to address and resolve bottleneck issues. Sensor network operation and lifetime is fundamentally limited by energy, a particular concern in environmental applications that necessitate long-term deployment. The project systematically interfaces new techniques for data networking and distributed information-processing to realize scalability and massive energy efficiencies in sensor network operation. The employed methods include novel semantic routing techniques and in-network localized distributed inferencing algorithms. A challenging ecological application, which is representative of the challenges arising in environmental monitoring, is addressed as proof-of-concept. Successfully completed project will lead to (1) an enabling technique for building systems to monitor and understand our environment and thus provide a framework for evaluating broad policy questions relevant to society; (2) new techniques and theories to advance the viability of large scale sensor networks as an engineering challenge; (3) novel, unanticipated insights and technologies in biology, geography, and engineering, which are bridged by the interdisciplinary effort; (4) scientific tools for scientists, educators, students, and like-minded individuals who might apply the results of the project. The results of the project will be disseminated through scholarly venues, journal, conference and online publications.
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0.915 |
2009 — 2013 |
Gopal, Sucharita (co-PI) [⬀] Kaufmann, Robert (co-PI) [⬀] Friedl, Mark (co-PI) [⬀] Phillips, Nathan Hutyra, Lucy (co-PI) [⬀] |
N/AActivity Code Description: No activity code was retrieved: click on the grant title for more information |
Collaborative Research: Ultra-Ex: Metabolism of Boston @ Trustees of Boston University
The urbanization and growth of the human population over past decades has yielded cities of unprecedented size and form, which emit significant quantities of waste, transform habitat, modify major biogeochemical cycles, alter local climate, and diminish human health. Carbon exchange is a key indicator of the intensity and pattern of urban metabolism, but the state of science currently does not address the close coupling of carbon exchange within and across human and natural subsystems of urban and urbanizing systems. Almost all research has focused on urban carbon emissions, or separately on urban vegetation carbon exchange. Thus, it is not possible to answer basic questions such as whether natural systems exchange carbon more locally than they do with a metropolitan region. This research will develop an integrated measurement and analysis framework for coupled carbon exchange in an urban-to-rural gradient from Boston to the rural Harvard Forest Long Term Ecological Research Site. This project will combine ground-based measurements of carbon exchange and energy flows with socioeconomic, meteorological and satellite measurements and modeling of human activity and the built and natural environments. These data will be integrated into a dynamic, Geospatial Information System that will characterize extant patterns of carbon exchange from daily to seasonal time scales at sub-meter spatial resolution across the urban-to-rural gradient. This analytical framework will then be used to forecast carbon exchange impacts of future land use change and urban growth scenarios, to advance fundamental knowledge about coupling of carbon exchange in urbanizing systems, and provide policy makers with specific and relevant information to align urban growth planning with sustainability goals.
Quantifying climatic, ecological, and socioeconomic drivers of carbon exchange and energy use will allow for forecasting carbon flows and evaluating policies aimed at altering flows consistent with social goals. For example, this research will help evaluate options for achieving Boston's emissions reduction targets. More broadly, it provides tools for larger-scale efforts like the Massachusetts Global Warming Solutions Act, the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, and the American Clean Energy and Security Act. Because this research includes natural and social science determinants at fine spatiotemporal resolution, it can evaluate options that cannot be assessed within a single discipline and anticipate unintended consequences for the human population. For example, this research can be used to evaluate how urban forestry, changes in rooftop albedo, and changes in transportation infrastructure can offset carbon emissions, or to examine how transportation options affect both carbon emissions and the economic opportunities available for urban dwellers.
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0.915 |
2010 — 2017 |
Gopal, Sucharita [⬀] Phillips, Nathan Anderson, Bruce Kaufmann, Robert (co-PI) [⬀] Schaaf, Crystal (co-PI) [⬀] |
N/AActivity Code Description: No activity code was retrieved: click on the grant title for more information |
Nsf Gk-12 Graduate Stem Fellows in K-12 Education Glacier-Global Change Initiative-Education & Research @ Trustees of Boston University
Global-scale environmental changes are critical to our survival as they may affect the capacity of the Earth to sustain life. From the perspective of education and research, the topic of global change presents a rich domain of inquiry, exploration, and discovery at all grade levels. GLACIER's primary goal is to provide graduate fellows a strong interdisciplinary perspective on global change research by training them to observe and analyze both physical and anthropogenic processes and their consequences at a variety of spatial and temporal scales. GLACIER fellows will also have the opportunity to enhance their teaching skills and learn how to translate their research into exciting and dynamic STEM classroom lessons in grades 5- 8. GLACIER will also train teachers to use geospatial technologies (such as remote sensing, Global Positioning Systems (GPS), and Geographical Information Systems (GIS)); learn about methods and field work used to study global change, create sustainable curricula for grades 5-8 based on an inter-disciplinary approach, and cultivate new ways of engaging their students to think about environmental problems.
Broader Impacts: GLACIER will help educate a citizenry that can make informed decisions about the environment, and to train future generation of scientists with a multi-disciplinary perspective and strong analytical skills. Finally, systematic evaluation criteria will provide feedback regarding the value of our multi-disciplinary focus. GLACIER will strengthen the ties between Boston University and two partner school districts of Cambridge and Brookline, as well as enhance existing links to local museums, zoo, aquarium, and other field sites.
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0.915 |
2016 — 2020 |
Gopal, Sucharita (co-PI) [⬀] Phillips, Nathan |
N/AActivity Code Description: No activity code was retrieved: click on the grant title for more information |
Cnh-S: Coupling of Physical Infrastructure, Green Infrastructure, and Communities @ Trustees of Boston University
This interdisciplinary research project will examine the connectivity and functional interdependencies among co-located, critical infrastructure systems, such as gas, water and sewer pipes, roads, and the urban canopy, as well as the networks of people and institutions that depend on and manage and maintain the urban infrastructure. The project will center on an aged, leaking natural gas pipeline system that damages the urban forest canopy, creates road repair problems, degrades air quality, contributes to atmospheric warming, and can endanger human safety through explosion risks. The project will provide new insights regarding the robustness, redundancy, and connectivity within and across physical-biophysical-sociopolitical networks. By explicitly mapping out hidden and unrecognized physical and social linkages among critical urban infrastructure systems, the project will provide a foundation for more effective, coordinated urban infrastructure management and maintenance. The investigators will develop a general framework for sustainable urban infrastructure systems that can be applied across a wide range of urban settings across the U.S. and elsewhere. Project findings will be disseminated to a broad range of potential beneficiaries, including officials in municipal public works departments, local utilities, and state policymakers and regulators. The project also will provide education and training opportunities for graduate students, and it will involve a public school teacher as an integral member of the research team in order to improve capabilities to effectively communicate findings and insights to K-12 students and help them better understand the importance of infrastructure management.
The investigators will use methods from plant physiological ecology, geospatial science, and social network theory to measure interactions among co-located infrastructure and social networks and to map their connectivity and functional interactions across the Boston metropolitan area. They will perform field research across a geospatially diverse set of known gas leaks in the greater Boston area and employ geospatial analysis relate leak data to other data, such as measures of tree health and damage. They will conduct field experiments to assess the impacts of gas leaks on saplings, and they will assess the degree to which methane might be vented through trees into the atmosphere. Analyses of the geospatial relationships between gas leaks and human communities will examine relationships among biophysical and demographic data, and the conduct of a pair of extended case studies will provide insights into the formal and informal relationships and interactions over daily, mid and long-term management issues within the network. Through these complementary approaches, the investigators will advance a general theory of urban function that has the power of transforming science to practical application in guiding policy toward effective, efficient, and environmentally beneficial coordination of infrastructure management. This project is supported by the NSF Dynamics of Coupled Natural and Human Systems (CNH) Program.
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0.915 |