This work constitutes a resource for TNC in managing GMP and the other prairies in the Indian Boundary Prairies to preserve biodiversity and maintain valuable ecosystem services. Continuing work at Gensburg Markham Prairie includes sampling of surface soils from the bottom of ditches during the dry season to evaluate deposition of metals and road salt constituents from water that infiltrates into the subsurface. Additional methods of estimating soil EC are also being explored to permit separation of intrinsic soil properties from anthropogenic effects on EC. As part of an ongoing partnership with Argonne National Laboratory, we are working to integrate the EC sensors installed as part of this research with larger-scale environmental sensing infrastructure via the Waggle platform (Beckman et al., 2016). This integration will permit open data dissemination in real time, allowing these measurements to inform site management decisions and be available to the public to facilitate discussion of alternative deicing strategies.
- PI: Aaron Packman
- PI Institution: Northwestern University
- Link: https://doi.org/10.1093/femsec/fiz163
- March 1, 2017 – February 28, 2019