Clark receives $542K in NASA grants
Clark University will receive nearly a half-million dollars from two grants distributed by the National Atmospheric and Space Administration (NASA) for a set of projects investigating the balance of carbon uptake and release across forests in the United States.
Christopher A. Williams, associate professor of geography in Clark’s Graduate School of Geography, was the recipient of the grants, which totaled $542,098, according to Clark. Williams is heading one research team that received $858,000 from NASA’s Carbon Monitoring System (CMS), of which the Worcester school will receive $468,125.
The CMS study aims to quantify how much carbon is being released and taken up by forests across the country, according to a statement from Clark. The team will assemble new remote-sensing products to document regional and nationwide changes. It will also apply a national reporting framework, and incorporate a forecasting mode to test carbon balance implications of disturbance scenarios such as forest fires and logging.
Carbon is both stored in and released from forest vegetation. Williams explained that while forests are a globally significant store of carbon, it’s vulnerable to forest disturbance processes such as harvesting or fires that oxidize forest carbon and release it to the atmosphere as CO2, contributing to global warming. Historical forest clearing is responsible for about one-third of all human-caused carbon emissions to date with the rest coming from the combustion of fossil fuels, according to Clark.
Williams is also participating on another research team that received a $1.3 million NASA grant, of which Clark will receive $73,973, for a study that focuses on the southeastern U.S. In that project, Williams will provide information on forest dynamics to complement other data from the agricultural, transportation and energy sectors, Clark reported.
WBJ Web Partners
Most Recent
Most Recent
0 Comments