Engineering Faculty Take on $4.6m Innovative Climate Resilience Projects
Content by Emily Cerf via UCSC Newscenter
Professor of Computer Science and Engineering Alex Pang's project will monitor Santa Cruz shoreline and nearshore dynamics to better understand and prepare for threats posed by sea level rise. (photo by Carolyn Lagattuta)
From building more efficient greenhouses to improving wildfire management, Baskin Engineering professors are leading three major projects to address climate crisis issues with funding from UCSC’s newly launched Center for Coastal Climate Resilience.
The Center recently announced a total of more than $4.6 million in award funding for efforts to fight climate change in coastal communities across California and beyond. All three of the projects led by engineering faculty are pilot awards, meaning they were previously unfunded efforts to address climate impacts and solutions.
“We are very excited about these new initiatives as we continue to build capacity, expertise and partnerships,” said Anne Criss, Assistant Dean of the Baskin School of Engineering who is coordinating climate change-related projects at the school. “Engineering is here to provide meaningful contributions to improving our resilience to climate change, playing an essential role not only in finding technical solutions to reducing greenhouse gas emissions, but also in helping coastal communities adapt to our changing climate.”
Coastal Monitoring
Sea level rise poses a great threat to coastal communities such as Santa Cruz, and a prerequisite for protecting those communities is a deep understanding of those threats and the risks they pose. This project will employ a machine learning-based algorithm to analyze changes in the Santa Cruz shoreline and nearshore dynamics such as rip currents using video from a network of webcams in the study area. The shoreline data captured at various time scales and rip current occurrence data can be used for climate modeling, prediction, and policy making, such as long-term studies on sea level rise and rip currents to help with beach safety. The software will be open source so it can be replicated for other settings and extended for future projects.
Greener Greenhouses
As extreme weather threatens agricultural production and about a third of the world’s population does not have access to adequate food, greenhouses are an important aspect of climate resilience in the global food production system. Katia Obraczka and her team will develop greenhouses equipped with an Internet of Things system that continuously monitors conditions such as airflow, temperature, humidity or light throughout the greenhouse to optimize resource usage such as water and fertilizer, while improving food production. The system will employ LiFi, a low-power wireless communication technology that uses light waves emitted by LEDs for ultra-low-power and efficient communication. LEDs will also be used to provide supplemental illumination for the plants as well as energy sources for the light-powered IoT sensing nodes. The LiFi IoT will also be used to control greenhouse elements such as vents, lights, and irrigation pumps. The LiFi-based IoT technology will be open source, making it accessible to small, local farmers. Ultimately, the team hopes to show that plants grow as well or better in greener greenhouses than current methods, while reducing the amount of water, electricity, and labor used to grow healthy food in addition to operating battery-free.