MCA: In Flux: The Role of Dynamic Urban Greenspace in Energy, Water and Carbon Cycling

Urban areas are home to more than half the global population and showcase powerful synergies between climate and human activity. In urban areas, modification of the land surface by humans is especially evident and impacts climatology from local to regional scales. Urbanization causes significant changes to local and regional climate due to major modifications of surface energy, water, and carbon budgets.

The outcomes of this research project aim to improve understanding of how greenspace in urban areas impacts energy, water, and carbon dynamics, which will inform emerging and evolving approaches to adapt to and mitigate the negative environmental impacts of urbanization. The outcomes of this work will inform efforts to intentionally modify near-surface climates through the strategic use of urban vegetation.

Furthermore, a workforce that is trained in the unique science and management of urban areas is increasingly important. Providing integrated research and learning opportunities for undergraduate students is a priority of this project, especially for women and underrepresented groups.

This project explores emergent questions and hypotheses in urban ecohydrology using an iterative and integrated combination of local observations, eddy covariance networks, remote sensing data and modeling approaches to assess the role of dynamic urban greenspace in energy, water and carbon cycling. Small scale processes investigated in ground-based field efforts will be linked with large scale processes using modeling approaches and remote sensing products.

These research activities will provide a better understanding of the controls on land surface-atmosphere interactions and how they influence larger scale feedbacks.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.