Extreme Events Research Grants Totaling $9 Million Awarded by EPA

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has awarded nearly $9 million in grants to 13 academic institutions to develop technologies to prepare air and water quality management systems for extreme environmental events. The grants will support research to improve air and water quality following severe heat waves, droughts, storms and other natural disasters. More information on the grants is available at http://cfpub.epa.gov/ncer_abstracts/index.cfm/fuseaction/recipients.display/rfa_id/541/records_per_page/ALL

The grantee projects are:

• Michigan Technological University, Houghton, Mich., will investigate projected changes in several meteorological phenomena that drive air pollution episodes.
• Oregon State University, Corvallis Ore., will develop a model for prediction and quantification of combined sewer overflows due to the highly dynamic flows of extreme weather conditions.
• University of South Florida, Tampa, Fla., received grants for two projects; investigating the increased emergence of water-borne diseases due to increases in extreme climatic events, and developing decision-support tools to understand past changes in climate, the occurrences of extreme events, and their impacts on water quality.
• Mississippi State University, Starkville, Miss., will investigate the role of best management practices and land use decisions on water quality in the face of climate change.
• University of Texas at Austin, Austin, Texas, will examine the links between droughts and air quality in the southern U.S.
• Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Mass., will examine the ability of models to represent extreme air pollution events and the meteorological conditions that lead to them.
• Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio, will use molecular tools and satellite remote sensing to quantify water quality and drinking water related human health risks of harmful algal blooms and disinfection byproducts associated with extreme events.
• University of Washington, Seattle, Wash., will develop models to predict how the physical and chemical quality of urban streams will be affected due to extreme climate.
• Public Policy Institute of California, San Francisco (OR San Diego), Calif., will integrate information from climate scientists regarding the past, current, and future impacts of climate change and extreme events.
• Michigan State University, Lansing, Mich., will quantitatively establish the relationship between extreme events and harmful algal blooms and predict the effects of future climate change on harmful algal blooms and the associated vulnerability of watersheds on a national scale.
• Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, Ga., will look at the air quality impacts of extreme weather events under present and future climate conditions.
• Cornell University, Ithaca, N.Y., will use the statistical technique known as extreme value theory to examine air pollution episodes in the U.S.
• Columbia University, New York, N.Y., will use state-of-the-art statistical techniques to relate meteorological conditions to air pollution episodes.