Bohrer and Yilmaz Receives NSF RAPID Award
Gil Bohrer, Assistant Professor (Principal Investigator) and Alper Yilmaz, Associate Professor (Co-Principal Investigator) recently received an NSF Rapid Response Research (RAPID) award. This RAPID award seeks to evaluate the consequences on greenhouse gas fluxes of “superstorm” Sandy on a temperate urban coastal wetland in New Jersey. The sites already have baseline data for more than a year of intensive measurements of carbon dioxide and methane fluxes with the eddy covariance technique, methane fluxes with the chamber technique and belowground porewater measurements. With the baseline data, it is possible to measure the impact Sandy had on the processes governing methane release. Bohrer and Yilmaz will join the teams of collaborators in Rutgers and Princeton in NJ to rebuild three flux towers that have suffered a direct hit from superstorm Sandy. The quadrotor UAV will be used to take aerial pictures of the NJ meadowland wetland sites and determine the extent of damage to the ecosystem. Sample fluxes will be taken from damaged and undamaged areas, and followup on the recovery of the wetland will take place throughout next year.
The Environmental Sustainability program at NSF supports engineering research with the goal of promoting sustainable engineered systems that support human well-being and that are also compatible with sustaining natural (environmental) systems. These systems provide ecological services vital for human survival. The long-term viability of natural capital is critical for many areas of human endeavor. Research in Environmental Sustainability typically considers long time horizons and may incorporate contributions from the social sciences and ethics.
