An iSEE seed-funded research project that uses robotics and artificial intelligence to autonomously manage “high tunnel” food production is entering its second year at the University of Illinois Sustainable Student Farm.
U. of I.’s Robot Integrated High Tunnels (RobInHighTs) team received a $975,000 USDA NIFA (National Institute of Food and Agriculture) grant in 2023 in addition to an iSEE Campus as a Living Lab (CALL) seed funding that same year.
A RobInHighTs robot uses its camera (orange attachment on left side) to look for signs of pest damage on tomato plants at the Sustainable Student Farm.
High tunnels are metal frames covered in a heavy plastic often used in urban agriculture. Their main benefit is expanding the season that crops can be grown: they can be planted earlier in the spring and harvested later in the fall. In climates like the Midwest, where our ability to grow fresh produce year-round is hindered by the cold weather, this promises to be a huge advantage for local farmers. Additionally, high tunnels often increase crop yields by protecting the plants from severe weather and animals.
“We have seen a lot of interest from local farmers and community gardens to invest in high tunnels to grow specialty crops, but there are a few barriers to entry, like the initial cost of the tunnel and the amount of labor required to maintain the produce while it’s growing,” said Naveen Uppalapati, RobInHighTs’ primary investigator and a research scientist at the Center for Digital Agriculture within the National Center for Supercomputing Applications.
The hope is that RobInHighTs will reduce the amount of labor required, helping local farmers overcome one of those barriers.
The first challenge for the team was ensuring the robots could autonomously navigate between rows of crops. That technology already existed for corn and soybean fields but needed to be adapted for the smaller rows in high tunnels.
Using cameras, the robots monitor parts of the plant looking for signs of pest damage and indications that the plant is ready for harvest.
“Currently, we’re working on detecting pests and making sure that the robot can communicate which plants in the tunnel have signs of pest damage,” Uppalapati said. “That way, the farmer can treat only the plants that need it rather than the whole tunnel, reducing the amount of pesticide used.”
Team members also hope this will have economic benefits by filling in when there are labor shortages. Often, when fruits are mass produced, they all are ready for harvest at one time, and a labor shortage can mean huge amounts of waste simply because they weren’t harvested in time. Shadi Atallah, an associate professor of Agricultural and Consumer Economics, is collaborating with RobInHighTs to measure how many robots would be the equivalent of the amount of work one human can do.
The project’s USDA funding is set to continue through 2026 and has allowed team members to expand their areas of research and collaborate with similar research at Tuskegee University. The goal of that collaboration is to overcome barriers facing minority farmers, and Tuskegee is creating educational modules for this program. The project initially only included one robot to do data collection but now expanded to multiple robots that also do pest detection.
“Our goal for this year is to nail down all of the individual parts: row navigation, pest detection, and harvesting. In the next two years we aim to put them all together and have a robot that can do all that monitoring and send that information to the farmer,” Uppalapati said.
— Article and photos by Erin Minor, iSEE Communications Intern
Urbana, Ill. — Feeding an ever-growing human population is one of the major grand challenges we face — especially with the impact agriculture can have on climate change. University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign researchers and partners in Singapore are taking a novel approach to this challenge: creating food building blocks at the microbial level.
PreFerS will focus on enhancing the reliable, cost-effective production of safe, nutritious, and appetizing foods. More specifically, the research will advance technologies for microbial cell engineering — creating metabolic pathways in microorganisms — to convert readily available compounds like sugars into targeted, nutritional molecules including alternative proteins, healthy lipids, and vitamins.
Through this work, PreFerS seeks to improve food supply chain resilience, reduce environmental impacts of food and nutrient production, and directly address hidden hunger — the growing epidemic of micronutrient deficiency.
“By converting sugars and inedible parts of crops into healthier foods, we can take what is already provided in plants and use it to create a more balanced, nutritious, and good-tasting diet,” Jin said. “We believe this work can play a major role in human health and address inequities in food supplies the world over — without contributing to global climate change.”
The PreFerS team is supported by the Institute for Sustainability, Energy, and Environment (iSEE) and assisted by Guest, iSEE’s associate director for research; and Madhu Khanna, iSEE’s director and Alvin H. Baum Family Chair. Guest and Khanna guided the 18-month proposal development and related activities with the NRF. “I am grateful for the time and work iSEE has devoted to help us secure the funding for PreFerS, and I look forward to the Institute’s continued support,” Jin said, adding that Tamer Basar, former executive director of Illinois ARCS, and Jayson Koh, managing director of Illinois ARCS, were also instrumental in securing the NRF award.
“We have seen food companies successfully produce novel food ingredients with precision fermentation, and our scientific understanding and technological capabilities are growing rapidly. The first thrust of PreFerS will improve the precision fermentation toolset, maximizing efficient production of target food products and minimizing unnecessary byproducts,” Guest said. “The second thrust centers on bioprocess engineering and will focus on scaling up fermentation in a way that is both cost-effective and environmentally responsible.”
“Food security and sustainability are a major concern in Singapore and globally,” Khanna said. “We believe the work done by this new research team on a fermentation-based food supply will help Singapore reach its goal to produce 30% of its nation’s nutritional needs locally by 2030.
“And the results of this interdisciplinary effort will have far-reaching implications for safe, healthy, and sustainable foods across the world, while also mitigating the effects conventional agriculture can have on the climate.”
The PreFerS team also features several Singapore-based researchers, including affiliates from the National University of Singapore, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore Institute of Technology, and Agency for Science, Technology and Research. Joining Jin as co-program lead is Wen Shan Yew (biochemistry, National University of Singapore), who earned his master’s degree and doctorate from the U. of I.
“The strength of this collaboration lies in our ability to unite global partners in addressing global challenges,” said Germán Bollero, dean of the College of Agricultural, Consumer and Environmental Sciences at U. of I. “By bringing together diverse expertise and innovative minds from Illinois and Singapore, we are not only pushing the boundaries of scientific discovery but also unlocking untapped potential in precision fermentation. This partnership exemplifies how collaborative efforts can drive transformative solutions for food security and sustainability, ultimately benefiting communities worldwide.”
U. of I. has had a research center in Singapore since 2009. This engagement was reconstituted in 2023 as Illinois ARCS, a university-affiliated Singapore public company to foster cutting-edge research by Illinois faculty and Singapore partners. In addition to PreFerS, Illinois ARCS also hosts the Trustworthy and Secure Cyber-Plexus for Digital Communities program (TSCP-DC) with David Nicol (electrical and computer engineering and Information Trust Institute) as its principal investigator. Illinois Chancellor Robert J. Jones serves as Illinois ARCS chairman and Illinois Vice Chancellor for Research and Innovation Susan A. Martinis is Illinois ARCS vice chair.
— News release by Tony Mancuso, iSEE Communications & Public Affairs Director
The iCOVER (Innovated Cover-crop Opportunity, Verification, and Economy stimulating technology for underserved farmers using Robotics) Project is researching innovative, equitable ways for farmers to plant cover crops using cutting-edge technology. Originally seed-funded by iSEE, the team received $4,999,999 in funding in 2022 from the USDA’s Climate-Smart Commodities program.
iCOVER Primary Investigator Girish Chowdhary offers answers to some Frequently Asked Questions about the project.
Why are cover crops important to climate-smart agriculture?
Here in the Midwest, we typically only grow cash crops — which are typically corn and soy rotations. About 200 million acres of corn and soy are grown in the Midwest annually, which results in the field being left fallow for most of the year. This creates problems like weeds taking over the fields, soil erosion due to wind, and nitrogen overflows that get into our waterways.
Cover crops are a way to cover the ground during that fallow season and prevent these problems. For example, rye and hairy vetch, common cover crops used in this region, can hold any excess nitrogen that the farmer sprays and fix nitrogen in the soil. That might reduce the amount of nitrogen the farmer has to put on the field the next year. Other plants like turnips break up soil compaction and can be used for grazing animals if farmers want to integrate animals onto the fields during fall and spring. Lastly, all cover crops help with retaining moisture, preventing weeds from taking over, and adding biodiversity into the soil.
How does iCOVER’s work make it easier for farmers to plant cover crops?
iCOVER is really trying to help farmers adopt new ways of cover crop planting that are lower cost and that can scale up more easily.
Right now, farmers struggle with finding the time to plant cover crops. Even though the benefits are well known, cover crop adoption is pretty low: 10% or less. The problem is that farmers can only plant cover crops after the harvest is done, which is late September or October. There’s not a lot of green season left, and it’s an extra task for farmers to go over the field and plant the cover crops.
iCOVER is propagating two novel ways of cover crop planting that can allow in-season cover crop planting using aerial drones and ground robots. This means farmers can plant cover crops earlier in the year — in August or as early as July if they’d like to. That way the crops get more time to establish, and when the field is harvested there’s already a green cover on the ground. This also has benefits of storing a lot more carbon into the ground, but even just from a soil regeneration perspective, it creates a longer season for these cover crops to grow.
How does the cost of robotic cover crop planting compare to the traditional method?
We are working with economists like Shadi Atallah and Madhu Khanna, who have been advising us. We foresee that cover crop planting with autonomous ground robots can go as low as $10 an acre, which is 50% cheaper than what farmers would pay if they were to do cover crop planting with tractors. Plus, it removes all the hassle and results in a better output.
With drones, it could be as low as that, but we’re trying to overcome some technical challenges due to their battery usage … and batteries are more expensive. But in theory, we see a significant cost reduction over what farmers are paying today.
What kind of soil research is iCOVER doing?
We’re creating ways to measure cover crop using remote sensing. This helps farmers to know how much cover crop has grown. We’ve invested in methods to measure in-ground carbon accumulation and spectroscopy using some technologies that are still in early stages of development.
iCOVER is scaling this research up across multiple states. What is it like coordinating across multiple states and different regions?
iCOVER is a partner of the USDA’s Climate Smart Commodities program and has received much of its funding from that program. The goal for this year is to plant around 2,000 acres, which is a pretty aggressive scale for these new types of technologies. Over the next four years, we’re scaling up to 10,000 acres. We have some industry partners who are helping with that. They’re working with farmers to figure out how we can grow the scale.
Demand from farmers is not the challenge, but logistics and coordination are. We also have a lot of requirements from the government to make sure that everything is well documented.
The way iCOVER works is farmers get monetary incentives through the project to adopt cover crops. Because it’s an innovative technology project, there’s some investment in the technology development and deployment. Here in Illinois, we are mostly focusing on cover crop planting with robots and drones. Then at the University, we’re investigating novel ways of measuring carbon in the ground. The third area of research is smallholder farms in Alabama, to see if these methods can be used in those circumstances as well.
So, most of the crops are here in the Midwest with a few satellite farms in Alabama starting around 500 acres and growing to 2,000 acres over the next three years.
There is a pressing global need to ensure the efficiency, sustainability, and resilience of transportation systems for both urban and rural communities. Transporting people and goods with fossil-fueled vehicles has long been recognized as unsustainable for most communities — but different communities will face different challenges. From electric vehicles to ride-sharing services, our transportation systems continue to evolve, and these new developments demand new research.
To this end, interdisciplinary experts at the University of Illinois are working together to investigate fundamental questions about infrastructure design and planning, energy sources, integration of transportation across multiple modes, public policy, and regulation.
The project, Sustainable Low-Carbon Alternatives for Meeting Mobility Needs of Urban and Rural Communities, aims to provide a grand vision and detailed engineering guidelines for next-generation decarbonized transportation systems. The vision and guidelines aim at serving the mobility needs of both urban and rural communities, and ensuring coupled clean energy supply for agricultural production, industry operations, and residential buildings, over the next 10-20 years.
iSEE is supporting the project with $300,000 — part of a $1 million anonymous gift that the Institute is designating for sustainability research initiatives.
“We are pleased to invest in research into holistic, next-generation transportation systems that sustainably and equitably serve the mobility needs of both urban and rural communities,” said Madhu Khanna, iSEE’s Alvin H. Baum Family Chair and Director. “This new project will address a range of open questions related to infrastructure design and planning, energy sources, transportation service integration, emission reductions and other environmental impacts, the economic and behavioral incentives to adopt alternative transportation modes, and the design of policies needed to accelerate this transformation.
“We are particularly excited to have Civil & Environmental Engineering Professor Yanfeng Ouyang lead an interdisciplinary team that will grow our research program in this area with a potential for attracting external funding.”
The team will focus on two initial efforts that will form a solid foundation for future work:
Investigating ways of planning for ubiquitous and equitable access to electric vehicle charging in rural areas and small towns, and assessing community-level impacts. The proposed effort will prepare pilot programs for low-cost charging access in a variety of locations, at scales of hundreds of units.
Conducting small-scale experiments on alternative mobility services and pricing strategies for communities (specifically Rantoul and Champaign-Urbana). Team members will investigate how mobility service needs can be fulfilled in low-density rural areas with different options for different prices and wait times.
“Partnering with iSEE on this project has given us many valuable opportunities,” said Ouyang, who is the George Krambles Endowed Professor of Rail and Public Transit and also serves as Associate Director for Mobility at the Illinois Center for Transportation. “They’re supporting us not only with start-up funding for team building and for laying our foundational plans, but also by setting up roundtables with local industry and community leaders who are at the frontier of the sustainable mobility space.”
Ouyang’s co-PIs are Julie Cidell, Professor and Department Head of Geography & Geographic Information Science; Ria Kontou, Assistant Professor of Civil & Environmental Engineering; Philip Krein, Grainger Endowed Chair Emeritus in Electric Machinery and Electromechanics in Electrical & Computer Engineering; Lewis Lehe, Assistant Professor of Civil & Environmental Engineering; and Moses Okumu, Assistant Professor in the School of Social Work.
One of the first activities being organized by co-PIs connected with this project is a May 16-17, 2024, workshop titled “Envisioning Equitable Transitions to Sustainable Transportation Systems.” A diverse group of researchers, educators, industry professionals, and activists will discuss urgent questions about transitioning to low-carbon transportation systems — whatever they might be — while addressing the needs of all populations regardless of race, ethnicity, or socioeconomic standing.
The conference is jointly organized by the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and the University of Illinois Chicago (UIC) and is supported by generous funding from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.
— News release by April Wendling, iSEE Communications Specialist
As a land-grant institution, the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign has a responsibility to acknowledge the historical context in which it exists. We are currently on the lands of the Peoria, Kaskaskia, Peankashaw, Wea, Miami, Mascoutin, Odawa, Sauk, Mesquaki, Kickapoo, Potawatomi, Ojibwe, and Chickasaw Nations. It is necessary for us to acknowledge these Native Nations and for us to work with them as we move forward as an institution with Native peoples at the core of our efforts.
The University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign is well past the halfway point from Illinois Climate Action Plan 2020 to iCAP 2025. It’s time to check in on each of the iCAP chapters to gauge progress, address the challenges our campus faces, and celebrate some achievements. This month, iSEE Communications Intern Gabe Lareau examines the Land & Water chapter to seewhat the university is doing to properly preserve its most valuable natural resources. View the full series >>>
Participants learn about the history and value of campus trees during Sustainability Month walking tour in October 2019.
Land and water are integral to our survival and have never been more threatened. Climate change exacerbates droughts and floods, groundwater is being rapidly depleted globally, and, according to Our World in Data, “tree loss in 2019 was 24 million hectares. That’s an area the size of the United Kingdom.”
Thankfully, on its little patch of prairie, the University of Illinois Land & Water iCAP Team is helping shepherd progress toward a more sustainable future where campus doesn’t just use its land and water resources, but actively cares for and replenishes them by reducing water consumption, increasing pollinator habitat, and continuing to plant native tree species across campus (to name a few initiatives).
Here are seven ways the University of Illinois is caring for land and water:
Reducing Water Consumption
As with any other resource, whenever water is wasted so is all of the energy (and therefore CO2) used in its extraction, distribution, and return to the waste system. However, water’s biggest carbon footprint revolves around how it’s heated. On campus, that heat comes from Abbott Power Plant, which runs on fossil fuels.
Therefore, reducing campus’ collective water consumption is paramount to not only preserving our potable resources, but also ensuring the success of the iCAP’s overarching goal of reaching net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. In this regard, campus is staying on track.
The iCAP prescribes that campus “reduce potable water consumption to 721,500 kilogallons/year” by 2024 — a 45% reduction from 2008, which saw the university use more than 1.3 million kgal of potable water — enough to fill 2,563 Olympic-sized swimming pools.
Fortunately, campus potable water use steadily declined between 2008 and 2021, despite a growing student population, with a low of 652,833 kgal — a reduction of almost 50 percent — used in 2021. That’s thanks in part to initiatives like University Housing’s decision to no longer use and wash dining trays, which saves 110,940 gallons a year and replacing plumbing fixtures with low-flow replacements.
Recent campus water use has ticked slightly upward (in 2023, usage was 40,000 kgal above the goal) — likely in part because of two straight drought years. It is a warning, however, that complacency in our individual habits and institutional practices can spell real consequences.
2024 is far from over, and if campus makes a concerted effort to reduce its consumption, the 721,500 kgal figure is reachable. It will take future initiatives, like a state policy that would allow using reclaimed municipal or industrial wastewater to irrigate the South Farms, for campus to continue seeing its water use decrease and carbon output diminish.
Our campus has improved the quality and quantity of its natural resources by implementing the Resilient Landscape Strategy as well as increasing the number of trees and pollinator-supportive landscapes on campus. However, continuing to plant cover crops and install green infrastructure across campus must increase to meet iCAP goals.
Designing Resilient Landscapes
In 2020, the latest iCAP posited five main suggestions for campus to have truly resilient landscapes. Resilient, in this case, meaning that the flora and fauna who live on the University of Illinois urban landscape will be able to better weather climate change’s effects.
The first recommendation from the iCAP was a Campus Landscape Master Plan, which was completed in 2022. When implemented, it will not only beautify and buttress campus with native, pollinator-friendly plantings, but also increase tree cover and overall permeable surface area.
Those pollinator-supportive plantings will be installed much more quickly, as five new grounds workers are set to be hired by Facilities & Services (F&S), according to Campus Landscape Architect and iCAP Team Chair Brent Lewis. An increased number of hands on the ground, potentially including two new tree surgeons on campus, satisfies another major recommendation to make campus lands more resilient — and community members safer. After all, a branch knocked loose from a major storm has less of a chance of falling on your head if tree crews can get to it first.
The last major recommendation for making campus more climate resilient is the writing of a Rainwater Management Plan — a process that started in February 2024 and will take the rest of the year, Lewis said. Farnsworth Group, a local architectural firm, will conduct an analysis that will survey where water pools most on campus and causes the most damage. Then, according to Lewis, campus will be able to determine ways to better absorb rainwater into the ground and use the water draining into storm sewers more efficiently.
Planting Trees
Perhaps no effort pays greater dividends to fight climate change than planting trees. Trees have myriad benefits — offering habitats for animals, providing shade in increasingly warm summers, and loosening soil, which increases rainwater uptake, to say nothing of literally sucking carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere. For free.
The iCAP 2020 prescribed that there be 1,500 additional trees on campus by the end of this year. Lewis and the Land & Water Team are right on track: “We’re planting 300 trees a year.” However, the ever-warming climate is causing problems for some of the new trees.
“The thing that’s been really hard is that in the past two years we’ve had droughts, and those droughts have killed off a bunch of trees,” Lewis said.
Nevertheless, each new cohort, 300-strong, continues to grow and sequester carbon.
Where exactly are all of these 300 trees a year going?
“The campus is a lot bigger than you think,” Lewis said. “I’m doing trees on the South Quad; I’m doing trees by the Bell Tower. I’m planting trees by Architecture on Lorado Taft Drive. One area that has always bothered me is that very open walkway south of Madigan Lab on Gregory Drive. We’re going to tree that whole thing.”
Planting random trees in random places does not do much for campus landscapes — a great deal of thought must be put into what kind of plantings are used. In a given area, “the industry standard is 30/20/10,” Lewis said, meaning that the ideal diversity of trees is “no more than 30% from one family, 20% from one genus, and 10% from one species.”
Lewis says campus is riding more of a 19/15/8. Not perfect — he pointed out that few municipalities are — but still better than many. If campus planted only a few types of trees, as many cities unwisely do, the entire population would be one pest or disease away from being wiped out. And, along with them, a natural carbon sink.
Pollinator-friendly coneflowers grow near a campus sidewalk.
Increasing Pollinator Habitat
In 2018, the University of Illinois was officially certified as a “Bee Campus USA,” a designation awarded by the Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation. Becoming a “Bee Campus” involves feeding pollinators with native and biodiverse plants in adorably named but effective “Pollinator Pockets,” raising awareness in the local community, and ridding away pests with as few pesticides as possible.
While smaller in scale than some iCAP objectives, this remains one of the most important. Pollinators — bees, butterflies, even bats — are an integral, but threatened, pollination system that our food supply depends on.
According to Lewis, campus is looking to renew its annual certification as a “Bee Campus USA” — an easy task considering that there are 45 pollinator-supportive locations across campus, surpassing the 39 required in the iCAP by April 2024.
But climate action is not just about checking a box. It’s a continual transformation of habits, and the Land & Water team continues to look at possible locations as potential pollinator oases. During a recent meeting, the Team discussed the South Farms, specifically where the Embarras River crosses through the cropland. Lewis thought, “You know, maybe we should look at those corridors and see if we can get 30 acres of prairie in there.” On first impression, the College of ACES was amenable to the idea, he said. “I didn’t get any pushback.” Meeting minutes from the Land & Water Team identify the Department of Crop Sciences as a possible funder for a Prairie STRIPs project. If completed, it would “decrease erosion, pull pollutants out, and support pollinators,” according to the team.
Building Green Infrastructure
Beyond the beautiful landscapes, buzzing pollinator pockets, and thousands of trees, much of the campus is obviously still brick and mortar. When it rains, flat roofs and roads are unable to soak up the water, leading to flooding and, sometimes, extensive damage.
That is why Green Infrastructure is so important. Retrofitting the landscape with more permeable surfaces, ideally soil, can soak up the excess water. The Red Oak Rain Garden and the Illinois Street Residence Hall green roof are just two of the many examples of Green Infrastructure on campus. As of early spring 2024, 48 green infrastructure projects are active on campus, with another being installed by early summer, meaning we will reach our goal of 49 by the end of this year.
Planting Cover Crops
To increase their yields and protect their livelihoods, farmers enrich their crops with nitrogen- and phosphorus-rich fertilizers. These elements make their way into the water cycle and are eventually washed away and deposited into rivers — in the case of the South Farms, all the way to the Mississippi.
Why does this matter? Well, certain types of algae and phytoplankton thrive on these two elements and, when the resulting algal bloom dies, its decomposition sucks the oxygen out of the water — killing all life in the area. This phenomenon is the cause of the Gulf of Mexico’s annual summertime “Dead Zone” — a lifeless region fueled by fertilizer chemicals from midwestern farms.
Cover crops — flora planted in agricultural fields during the offseason — are integral to cutting off nitrogen and phosphorus from making their way into the Gulf and threatening its biodiversity. Like Green Infrastructure, keeping these plants as tenants during the winter ensures that farm soil stays permeable and the nitrogen and phosphorus are taken up as nutrients instead of washed away as waste. They may also help reduce erosion, keeping phosphorus-rich soil out of nearby water sources.
Planting cover crops on all 3,343 acres of the University’s South Farms, while technically possible, is not feasible. Some of the South Farms’ acreage, such as the 321-acre Energy Farm, houses experimental fields, and cover crops could be a confounding variable in an experiment. The good news, according to Lewis, is that the vast majority of the South Farms are cultivated for revenue, not research. Cover crops, by the way, can increase yields while also building soil organic matter — which can help increase water-holding capacity — and acts as a reservoir for nutrients.
The Department of Crop Sciences, which owns half the South Farms acreage, has 1,100 tillable acres of cropland in the South Farms, of which 18% have cover crops, per the Land & Water Team’s March 1 meeting minutes. The Department of Animal Sciences, which owns all but 5% of the rest of the South Farms, has cover crops on “13.6% plus or minus” of its land, Lewis said. While these are promising numbers for the South Farms’ two biggest occupants — and calculations are still being done to determine exact acreages — campus is likely still short of the iCAP’s 20% cover crop total.
Integrated Pest Management
The development of an Integrated Pest Management (IPM) plan, if adopted campus-wide, would mean an environmental boon. IPM overlaps with nearly every Land & Water iCAP objective: The university tree canopy can’t increase if it keeps falling victim to invasive species, and eradicating pests leaves more room for pollinators to flourish.
For those who prefer to spray pesticide and call it a day, Integrated Pest Management (IPM) is a more holistic approach to managing the invasive insects and weeds that plague campus land. According to University of Illinois Extension, proper IPM “uses all available control practices such as crop rotation (changing what’s grown in a field), selecting resistant varieties (plants resistant to pests), mechanical cultivation, changing planting and harvesting times, biological control (using other living organisms to control pests), and chemical control.” It’s not just a spray and pray — using a variety of approaches prevents excess amounts of pesticides into the land and water.
Lewis is coordinating with the grounds departments from F&S, the Department of Intercollegiate Athletics (DIA), and Campus Recreation to finalize a coordinated Integrated Pest Management Plan. “It’s been interesting and is just something we need to tick off.” (Pun intention unknown.)
Inaugural Levenick Resident Scholar in Sustainability Leadership Natalie Kofler, a bioethicist who founded Editing Nature, delivers a MillerComm lecture on the University of Illinois campus in Fall 2019.
The visiting scholar program is intended to bring experts from other universities, the private sector, and nonprofit organizations to share fresh perspectives, stimulate interdisciplinary interactions, and connect with the U of I community.
Applications for 2024-25 are welcome from scholars in a broad range of disciplines related to sustainability and the environment — including the biological sciences and physical sciences, engineering, the social sciences, and the humanities.
Resident Scholars are expected to pursue their scholarship while interacting with students and faculty across campus to promote multi-disciplinary research, education, and outreach. A course offering at the senior or graduate level is encouraged but not mandatory. The duration and schedule of residency are negotiable and can range from two weeks to a full semester. The Resident Scholar will be provided a stipend and travel expenses.
Past visiting scholars included molecular biologist and bioethicist Natalie Kofler, Director of Editing Nature; activist and author Catherine Coleman Flowers, Founder of the Center for Rural Enterprise and Environmental Justice; and University of Michigan nuclear energy researcher Denia Djokić, an Associate with Harvard’s “Managing the Atom” project.
Applications are due March 22, 2024. Those interested in applying, nominating others, or learning more about the Levenick Resident Scholar position should contact Professor Mike Ward, the Levenick Chair in Sustainability, at mpward@illinois.edu.
Professor Michael Ward has been appointed as the Stuart L. and Nancy J. Levenick Chair in Sustainability with the Institute for Sustainability, Energy, and Environment (iSEE) at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.
“Michael Ward is known as an innovative thinker and highly engaged collaborator with boundless energy,” said ACES Dean Germán Bollero, the Robert A. Easter Chair. “We are thrilled to have him assume this role to champion sustainability science in his lab, our greater campus community, and beyond.”
As the Levenick Chair, Ward will oversee the Levenick Resident Scholars in Sustainability Leadership, a program that brings experts to share fresh perspectives and innovations with the Illinois community. Both the chair and program were established through a generous endowment from ACES alum Stuart Levenick (NRES ’76) and his wife Nancy.
Ward’s lab develops novel approaches to monitor the behavior and migration of birds, aiding conservation efforts among local farmers, the U.S. Army, international governments, and others. He earned his bachelor’s degree from Truman State University and went on to earn a master’s degree and doctorate from Illinois.
Rohini Vembar is one of two M.S. students in Natural Resources & Environmental Sciences who has received funding from the Midwest Climate Adaption Science Center (CASC) team at the University of Illinois. Working with Illinois Natural History Survey (INHS) scientist Suneeti Jog, she has helped create a mapping tool that will assess Midwest wetlands using projected climatic changes expected in these areas. This tool would inform wetland management decisions in determining areas to prioritize protection and conservation.
For a general audience who may not have lots of information about wetland management, why are wetlands and their ecosystems important?
Since they’re at the intersection of terrestrial and aquatic environments, wetlands are influenced by and heavily influence those systems. They’re often referred to as “the kidneys of the Earth” due to their role in nutrient and pollutant filtration. Additionally, they provide natural flood protection by acting as a water catchment.
Mapped wetlands in the Midwest from U.S. Fish and Wildlife.
These services that wetlands provide are important for humans but the long history of draining wetlands for farmland have resulted in a significant decline in the services that wetlands provide. Almost 90% of the historical wetlands in Illinois have been drained and are farm fields now. We’ve had to build levees and dams along the Mississippi river and that would not have been needed if the wetlands that buffer the river had been left alone.
In terms of management, federal legislation doesn’t have one rule specific to wetlands. Wetland protections are a culmination of lots of different acts and laws administered by several agencies, making wetland regulation incredibly confusing and constantly up for debate. Part of my work is conducting wetland delineations for the Illinois Department of Transportation. So, when there’s a construction project that has federal or state funding, we go and see what natural resources are there that will be impacted by the project.
Midwest mapping from the Nature Conservancy’s Resilient and Connected Network.
Your research is on climate change adaptation and mitigation. What kinds of impacts are we seeing currently and what do future projections say about wetlands in a changing climate?
In terms of precipitation, there are some regions that have been a lot wetter, but if you look at Illinois, most of it has been in a drought. When we do get those big occasional rain events, it leads to flooding. What makes wetlands special is that the vegetation has adapted to deal with heavy amounts of water. These plants can survive in a lot of water where other plants would die when you drown them. When a wetland doesn’t get enough rain or water needed to keep up with those plants, they’ll die in a drought. When we do get a big rain event, the root system isn’t there to suck up the water. So instead, the water sits there like a puddle.
Wetlands also act as carbon sinks. When there’s more carbon in the atmosphere, wetlands are able to take up some of that, but there’s a thin line between being a carbon sink and a carbon source. At some point, they will start emitting carbon instead.
Tell me about the mapping tool you’re creating.
I have been working on a mapping tool that highlights areas where wetland protection and management should be prioritized as climate patterns continue to change. It looks at the distribution of wetlands across the Midwest and how they overlap with areas of high landscape resiliency. Landscape resiliency includes the ability for landscapes to perform functions and sustain biodiversity through habitat connectivity as conditions change. Overlaying general distribution of wetland habitat with those areas of interconnectedness will show where wetland protection should be a high priority as the climate changes. Additionally, the inclusion of climate projections shows how and where wetlands are expected to be impacted.
Oftentimes, destruction of wetlands is unavoidable. In instances where wetlands are impacted, federal legislation requires compensation in the form of wetland restoration, creation, or preservation to result in “no net loss.”
However, there is a lot of evidence that restoration and construction of wetlands needs a lot of human intervention after the restoration to maintain the system. They’re not as sustainable as natural wetlands. There is a high probability of new wetlands being overrun with invasive species or needing water to be pumped into it. Of course, restoration is better than nothing, but preservation is the best way to go.
Midwest climate projections for the current carbon emissions trajectory (top) and a worst-case scenario (bottom).
What kind of data is currently used in your model?
First is the U.S Fish and Wildlife Service’s wetland distribution data. Their National Wetlands Inventory shows where wetlands in the country are located. The second data source is the Resilient and Connected Network from the Nature Conservancy. It’s a newer piece of data that was really helpful to my research. The third piece of data is climate projections. I’ve used two different emissions scenarios: The first is RCP 4.5, which is our current carbon emissions trajectory, and RCP 8.5 is a worst-case scenario. This also includes five different climate variables that heavily influence wetlands: mean annual temperature, precipitation, runoff, soil storage (how much water the soil can hold), and evaporation deficit (how much water after precipitation can be evaporated). The goal is to show how these three components influence each other.
How are you hoping this tool will be used?
To give priority to certain wetlands that need protection. With climate change occurring there’s a very real possibility that wetlands will slowly migrate, which raises the question of whether they should be allowed to move to new areas. Larger wetlands with more diversity used to cover the Midwest, historically. In some ways, those are the most productive types of wetlands to have because they perform many different functions and can provide many different services.
Looking into how climate change impacts resilient landscapes should lead to giving information needed to prioritize wetlands and how to manage certain wetlands. If someone is going out to do an assessment, understanding how those wetlands in that area are expected to change can influence management decisions. There are a lot of potential paths for this tool, and it would take years to get it into something that is used regularly, but it’s a step in the right direction. There’s so much written information about these issues, but it’s hard to visualize, and I hope this can help with that.
— Article by iSEE Communications Intern Erin Minor
