Funded Projects

Nutrient and Greenhouse Gas Evaluation Tool - Funded by the US Department of Agriculture
Under the Nutrient and Greenhouse Gas Evaluation Tool (NUGGET) project we are part of a team that is developing approaches to estimate nitrogen releases to air and water from agricultural managements. We are using the Denitrification-Decomposition (DNDC) soil biogeochemical model to assess the impact of management strategies on the fate of nitrogen (N) and carbon (C) in agro-ecosystems. Current work at AGS also involves incorporating DNDC into a web-based decision support system in order to provide crop consultants, farm managers, natural resource managers and policy makers with the technical resources needed for the evaluation of best management practices and site-specific applications.

Rangeland Decisions Support System - Funded by NASA
Rangeland managers need tools for evaluating impacts of management practices on short- and long-term environmental quality and rangeland fertility. These tools need to be able to integrate the large suite of interacting factors that influence environmental quality and rangeland fertility and provide scientifically sound information that is available in a timely manner and can readily be understood and used. The overall goal of our Rangeland Decisions Support System is to develop, generate, and disseminate a suite of rangeland information products from remotely sensed data, and to apply those products in an integrated DSS for improved management. Are objectives are to enable public, private, or nonprofit end-user organizations to adapt scientifically-sound measurements and derived products into operational use for improved agricultural efficiency, better carbon management, and developing sustainable rangeland management practices.

Land Use Land Cover Change Tools - Funded by the Cooperative Institute for Coastal and Estuarine Environmental Technology
Coastal and estuarine habitats in the Northeast are being significantly impacted by a rapid rate of population growth and an ever accelerating change in land use composition. Policy-makers and local/regional planners desire information on land use and the interactions of drivers to make informed decisions about land use to support community growth while minimizing environmental impacts. AGS is a part of a team combining remote sensing products, GIS biophysical data, demographic and economic conditions, and artificial intelligence algorithms in an artificial neural network to project the location of future land use changes in coastal New Hampshire. This project works closely with regional planners and community organizations.

Kansas-N2O Mitigation - Funded by the USDA-NRI Air Quality Program
Agriculture emits to the atmosphere significant quantities of GHG, mainly CO2, N2O, and CH4. While agriculture is contributing to the atmospheric accumulation of GHG, it also has the potential to be a significant mitigation option, in particular changes in agricultural management practices, such as tillage, fertilization, irrigation, and manure amendment. We are investigating the effects of various N-management strategies, such as for the purpose of reduction of N2O fluxes under no-till conditions.

Developing Animal Manure Management Tools - Funded by the USDA
The measurement and monitoring of dairy-related air emissions and emission reductions is complex because the emission sources are dispersed and largely driven by biological activity with significant variability over time, space, and management practices. Emissions are further affected by local and regional meteorological and soil conditions. This complexity results from the interaction of a suite of biogeochemical processes such as decomposition, nitrification, denitrification, fermentation, and ammonia volatilization. Our Web-based biogeochemical modeling tools being constructed will enable the dairy industry to access and easily use a scientifically sound modeling tool for estimating air emissions and evaluation of mitigation strategies.

Northern Eurasia Earth Science Partnership Initiative - Funded by NASA/Multiple Funding Agencies
We are contributing to the NEESPI effort on a few fronts. The goal established for the NEESPI was to establish a large-scale, interdisciplinary program of funded research aimed at developing a better understanding of the interactions between the ecosystem, atmosphere, and human dynamics in northern Eurasia in support of international science programs with particular relevance to global climate change research interests and government agency funding priorities. The long range goal is to develop a comprehensive understanding of the Northern Eurasian terrestrial ecosystem dynamics, biogeochemical cycles, surface energy and water cycles, and human activities and how they interact with and alter the biosphere, atmosphere, and hydrosphere of the Earth. The anticipated outcome from this program of research is the ability to measure, monitor, and model the processes that will provide accurate future projections of climatic and environmental changes in this region.

Modeling Marginal GHG Abatement - Funded by the EPA
The EPA's Climate Economics Branch (CEB) promotes cost-effective strategies to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, both in the U.S. and internationally. In addition, the Branch conducts economic and integrated assessment analyses to support decisions related to U.S. climate change policy. An area of expertise includes analysis of U.S. and international agricultural options (both methods and technologies) to reduce GHG emissions and sequester carbon and their associated benefits and costs, as well as the estimation of potential economic, environmental, and human health impacts and adaptation associated with climate change. The goals of this project are to advance CEB's international agricultural mitigation analyses capabilities by using a case study to evaluate an important potential bias associated with previous analyses, provide more refined estimates of greenhouse gas mitigation potential, and provide direction for future improvements to greenhouse gas abatement cost estimates from crop systems.

CIG-California Rice and Agricultural - Funded by Environmental Defense, California Rice Commission
The enactment of California Assembly Bill 32 - the Global Warming Solutions Act (Assembly Bill 32) of 2006 - which regulates greenhouse gas emissions marked the beginning of a new era of climate policy for California and likely the nation. Policy makers, the public, and various industries in California are grappling with the challenge of how to meet AB 32's emission reduction targets in the most cost effective manner. In order to respond to emerging concerns about global climate change and to encourage continuous environmental improvement throughout the industry, rice producers are now open to examining options for voluntarily reducing GHG emissions and sequestering carbon within the framework of a GHG emissions trading program. Approaches are needed to measure GHG emissions and reduction strategies in order to make beneficial decisions. Our goal is to develop tools to measure GHG emissions and evaluate environmental practices, reduction technologies, and the economic benefits of managements on selected rice farms in California.

Enhanced Research and Education Capacity for Integration of Earth Observations, Infectious Diseases Ecology and Public Health in New Hampshire - Funded by NASA
At national and state scales within the United States, a number of vector-borne infectious diseases (e.g., Lyme disease, Eastern Equine Encephalitis (EEE), and West Nile Virus) have experienced rapid expansion across many states. Large spatial variation and temporal dynamics as well as associated uncertainty in the outbreaks and spread of infectious diseases pose enormous challenges to public health professionals, decision makers, and the public. Research is needed in order to manage risks and preparedness for infectious disease. The overarching objectives of this project are to improve our understanding of infectious diseases ecology and to develop epidemiological modeling and prediction capacity for identifying "hot spots (spatially varying risk)" and "hot-times (time-varying risk)" of vector-borne diseases (e.g., Lyme disease); educate and train researchers so that they are capable to integrate geospatial technology (remote sensing, GIS, and global positioning system) and mathematical and statistical modeling into infectious disease ecology and public health; enhance public service and preparedness for citizens in the world with rapidly evolving dynamics of infectious diseases.

Developing Geospatial Tools for Web GIS and 3-D Visualization for Enhanced Web-based Decision Support Systems - Funded by the New Hampshire Industrial Research Center
There is an increasing demand for scientifically sound and spatially explicit decision support systems that are easy to use and readily available. The development and integration of spatially explicit GIS data, which are required for robust geospatial decision support systems (DSS), is time consuming and expensive. The three primary goals we aim to address are approaches to automate and pre-process large volumes of spatial data required to run a DSS, develop tools to summarize and visualize complex spatial data, and create flexible three dimensional data visualization capabilities

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