Progress 10/01/19 to 09/30/20
Outputs
Target Audience:My activities targeted a wide range of audience ranging from the general scientific community, particularly the soil sciences and resource management communities through my peer reviewed publications, but span to a much wider population covering communities in California through the wide initiatives in One Climate Big Idea that I am currently leading. Newly developed educational tools fitting the new realities of teaching in a pandemic have significantly impacted the quality of education of a wide range of students I instructed, and helped other instructors as well. Changes/Problems:Funding continues to be a major challenge, that exacerbated with COVID-19 and budget limitations. What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided?· Successfully developed a modeling approach and an organizing principle for the water-energy-food nexus · Collaborated on the advancements and development of different infiltration models, evaluation of soil moisture sensing technology, and macropore detection method using ground penetrating radar surveys. · Successfully implemented new educational tools for improving the teaching methods of soil physics in online teaching environment and for establishing a connection between soil-physics and policy. How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest?We completed the metadata generation for two systematic reviews related to soil structure and health, incorporating the screening of thousands of journal articles and the development of two large global datasets that will be made available. We developed and validated a regional model for resource optimization and management at the scale of water-energy-food nexus. Furthermore, a far reaching impact was in the development of advanced educational modules for improved teaching and mentoring in soils physics and environmental sensing that can impact a wide range of students and future soil physics scientists. What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals?Continue along the same pathways identified this year: apply the water-energy-food nexus model, advance the modeling of water repellent soil, advance the development of educational tools for improvement of instruction in soil physics.
Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals?
· Developed an organizing principle and an optimization model for the water-energy-food nexus: a model was derived and validated with synthetic data to optimize a regional area's resources at the water-energy-food nexus level. This model can serve as a decision support tool and a simulation package to optimize the management and flow of resources at a given region. This is a very useful planning tool and my next step is to seek funding to apply it at regional scales. My target scales are two: city or town scale, and for those I am interested in targeting towns and communities that were impacted by the fires in California and the US West. My second scale is planning at the state level and I hope to get funding for the coming few years to model the flow and optimization of resources at the scale of California State. · Developed a global meta-database for soil structure and health: two systematic reviews were conducted and metadata gathered for the impact of cover crops on soil structure and the impact of soil structure on infiltration modeling. Thousands of journal publications were screened and hundreds were examined and synthesized. Next step is to generate machine learning algorithms and analysis to derive functional definitions for soil structure and health. · Leading and the development of UC Davis campus wide Big Idea around One Climate: I was nominated to lead, and become the Champion of, UC Davis's One Climate Big Idea. This is a great opportunity that involves the planning and development of new research initiatives and directions. A wide range of soil health and physics concepts were incorporated and can be adopted or used to inspire our W4188 search for Big Ideas. · Development of a simple correction term to model infiltration in water-repellent soils: the recent fires in California and the entire west revived interest in advancing the modeling of infiltration for soil water repellency which can substantially alter hydrologic processes, particularly the ability of soils to infiltrate water. We developed a simple rate-based correction term that can be used with any infiltration model and validated it with a simple two-term infiltration equation and then, using two datasets of infiltration measurements conducted in soils with varying water repellency, compared model error with versus without the added term. The correction substantially reduced model error, particularly in more repellent soils. At the same time, the rate constant parameter introduced in the new model may be useful to better understand dynamics of soil water repellency and to provide more consistent interpretations of hydraulic properties in water-repellent soils. · Advanced teaching tools incorporated into soil physics curriculum: several soil physics students expressed frustration in seeing a connect between the concepts they study in soil physics and what they foresee as "the real world". I developed a one-week (three lectures) educational module in 2019 that connects key soil physics elements into policy, and contemporary concepts including regional development, SDGs, and the water-energy-food nexus. This module was modified into online teaching environment this year, and one question from the take-home final was on the connections between soil and the SDGs which was highly appreciated by the students, and gave them a better perspective of how helpful soil physics can be at scales that they could not make the connection before. Furthermore, online tools were developed to teach soil physics and environmental sciences students basic electronics and Arduino sensor-systems. Also, take-home soil physics labs were designed for students to adopt toadvance COVID-19 new teaching realities.
Publications
- Type:
Journal Articles
Status:
Published
Year Published:
2020
Citation:
C. Higgins and M. Abou Najm (2020) An Organizing Principle for the Water-Energy-Food Nexus. Sustainability. sustainability-859701
- Type:
Journal Articles
Status:
Published
Year Published:
2020
Citation:
S. Rao Peddinti, J. Hopmans, M. Abou Najm, I. Kisekka, (2020) Assessing Effects of Salinity on the Performance of a Low-Cost Wireless Soil Water Sensor. Sensors 20(24), 7041; https://doi.org/10.3390/s20247041
- Type:
Journal Articles
Status:
Published
Year Published:
2020
Citation:
Di Prima, S., Winarski, T., Angulo-Jaramillo, R., Stewart, R.D., Castellini, M., Abou Najm, M.R., Ventrella, D., Pirastru, M., Giadrossich, F., Lassabatere, L., (2020). Detecting infiltrated water and preferential flow pathways through time-lapse ground-penetrating radar surveys. Science of the Total Environment. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2020.138511
- Type:
Journal Articles
Status:
Published
Year Published:
2020
Citation:
S. Di Prima, R. Stewart, M. Castellini, V. Bagarello, M. Abou Najm, M. Pirastru, F. Giadrossich, M. Iovino, R. Angulo-Jaramillo, L. Lassabatere. (2020) Estimating the macroscopic capillary length from Beerkan infiltration experiments and its impact on saturated soil hydraulic conductivity predictions. Journal of Hydrology 589: 125-159. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jhydrol.2020.125159
- Type:
Journal Articles
Status:
Published
Year Published:
2020
Citation:
M. Citton, S. Croonenberg, A. Chami, G. Chammas, S. Kayed, N. Saliba, M. Abou Najm, H. Tamim, S. Zeineldine, M. Makki, M. Kalot, I. Lakkis, M. Al-Hindi (2020) Multisource groundwater contamination under data scarcity: the case study of six municipalities in the proximity of the Naameh landfill, Lebanon. Water. 12(5), 1358; https://doi.org/10.3390/w12051358
- Type:
Journal Articles
Status:
Published
Year Published:
2020
Citation:
S. El-Nakib, I. Alameddine, M. Massoud, M. Abou Najm (2020) Nutrient pollutant loading and source apportionment along a Mediterranean river. Environmental Monitoring and Assessment, 192:274-17; doi:10.1007/s10661-020-8220-7
- Type:
Journal Articles
Status:
Published
Year Published:
2020
Citation:
G. Chammas, S. Kayed, A. Al Shami, W. Kays, M. Citton, M. Kalot, E. Al Marj, M. Fakhr, N. Yehya, S. Talhouk, M. Al-Hindi, S. Zein-El-Dine, H. Tamim, I. Lakkis, M. Abou Najm, N. Saliba (2020) Transdisciplinary interventions for environmental sustainability. Waste Management, 107:159-171. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.wasman.2020.03.043
- Type:
Journal Articles
Status:
Published
Year Published:
2020
Citation:
G. Rachid, I. Alameddine, M. Abou Najm, S. Qian, M. El Fadel (2020) Dynamic Bayesian Networks to assess anthropogenic and climatic drivers of saltwater intrusion: A decision support tool towards improved management. Integrated Environmental Assessment and Management. https://doi.org/10.1002/ieam.4355
- Type:
Journal Articles
Status:
Published
Year Published:
2020
Citation:
P. Concialdi, S. Di Prima, H. Bhanderi, R. Stewart, M. Abou Najm, M. Lal Gaur, R. Angulo-Jaramillo, L. Lassabatere(2020) An open-source instrumentation package for intensive soil hydraulic characterization. Journal of Hydrology.https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jhydrol.2019.124492
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