Colonel Harry F. and Frankie M. Lovell Endowed Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering Praveen Kumar and CEE Associate Professor Jennifer Druhan are a part of the research team at the Prairie Research Institute that has developed a data-driven framework to better predict how environmental systems in the critical zone — from the bedrock layer beneath the Earth’s surface to the tree canopy — behave over time and under different influences.
The National Science Foundation-funded project focuses on how intensively managed agricultural landscapes differ from natural landscapes, using data on stream chemistry, soil-gas concentrations, and land-atmosphere exchanges. An understanding of different parts of the landscape, such as the river, soil, and surface, helps scientists make more accurate predictions about how nutrients move through these systems and how they store and release CO2, water, and energy.
Lead author Allison Goodwell, a research scientist at the Illinois State Water Survey, worked closely with Prairie Research Institute co-authors Brian Saccardi, Andrew Stumpf, Erin Bauer, Steve Sargent, as well as Kumar, Druhan and doctoral student Jinyu Wang who are both a part of the Department of Earth Science and Environmental Change at the University of Illinois, and researchers from the University of Nebraska Omaha and Purdue University.
The study is detailed in the journal AGU Advances.
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