Research
Active Grants
NSF DISES: Co-producing Actionable Science to Understand, Mitigate, and Adapt to Cyanobacterial Harmful Algal Blooms (CHABS)
Cyanobacterial harmful algal blooms (CHABs) degrade water quality and diminish essential ecosystem services worldwide. Despite significant efforts to understand this complex socio-ecological system (SES) and reduce the excess nutrient inputs (nitrogen and phosphorus) that drive CHABs, poor water quality remains a persistent problem. Fundamental gaps in knowledge of critical SES components and interactions, including understanding the role of nitrogen loading and nitrogen and phosphorus cycling in driving CHABs biomass and toxin concentrations, farmer collective action behavior, the economic benefits of water quality improvement , and how to change SES governance, inhibits our ability to adjust existing management and governance approaches, which may have made toxic CHABs worse. This interdisciplinary, engaged research and education project is significant and novel in its focus on advancing critical CHABs SES science, while improving practical CHABs management, and training the next generation of SES scholars to help address this societal problem. Start date: January 2022.
NSF CAREER: Humanizing Engineering and Resilience: An Integrated Research and Education Approach to Understand and Enhance Infrastructure Resilience
Societies depend on resilient infrastructure and the uninterrupted provision of drinking water, electricity, and wastewater treatment; when infrastructure is not resilient, hazards and disasters can disrupt these services causing enormous economic losses and human and environmental impacts. Improving the resilience of the nation?s infrastructure to current and future hazards is vital for society and a grand engineering challenge. While much is known about the physical and technical dimensions of resilience, there are fundamental gaps in our understanding of the human dimensions of resilience. In particular, we cannot explain why infrastructure managers overwhelmingly focus on building resilience to the past, bouncing back from disruption, rather than bouncing forward or building resilience to future hazards and surprise. This Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) grant supports fundamental research that will address this gap in knowledge to: advance resilience theory to include human dimensions, identify the different human dimensions factors necessary to bounce back as well as bounce forward, produce actionable knowledge that will enhance resilience of U.S. infrastructure systems, and develop curricula to educate students and professionals about human dimensions of engineering. The novel integrated research and education approach offers unique opportunities for students to engage in research, prepares them to help solve societal problems, and helps diminish the gender gap in engineering. In addition to training a postdoctoral researcher and graduate and undergraduate students, this project will engage a broad audience including 150 students and 200-250 infrastructure managers and public officials.
This research advances fundamental understanding of resilience and resilience theory to enable researchers to assess human dimensions factors of resilience across a range of critical infrastructure not previously possible. It also advances novel methods and applies experimental techniques to demonstrate the effectiveness of tools for improving resilience and of a new educational model for enhancing student understanding and commitment to engineering. Results from this research will provide scholars with a new theory and methods for assessing human dimensions of resilience and will give practitioners concrete guidance on how to measure and improve infrastructure resilience to present and future hazards. Unique quantitative and qualitative datasets, interactive graphic displays, and professional and undergraduate engineering curricula will be produced and made widely available. Broad dissemination will occur through publications and conferences as well as webinars, trainings, and presentations to partners, infrastructure managers, and their communities. (NSF Award # 1944664)
This research advances fundamental understanding of resilience and resilience theory to enable researchers to assess human dimensions factors of resilience across a range of critical infrastructure not previously possible. It also advances novel methods and applies experimental techniques to demonstrate the effectiveness of tools for improving resilience and of a new educational model for enhancing student understanding and commitment to engineering. Results from this research will provide scholars with a new theory and methods for assessing human dimensions of resilience and will give practitioners concrete guidance on how to measure and improve infrastructure resilience to present and future hazards. Unique quantitative and qualitative datasets, interactive graphic displays, and professional and undergraduate engineering curricula will be produced and made widely available. Broad dissemination will occur through publications and conferences as well as webinars, trainings, and presentations to partners, infrastructure managers, and their communities. (NSF Award # 1944664)
NSF DRMS: Collaborative Research: Feeling the Squeeze: How Financial Stress Shapes Decision-Making and the Resilience of Municipal Drinking Water Systems
Across the nation, cities face immense fiscal stress brought about by the confluence of increased demands for critical city services – including drinking water, education, transportation, fire protection, and housing – and precipitous declines in revenues needed to support those increased demands. Decisions made under conditions of fiscal stress may erode and undermine the resilience of these critical city services by impeding the ability of water managers to respond to today’s challenges and plan for an uncertain future, while maintaining affordable and equitable service delivery. Financial stress therefore presents a significant risk to the resilience of the services upon which millions of people depend. Despite these risks, the effects of financial stress on decision-making by city governments and the influence of local political, institutional, and physical contexts on decision-making is poorly understood. This award supports fundamental research that will address this fundamental gap in knowledge. Specifically, this research will advance understanding of the ways that financial stress affects decision-making and resilience of drinking water systems (DWS), produce actionable knowledge that will improve equity and resilience of DWS, generate a new, publicly accessible database, and educate and train students and water professionals about the intersection of fiscal stress, risk and resilience, and equity in municipal decision making.
This research conducted with Sara Hughes (University of Michigan, PI) advances empirical and theoretical understanding of the relationship between financial stress, fiscal behavior, and resilience using a novel mixed methods approach. This research also advances practical understanding of how financial stress affects decision making and resilience in municipal DWS and generates a novel, integrative, publicly accessible database of municipal government spending and revenue, political and institutional context, drinking water system conditions, and demographics. Results from this research will provide scholars with new theoretical insights for understanding the relationship between fiscal stress, behavior, and resilience and its implications for equity in public services, and provide actionable insights to support effective interventions to improve equitable resilience now and in the future. This research will train a postdoc and graduate and undergraduate students including those from underrepresented groups including women, students of color, and first-generation students in rigorous, interdisciplinary research and engagement and reach over 100 more students through instruction using case studies developed from this research. Broad dissemination will occur through publications, conferences, webinars, and case studies.
This research conducted with Sara Hughes (University of Michigan, PI) advances empirical and theoretical understanding of the relationship between financial stress, fiscal behavior, and resilience using a novel mixed methods approach. This research also advances practical understanding of how financial stress affects decision making and resilience in municipal DWS and generates a novel, integrative, publicly accessible database of municipal government spending and revenue, political and institutional context, drinking water system conditions, and demographics. Results from this research will provide scholars with new theoretical insights for understanding the relationship between fiscal stress, behavior, and resilience and its implications for equity in public services, and provide actionable insights to support effective interventions to improve equitable resilience now and in the future. This research will train a postdoc and graduate and undergraduate students including those from underrepresented groups including women, students of color, and first-generation students in rigorous, interdisciplinary research and engagement and reach over 100 more students through instruction using case studies developed from this research. Broad dissemination will occur through publications, conferences, webinars, and case studies.
NSF EFRI E3P: Engineering Suspension Feeder Systems for Separation and Elimination of Microplastics from Water
Plastic contamination in the environment is a pervasive global problem with no obvious solutions. Environmental plastics are predominantly comprised of tiny pieces less than five millimeters in length. These so-called “microplastics” (or “MPs”) are now found in nearly every environment on Earth, including inside humans and animals, and their future health impacts and ecological consequences are unknown. This research project aims to create safe, efficient, and cost-effective technology to separate and eliminate MPs from wastewater. Outflows from wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs) are a major source of environmental MPs. Taking inspiration from nature, this project will employ freshwater mussels grown by the thousands in tanks to quickly and efficiently filter large volumes of wastewater. When drawing in wastewater for feeding, the mussels will combine the MPs in the wastewater with special bacteria capable of breaking down and destroying the plastic, transforming MPs back into small, naturally-occurring organic molecules. The bacteria and the MP breakdown products will be tested so that nothing harmful is released into the environment. Throughout the project, the team will engage with WWTP operators and state regulators to make sure the technology being developed is practical to implement. In parallel with lab- and pilot-scale technology development, a mathematical model representing a full-scale WWTP system including technical, economic, and social components will be developed. The model will be used for benchmarking and scenario exploration to give decision-makers clear, quantitative answers to the questions: how can our existing WWTP be modified, considering both traditional and novel technologies? what pollution prevention benefits would be achieved and at what cost? The project's focus on existing WWTP infrastructure will allow scientists and engineers to make a large impact with a relatively small investment. Led by a team of 10 scientists and engineers from two universities, the project will also train dozens of graduate and undergraduate students in sustainable biotechnology and will proactively engage students from underrepresented and disadvantaged communities. Multiple outreach and education activities will engage the support and imagination of thousands of K-12 students, teachers, and members of the public.
The objective of this project is to separate and eliminate microplastics (MPs) from wastewater treatment plant (WWTP) effluent. WWTP effluent is the source for approximately half of the MPs now in the environment, and WWTPs can be modified to economically prevent MP pollution of receiving waters. The approach of this project is to employ suspension-feeding aquatic bivalves to efficiently separate and concentrate MPs from water. Further, by co-concentrating MPs with certain MP-degrading bacteria, MP bioavailability will be enhanced. Microbially-mediated depolymerization will be achieved by leveraging the team’s existing collection of 1000 microbial cultures isolated from MPs in aquatic environments, some of which have already been shown to degrade certain plastics. This collection will be augmented by additional strains collected from the WWTP at the University of Connecticut, which will serve as a living laboratory for the project. The scope of the project will encompass both particulate and fibrous forms of polyhydroxybutyrate (PHB), a more readily-degraded polyester, as well as polyethylene (PE) and polyethylene terephthalate (PET), which are more recalcitrant; all are common environmental MPs. To achieve depolymerization of even the more recalcitrant MPs, biodeposits from mussels will be further processed in a microbially-driven Fenton bioreactor, and a complementary gradient microfluidic approach will be used to identify the optimal reaction conditions. At each stage of development, performance metrics will be quantified, alongside fundamental physiochemical properties, to inform a techno-economic optimization of a full-scale WWTP system that also incorporates a cost model for the socio-technical drivers/barriers to technology adoption. The expected outcomes of this project include (i) a detailed understanding of the fate of MPs in a model WWTP; (ii) practical, scalable processes to concentrate and eliminate MPs from wastewater, and (iii) decision tools to drive broad adoption of this MP separation and elimination technology.
The objective of this project is to separate and eliminate microplastics (MPs) from wastewater treatment plant (WWTP) effluent. WWTP effluent is the source for approximately half of the MPs now in the environment, and WWTPs can be modified to economically prevent MP pollution of receiving waters. The approach of this project is to employ suspension-feeding aquatic bivalves to efficiently separate and concentrate MPs from water. Further, by co-concentrating MPs with certain MP-degrading bacteria, MP bioavailability will be enhanced. Microbially-mediated depolymerization will be achieved by leveraging the team’s existing collection of 1000 microbial cultures isolated from MPs in aquatic environments, some of which have already been shown to degrade certain plastics. This collection will be augmented by additional strains collected from the WWTP at the University of Connecticut, which will serve as a living laboratory for the project. The scope of the project will encompass both particulate and fibrous forms of polyhydroxybutyrate (PHB), a more readily-degraded polyester, as well as polyethylene (PE) and polyethylene terephthalate (PET), which are more recalcitrant; all are common environmental MPs. To achieve depolymerization of even the more recalcitrant MPs, biodeposits from mussels will be further processed in a microbially-driven Fenton bioreactor, and a complementary gradient microfluidic approach will be used to identify the optimal reaction conditions. At each stage of development, performance metrics will be quantified, alongside fundamental physiochemical properties, to inform a techno-economic optimization of a full-scale WWTP system that also incorporates a cost model for the socio-technical drivers/barriers to technology adoption. The expected outcomes of this project include (i) a detailed understanding of the fate of MPs in a model WWTP; (ii) practical, scalable processes to concentrate and eliminate MPs from wastewater, and (iii) decision tools to drive broad adoption of this MP separation and elimination technology.
USDA/AFRI/Water for Agriculture: Assessing barriers to use of reclaimed wastewater for food production in controlled environment agriculture, Co-Investigator with PI Vadas (UConn)
We aim to develop practical and safe alternatives to potable water sources for sustainable food production. The goal of this project is to identify barriers to the use of reclaimed wastewater for food crop production with respect to crop growth, contaminant uptake, and public and farmer acceptance of reuse.
Publication: McOmber C, Zhuang Y, Raudales RE, Vadas TM, Kirchhoff CJ. 2021. What is recycled water, anyway? Investigating greenhouse grower definitions, perceptions, and willingness to use recycled water. Renewable Agriculture and Food Systems, https://doi.org/10.1017/S1742170521000090
USEPA, Valuation of Water Quality Change in Environment and Economy Context: Ecosystem Services across Gradients of Degradation and Local Economic Interest, Co-Investigator with PI Swallow (UConn)
Completed Grants
US DOE, GAANN: Environmental engineering at the forefront of water policy and education, Co-Investigator with PI Vadas (UConn)
AGU Innovation Grant: Illustrating innovations at the boundary [of Earth science and society], Co-Investigator with PI Arnott (Aspen Global Change Institute) and J. Vano
To enhance the usefulness of their science, many Earth scientists collaborate with stakeholders to generate and apply knowledge to support decision-making (Vano et al. 2018, Eos). Some may consider research in the context of application as a valuable service, but not necessarily “innovative.” This is in spite of the fact that these collaborations so often catalyze new and potentially transformational (i.e. innovative) knowledge by combining the valuable expertise of research and practice. Our goal, as part of the AGU Centennial Celebration, is to develop a conceptual framework for characterizing innovation that occurs through stakeholder-scientist partnerships. This framework work present different categories of innovation with concrete examples from recent experiences of AGU members and potential indicators that researchers and their partners could look for to identify whether a particular type of innovation may be occurring. Similar to how Meerow and Newell (2016, Urban Geography) critically examine the 5 W’s of urban resilience, we will consider innovations at the boundary of Earth science and society by asking: what innovations occur, who benefits from these innovations, when and where do innovations emerge, and why do they emerge?
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One outcome from the AGU Innovation Grant was this short film illustrating the basic concepts and fundamental ideas articulated in our proposal. The film was created by Ellie Barber in collaboration with James Arnott, Christine Kirchhoff, and Julie Vano
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Publication: Arnott JC, Kirchhoff CJ, Meyer RM, Meadow AM, Bednarek AT. 2020. Sponsoring actionable science: what public science funders can do to advance sustainability and the social contract for science. Current Opinion of Environment in Environmental Sustainability, 42, 38-44. www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1877343520300063
NSF, CNH-RCN: Amazon Dams Network: Advancing Integrative Research and Adaptive Management of Social-Ecological Systems Transformed by Hydroelectric Dams, Senior Personnel with PI Loiselle (UFlorida)
The overarching goal of the CNH-RCN International Amazon Dams Network is to provide a platform for researchers and diverse stakeholders to gather, synthesize, and share data and knowledge towards improved understanding, monitoring and adaptive management of the social-ecological river systems transformed by dam construction across the Amazon, that can be applied to other dammed systems. The project aims to contribute to the larger debates about impacts of large dams in the Amazon, and their associated risks and costs, learning from the adaptive management experience in the Colorado watershed.
Publication: Bair L, Yackulic C, Schmidt J, Perry D, Kirchhoff CJ, Chief K, and Colombi B. 2019. Incorporating social-ecological considerations into basin-wide responses to
climate change in the Colorado River Basin. Current Opinion of Environment in Environmental Sustainability, 37, 14-19. www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1877343518300770?dgcid=author |
NSF Coastal SEES: Enhancing sustainability in coastal communities threatened by harmful algal blooms by advancing and integrating environmental and socio-economic modeling, Co-Investigator with PI Steiner (UMichigan)
How does climate influence the biophysical dynamics of freshwater ecosystems and ecosystem services, and how can scientist and stakeholder co-production of information enhance coastal decision-making and sustainability? This is the overarching question we seek to answer. For my part, I aim to advance the fundamental knowledge of information usability, by better understanding drivers of the use of information (harmful algal bloom forecasts of severity and extent) and the kinds of decisions that may emerge from the co-production process.
Publication: Treuer G, Kirchhoff CJ, Mcgrath F, Lemos MC. 2021. Challenges of managing harmful algal blooms in U.S. drinking water systems. Nature Sustainability, https://doi.org/10.1017/S1742170521000090
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Publication: Lemos MC, Wolske K, Vang Rasmussen L, Arnott JC, Kalcic M, Kirchhff CJ. 2019. The Closer, the Better? Untangling Scientist–Practitioner Engagement, Interaction, and Knowledge Use. Weather Climate and Society, 11(3), 535-548. journals.ametsoc.org/doi/full/10.1175/WCAS-D-18-0075.1
Publication: Kalcic M, Muenich RL, Basile S, Steiner AL, Kirchhoff CJ, Scavia D. 2019. Climate Change and Nutrient Loading in the Western Lake Erie Basin: Warming Can Counteract a Wetter Future. Environ. Sci. Technol, 53 (13), 7543-7550.pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.est.9b01274
Publication: Kalcic M, Muenich RL, Basile S, Steiner AL, Kirchhoff CJ, Scavia D. 2019. Climate Change and Nutrient Loading in the Western Lake Erie Basin: Warming Can Counteract a Wetter Future. Environ. Sci. Technol, 53 (13), 7543-7550.pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.est.9b01274
NOAA/SARP: From precipitation thresholds identification to planning: Helping communities plan and adapt to future extreme events, Principal Investigator
The combination of more frequent and severe precipitation and sea-level rise pose an enormous risk to coastal New England and to coastal Connecticut in particular. In collaboration with our coastal community partners, Stamford and Groton, this project aims to co-produce climate
information and assist our partner communities to develop capacity to prepare for and respond to emerging extreme events through integration of precipitation thresholds information into ongoing long-term planning efforts and develop model planning efforts for use by other communities.
information and assist our partner communities to develop capacity to prepare for and respond to emerging extreme events through integration of precipitation thresholds information into ongoing long-term planning efforts and develop model planning efforts for use by other communities.
U.S. HUD/CT DPH Grant: Drinking Water Vulnerability and Resilience
With colleagues in Civil & Environmental Engineering at the University of Connecticut, the Connecticut Institute for Resilience and Climate Adaptation, and Milone & MacBroom, Inc., we sought to understand the vulnerability and resilience of Connecticut community water systems and private wells face to climate variability and change and identifying strategies to improve the water infrastructure resilience.
Publication: Drinking Water Vulnerability and Resilience Plan: Fairfield, New Haven, Middlesex, and New London Counties
Publication: Resilience gap paper coming soon.
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NSF SciSIP, Science Policy Research Report: Institutional Innovation to Close the Knowledge-Action Gap for Infrastructure, Co-Investigator with PI Katzenberger (AGCI)
Publication: Coming soon.
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Usable science can play a critical role in informing the multi-trillion dollar investment needed to rebuild and modernize American infrastructure to better serve societal needs in the face of uncertain demographic, technological, and environmental change. However, there is a persistent and costly science- to-action gap that hinders the production and application of relevant scientific knowledge to guide these critical infrastructure investments. This science policy research report will address the science-to-action gap for infrastructure by identifying how public investments in science can be better managed to produce more relevant information to inform the next generation of infrastructure design, construction and operation. This review will help guide science policy-makers on appropriate research and development investments best suited to inform the rebuilding and expansion of modern, resilient, and sustainable infrastructure critical to support U.S. businesses, communities, and citizens in the 21st century.
Publication: Arnott JC, Kirchhoff CJ, Meyer RM, Meadow AM, Bednarek AT. 2020. Sponsoring actionable science: what public science funders can do to advance sustainability and the social contract for science. Current Opinion of Environment in Environmental Sustainability, 42, 38-44. www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1877343520300063
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U.S. HUD Municipal Planning Grant: Wastewater vulnerability and resilience
Publication: Kirchhoff CJ and P Watson. 2019. Are wastewater systems adapting to climate change? Journal of the American Water Works Association. onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/1752-1688.12748
Publication: Mullin C and CJ Kirchhoff. 2019. Marshaling Adaptive Capacities within an Adaptive Management Framework to Enhance the Resiliency of Wastewater Systems. Journal of the American Water Resources Association.
onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/1752-1688.12709
onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/1752-1688.12709
Guide: Kirchhoff CJ, Mullin C, Utemuratov B, Tashev A. 2019. Wastewater System Resilience: Learning from Connecticut Wastewater Systems. Download here:
kirchhoff_etal_2019_building_wastewater_system_resilience_final.pdf | |
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Connecticut Sea Grant: Resilient Coastal Communities under Wind and Flood Hazards, Co-Investigator with PI Zhang (UConn)
Publications: Zhang W., Kirchhoff CJ, Wu D, Weston J, Li X, Ma X. 2019. Resilient Coastal Communities under Wind and Flood Hazards: Understanding the Trade-offs in Residential Building Designs
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NOAA/COCA Grant: Enhancing manager and stakeholder awareness of and responses to extreme precipitation effects on Lake Erie
With colleagues at the University of Michigan (Don Scavia and Allison Steiner), Grace College (Nathan Bosch), the National Wildlife Federation (Michael Murray) and the Ohio Department of Natural Resources, Division of Wildlife (Heather Elmer), we are undertaking research that will bring scientists and decision makers together to apply coupled land-water-climate models to assess scenarios of altered management practices and to evaluate the potential of those changes to reduce nutrient loading to Lake Erie.
Publications: Kalcic M, Kirchhoff CJ, Bosch N, Muenich R, Murray M, Gardner J*, Savia D. 2016. Engaging Stakeholders to Define Feasible and Desirable Agricultural Conservation in Western Lake Erie Watersheds, Environmental Science & Technology, 50(15), 8135-8145. pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/acs.est.6b01420
* indicates former student in Kirchhoff Lab |
CTIWR Grant: Evaluating and enhancing communities’ willingness to adopt N-Sink as a community based pollution mitigation decision tool
To help achieve desired nitrogen reductions in the Long-Island Sound, local decision makers must be armed with information that helps them better understand the connection between different existing and proposed land cover and land uses and associated nitrogen pollution. With colleagues at the University of Connecticut (Juliana Barrett) and with the support of Judy Rondeau, Niantic River Watershed Coordinator, Eastern Connecticut Conservation District and Christine Tomichek, Chair, Board of Directors, Niantic River Watershed Committee, we are conducting an in-depth analysis of N-SINK usability focusing on better understanding the factors that influence information uptake among Niantic River watershed decision makers. N-SINK was previously developed by the University of Rhode Island, in partnership with the University of Arizona and UConn CLEAR with funding from USDA/NIFA and EPA Region. N-SINK is a GIS decision support (DSS) tool that relates land use and restoration practices to their potential to act as nitrogen sources and “sinks”.
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