{"id":67794,"date":"2022-12-13T14:29:20","date_gmt":"2022-12-13T21:29:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/?p=67794"},"modified":"2022-12-14T10:14:19","modified_gmt":"2022-12-14T17:14:19","slug":"fossil-fuel-emissions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/fossil-fuel-emissions\/","title":{"rendered":"How plants, volunteers will help NAU computer model estimate fossil fuel emissions"},"content":{"rendered":"

Could the plants growing along roadsides and between buildings in Flagstaff help reveal where fossil fuel emissions are highest and lowest in the city? A team of NAU researchers thinks so. As part of a new $25M award from the U.S. Department of Energy to build a statewide Integrated Field Laboratory to study extreme heat, air pollution and their impact on people living in urban communities, the NAU team will work with researchers, community groups and plant enthusiasts across Arizona to test plants\u2019 capabilities as hyperlocal sensors of carbon dioxide from fossil fuel use. The NAU team and its plant partners will not only help scientists track street-level emissions in Arizona\u2019s cities and towns but could also forge a blueprint for building a reliable and high-resolution fossil fuel emissions tracking system across the United States.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The new center, dubbed the \u201cSouthwest Urban Corridor Integrated Field Laboratory\u201d (SW-IFL) and led by principal investigator David Sailor of Arizona State University, is anchored at the state\u2019s three universities and involves teams from Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee, Brookhaven National Laboratory in New York and industry partners. Using the sprawling urban regions of Arizona as a living laboratory, the team will engage communities reaching from the border with Mexico to the Navajo Nation and provide scientists and decision-makers with high-quality, relevant knowledge capable of guiding responses to the air quality, extreme heat and limited water problems that the state faces.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The project is a chance to create information about these challenges that leaders can act on, said NAU SW-IFL lead investigator <\/span>Kevin Gurney<\/span><\/b>. \u201cIn the past, we researchers haven\u2019t always done a good job connecting the physical sciences with the socio-economic realities on the ground,\u201d he said. By thinking about how policies and the built environment interact with physical processes like carbon emissions and heat, Gurney said, \u201cwe\u2019re really trying to do it differently this time.\u201d<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Harnessing plants\u2019 natural fossil fuel detection powers will require a combination of shoe leather, crowdsourcing, an NAU-based emissions model called Hestia and a sophisticated machine housed at NAU, the Mini-Carbon-Dating-System (MICADAS). Scientists can use this mass spectrometer to measure the carbon a plant has absorbed into its stem and leaves. Then they need to identify the portion of that carbon that came from burning fossil fuels, which are too old to carry radiocarbon, an isotope that occurs in the environment both naturally and from nuclear weapons testing. (Read this <\/span>great explainer<\/span><\/a> from KNAU about how the MICADAS machine works.)<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThis project lets us ask questions about tracking fossil fuel emissions in a rigorous and community-based way,\u201d said <\/span>Ted Schuur<\/span><\/b>, Regents\u2019 Professor of biology in the Center for Ecosystem Science and Society at NAU and one of the leads at the Arizona Climate and Ecosystems (ACE) <\/span>laboratory<\/span><\/a>. \u201cCan an annual plant in Flagstaff \u2018see\u2019 the fossil fuels in the atmosphere on the city block where it grew? How local is our airshed, and can the plants in our parks help us figure that out?\u201d\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Once the team learns how precisely common plants can sense their local atmospheric CO2, they will invite people and communities across Arizona to collect and send plants to be sampled at NAU.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Helen Rowe<\/span><\/b>, an associate research professor in the School of Earth and Sustainability at NAU, will connect with community organizations across Arizona to recruit \u201ccommunity scientists\u201d to help map these emissions from the ground. A community scientist could be anyone who wants to learn about plant sampling or is interested in tracking fossil fuel emissions in their community.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Rowe, who also works as an ecologist with the <\/span>McDowell Sonoran Conservancy<\/span><\/a>, said getting diverse communities involved across Arizona is an essential part of the SW-IFL project because volunteers bring important perspectives that are different from those that academic scientists bring. \u201cVolunteers can bring in details from the ground,\u201d said Rowe, who includes volunteers as co-authors in some of her research. \u201cThey bring wonderful insights that they have from being out there, collecting data.\u201d <\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

While collecting and sampling these plants in the ACE lab, the team will begin to draw an emissions map of Arizona\u2019s urban areas. That\u2019s where the Hestia Project comes in. Designed by Gurney, a professor in the School of Informatics, Computing, and Cyber Systems, Hestia is a high-resolution, living map of urban fossil fuel CO2 emissions based on what we know about the physics of emissions, atmospheric sampling and a whole lot of math. <\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\"People<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

The Hestia project has estimated emissions in the air around several major cities on a block-by-block scale and matched atmospheric samples closely\u2014within three percent.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cEvaluation against the atmosphere is crucial,\u201d Gurney said. He added that the unique approach of community-based plant sampling to evaluate his team\u2019s model is more cost-effective and potentially more precise than other air sampling techniques currently used to verify <\/span>atmospheric CO2 concentrations<\/span><\/a>. \u201cThe great thing about plants is that they\u2019re right down where the emissions are, doing their job, meaning they are natural integrators of the carbon signal,\u201d he said. \u201cThis technique takes advantage of that.\u201d <\/span>\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The new SW-IFL will leverage these estimates in other ways, too. Merging Hestia\u2019s information with a building energy simulator at Oak Ridge National Laboratory will allow the team to project the heat burden in different parts of Arizona cities. Heat varies widely in urban centers and affects people inequitably; numerous studies have shown that people of color and lower-income communities in urban regions are most vulnerable to heat-related health issues.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cDOE has a long history of leading in climate science and climate modeling,\u201d said Asmeret Asefaw Berhe, Director of the DOE Office of Science. \u201cIn addition, the Urban IFLs are an important element of the Office of Science\u2019s commitment to the \u2019Justice40 Initiative,\u2019 which prioritizes investment in diverse and minoritized communities affected by a changing climate.\u201d<\/span>\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m hoping this pilot project in Arizona is going to be a model for how to do this everywhere,\u201d Gurney said. \u201cIf we can tackle a domain of that size, and show it works, we can really begin to look at supplying this data for the whole U.S.\u201d\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Gurney believes that it\u2019s critical to help communities and regions better track their climate change mitigation efforts and to assess how they are meeting\u2014or falling behind\u2014their emissions reduction goals in a standardized, verifiable way.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cIf you mitigate, it should show up in the atmosphere,\u201d Gurney said. \u201cThat\u2019s the only place where it matters.\u201d<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

*<\/span>\u00a0<\/span>Read more about the new SW-IFL at <\/span>ASU<\/span><\/a> and <\/span>University of Arizona<\/span><\/a>. Individuals or communities interested in helping collect plant samples may contact <\/span>Helen Rowe<\/span><\/a> or <\/span>Ted Schuur<\/span><\/a>.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\"Northern<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Kate Petersen | Center for Ecosystem Science and Society<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Could the plants growing along roadsides and between buildings in Flagstaff help reveal where fossil fuel emissions are highest and lowest in the city? A team of NAU researchers thinks so. As part of a new $25M award from the U.S. Department of Energy to build a statewide Integrated Field Laboratory to study extreme heat,…<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":51,"featured_media":67795,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-67794","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-research-academics"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67794","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/51"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=67794"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67794\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/67795"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=67794"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=67794"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=67794"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}