April 2009 Research Update
Environmental and Economic Research and Development Program
NEW GRANT AWARDS FOR 2009
The program issued a Request for Proposals in September 2008 for research funding available in January 2009. The program sought projects that study the impacts of renewable energy or energy efficiency initiatives; biomass energy production and use to offset electric generation and/or natural gas; and climate change in Wisconsin due to electricity or natural gas use.
Nineteen highly competitive proposals were received, and the Research Forum recommended fourteen for funding. Research dollars allocated totaled about $1.5 million, including funding for multi-year projects. The following projects were subsequently approved:
- Carol Barford, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Center for Sustainability and the Global Environment (SAGE): Wisconsin Farm Biomass Production and the Emerging Carbon Economy
Award: $148,913 (total funding over 2 years)
- Brian Bub, Natural Resources Consulting, Inc., Cottage Grove, WI: Evaluating Nocturnal Bird and Bat Migration in the Upper Mississippi River Valley and Its Implications for Siting Wind Energy Facilities: A Workshop Series for Resource Agencies and Wind Developers
Award: $26,827 (1-year project)
- Mathew Dornbush, University of Wisconsin-Green Bay, Department of Natural and Applied Sciences: Maximizing Ecological Services and Economic Returns by Targeted Establishment of Biomass Yielding Grasslands in Wisconsin
Award: $164,853 (total funding over 2.5 years)
- Anna Haines, University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point, UW Extension Center for Land Use Education: Research Topic: Land Use and Ecological Consequences of a Wood Gasification Energy Facility at UW-Stevens Point: A Spatial Analysis with Statewide Consequences
Award: $54,491 (total funding over 1.5 years)
- John Katers, University of Wisconsin-Green Bay, Department of Natural and Applied Sciences: Life Cycle Analysis of Pellet Fuels
Award: $47,914 (1-year project)
- Ed Nelson, Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources, Bureau of Science Services: Farmer’s Willingness to Adopt Practices and Participate in Programs to Sequester Carbon
Award: $44,486 (1-year project)
- Donald Peterson, Sustainable Resources Institute, Inc., Florence, WI: Renewable Fuel Availability, Extraction and Usage Potential Impacts
Award: $95,550 (total funding over 2 years)
- Mark Rickenbach, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Department of Forest and Wildlife Ecology: Carbon Sequestration on Private Forests: Understanding the Silent Majority
Award: $76,940 (total funding over 1.5 years)
- Bruce Rodger, Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources, Bureau of Air Management: Wisconsin NADP National Trends Network
Award: $58,109 (ongoing air quality monitoring for 2009)
- Bruce Rodger, Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources, Bureau of Air Management: Wisconsin Mercury Deposition Network
Award: $90,857 (ongoing mercury monitoring for 2009)
- David Sample, Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources, Bureau of Science Services: An Ecosystem Management Approach to Biomass Production in Southern Wisconsin
Award: $186,643 (total funding over 3 years)
- Carl Watras, Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources, Bureau of Science Services: Impacts of Climate Change on Fluxes of Carbon and Water in Northern Wisconsin Lakes and Wetlands
Award: $139,969 (total funding over 2 years)
- John Williams, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Center for Climatic Research: Identifying Climate Analogs and Potential Shifts in Forest Composition and Extent for Southern Wisconsin under 21st Century Climate Change Scenarios
Award: $192,046 (total funding over 2 years)
- Ronald Zalesny, United States Forest Service, Northern Research Station: Land Use, Soil Health, and Water Quality Changes with Woody Energy Crop Production in Wisconsin and Minnesota
Award: $169,020 (total funding over 2.5 years)
We are pleased to welcome these new researchers and new projects to the program, as well as to continue supporting the national network monitoring projects from WDNR.
EXTENDING OUR THANKS TO THE RESEARCH FORUM
Members of the Research Forum play an important role in the Environmental and Economic Research and Development Program. We would like to salute their good work and thank them for their generous participation. Members are essentially volunteers, representing institutions and organizations invited by the program to join the Research Forum. The primary Forum responsibility is reviewing and recommending research proposals for funding. This can mean many hours, because members review all proposals on their own before meeting to discuss them and make final recommendations. The program receives about twenty full proposals in each funding cycle. We greatly appreciate the dedication and enthusiasm shown by Research Forum members. Their efforts are reflected in the high quality and timeliness of our research project list.
When the program research mandate was expanded in 2008 to include economic impacts of energy production and use in Wisconsin, the Research Forum grew from seven members to ten in order to incorporate broader expertise. At that time, The Governor’s Office of Energy Independence, the Department of Agriculture, Trade and Consumer Protection, and the USDA Forest Products Laboratory were invited to appoint representative Forum members.
Currently, the membership of the Research Forum is as follows:
Kenneth C. Rineer (Forum Chairman), Senior Environmental Analyst, Electric Division
Wisconsin Public Service Commission
David Jenkins, Director of Commercialization & Market Development
Wisconsin Office of Energy Independence
Julie Keal, Policy Analyst
Wisconsin Department of Commerce
Paul J. Meier, PhD, Director, Energy Institute
University of Wisconsin-Madison
David Michaud, Principal Environmental Scientist
We Energies (Representing Wisconsin investor-owned utilities)
Michele A. Pluta, P.E., Senior Environmental Engineer
Alliant Energy (Representing Wisconsin investor-owned utilities)
Gary Radloff, Director of Policy and Strategic Communications
Wisconsin Department of Agriculture and Consumer Protection
Peter J. Taglia, Staff Scientist
Clean Wisconsin (Representing the Wisconsin environmental community)
David Webb, Section Chief, Environmental Science Services
Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources
Junyong Zhu, PhD, Scientific Team Leader
USDA Forest Products Laboratory
RECENTLY PUBLISHED REPORTS:
Three new final research reports have recently been published on the Focus on Energy website. To access the summaries and full reports, go to
http://www.focusonenergy.com/Enviro-Econ-Research/Research-Reports/Completed_Projects.aspx.
Monitoring the Impact of Climate Change on Water Resources in the Northern Highland American Legion State Forest in Wisconsin (NHAL). (August 2008)
Carl J. Watras, Principal Investigator, Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources
This project is the first phase of a three-phase research effort to quantify and track the potential impact of greenhouse gas emissions and global warming on the 900 lakes and 126 streams situated within Vilas and Oneida counties (the Northern Highland American Legion State Forest, or NHAL), the largest group of undeveloped waters in Wisconsin. Climatic changes may threaten these lakes and streams due to potentially more frequent flooding and higher rates of evaporation. The resulting exchange of water and solutes between lakes, their terrestrial watersheds, and the atmosphere may have profound biogeochemical and ecological implications.
The technical challenge of this first phase was development and deployment of a prototype network of remote sensors within a typical NHAL catchment. The remote sensors would monitor hydrochemical gradients between a small lake, a surrounding wetland and the atmosphere, and could run unattended for months on a few AA batteries. A cluster of motes deployed within a watershed could theoretically form a network that sends data back to a distant base station in near-real time via a single high power radio. Nodes were designed to record and transmit data on rainfall, lake water and groundwater at three minute intervals. The prototype network was designed serve as a model for monitoring efforts across a wide variety of NHAL catchments. Field testing of the prototype system began at the end of summer 2007. The deployment was successful and preliminary results were promising, but not flawless. Power consumption was higher than expected, and data from the lake and wetland nodes frequently had erroneous values. Further evaluation indicated that subtle hardware malfunctions and software bugs were causing the problems. Phases Two and Three of the project (also funded by Focus on Energy) will involve further technical refinements, and data gathering and analysis.
A Landscape Scale Decision Support Tool for Monitoring Bird and Bat Migration across Wisconsin (August 2008)
Manuel Suarez, U.S. Geological Survey; Patricia Heglund, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service; Robert Kratt, U.S. Geological Service (All from the Upper Midwest Environmental Science Center, La Crosse, WI)
Migratory birds and bats face many challenges as they travel between their wintering and breeding grounds, including potential collisions with human-erected structures such as wind turbines and cell towers. Federal, state and local government agencies continue to ponder the issue of increasing bird safety with regard to siting wind energy projects. This project was initiated to address the question, “Are there patterns in timing, location, and direction among migrating land birds?” The project goal was to explore the use of Nexrad weather data to see if examining five or more years of this data would provide a sense of the general timing, movement patterns and habitat use by migrating land birds.
Nexrad Weather Surveillance Radar (WSR-88D) is increasingly viewed as a potentially valuable resource in the study of bird and bat migration, particularly with species that migrate at night or tend to have small body sizes and therefore are too small to wear radio transmitters with enough capacity to monitor for long distances and long periods of time. This project incorporated six years of data generated by the Nexrad WSR-88D sites located in Wisconsin (and in neighboring states) that was made available from the NOAA National Climatic Data Center, and created time-series mosaics of the radar products. The animations allow the viewer to identify and summarize timing, stop over locations, and general pathways of movement across Wisconsin where Nexrad coverage exists.
While the scope of this project did not include in-depth analyses of the data, researchers noted several interesting patterns worthy of further analysis. For example, under the four-year viewer, they noted lower activity in the Marquette, MI radar station relative to the stations along the Wisconsin border of Lake Michigan. They also observed progressions of movement from south to north in the spring data and from north to south in the fall data that may establish timing of movements. Additionally, they noted a few locations that repeatedly display high intensity returns, which suggest these might be stop over areas.
NOTE: The animation tool is complete and users can select up to four months (April or May 2002 to 2007 or September or October 2002 to 2007) for concurrent display. Once a particular time frame is selected, users can then analyze the raw data for weather patterns, explicit stop over locations, timing of exodus and fall out. To obtain the full dataset for further research, contact Manuel Suarez at
msuarez@usgs.gov
Impacts of Past and Future Changes in Climate and Atmospheric CO2 on Wisconsin Agriculture (October 2008)
Christopher J. Kucharik, Principal Investigator, Center for Sustainability and the Global Environment, University of Wisconsin-Madison; Shawn P. Serbin, Department of Forest and Wildlife Ecology, University of Wisconsin-Madison
Climate change and increased variability pose a real threat to the stability of agro-ecosystems in the long term, jeopardizing food and economic security. To begin addressing this significant challenge, this study focuses on a single important question: How has previous climate change and variability impacted corn and soybean production across Wisconsin, and how might future atmospheric changes challenge farmers?
The project concentrates on three main objectives: 1) Developing a daily record of maximum and minimum temperature and precipitation observations, and annual crop yields (corn and soybeans) across Wisconsin for the 1950 to 2006 period; 2) quantifying the actual trends in climate and statistical relationships between seasonal weather indices and corn and soybean yields for 1950 through 2006; and 3) and using statistical modeling in conjunction with results from the second objective and Global Circulation Model (GCM) scenarios of future climate change through the year 2100 to delineate how crop yields may respond to atmospheric changes.
The project established clear and coherent spatial patterns in temperature and precipitation that are to be expected for this region. They found that annual average precipitation has increased in the central and southern portions of the state but declined across the far northern portion of Wisconsin since 1950. They also calculated that the length of the growing season has increased by 5 to 20 days, with the greatest change in the central and northern part of the state. The annual number of days each year with low temperatures less than 0ºF has diminished substantially, while the number of days each year with highs greater than 90ºF has remained relatively constant, which is in contrast to what has been projected by climate models.
Results suggest that for each additional degree (ºC) of future warming, corn and soybean yields could potentially decrease by 13 percent and 16 percent, respectively, whereas modest increases in precipitation during the summer could help boost yields by between 5 to 10 percent, counteracting the negative effects of increased temperature. While northern U.S. Corn Belt regions such as Wisconsin may benefit from climate and management changes that lengthen the crop-growing period in spring and autumn, they are not immune to decreased productivity due to warming during meteorological summer.
OTHER PROJECTS IN PROGRESS:
- Development of a Research Proposal to Evaluate Impacts to Birds of Wind Development in Offshore Areas of Lake Michigan
Wisconsin Society for Ornithology, Inc. Principal contact: Noel Cutright
Anticipated completion: August 2009
- Impacts of Harvesting Forest Residues for Bioenergy on Nutrient Cycling and Community Assemblages in Northern Hardwood Forest
U.S. Forest Service, Institute for Applied Ecosystem Studies, Northern Research Station. Principal contact: Deahn Donner-Wright
Anticipated completion: December 2011
- Modeling the Effects of Forest Management Decisions on Carbon Sequestration
University of Wisconsin-Madison, Department of Forest Ecology and Management. Principal contact: S.T. Gower
Anticipated completion: September 2009
- Coordinated Energy Strategies for Climate and Air Quality
University of Wisconsin-Madison, Center for Sustainability and the Global Environment. Principal contact: Tracey Holloway
Anticipated completion: December 2009
- Assessment of Photovoltaics at High Penetration on Peak Demand and Annual Energy Use
University of Wisconsin-Madison, Department of Mechanical Engineering, Solar Energy Laboratory. Principal contact: S. A. Klein
Anticipated completion: February 2010
- Quantifying the Economic and Ecological Aspects of Forest Biomass Harvesting in Wisconsin
Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources, Wildlife and Forestry Research Section. Principal contact: Karl Martin
Anticipated completion: February 2011
- Potential Effects of Climate Change on Inland Glacial Lakes and Implications for Lake Dependent Biota in Wisconsin
Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources, Bureau of Science Services. Principal contact: Michael Meyer
Anticipated completion: June 2010
- Impacts of Biomass Removal on Carbon and Nitrogen Cycling in Wisconsin Northern Hardwood Forests
University of Wisconsin-Madison, Department of Forest and Wildlife Ecology. Principal contact: David J. Mladenoff
Anticipated completion: March 2010
- Energy Intensity and Environmental Impact of Integrated Dairy/Bioenergy Systems in Wisconsin
University of Wisconsin-Madison, College of Agricultural and Life Sciences. Principal contact: Douglas Reinemann
Anticipated completion: June 2010
- Assessing Sustainability of Switchgrass Production in Southwestern Wisconsin
University of Wisconsin-Madison, Agronomy Department. Principal contact: Mark Renz
Anticipated completion: September 2011
- Consumer Adoption & Grid Impact Models for Plug-in Hybrid Electric Vehicles in Wisconsin
University of Wisconsin-Madison, Department of Electrical Engineering. Principal contact: Giri Venkataramanan
Anticipated completion: July 2009
- Climate Change in Wisconsin
University of Wisconsin-Madison, the Nelson Institute, Center for Climatic Research. Principal contact: Daniel J. Vimont
Anticipated completion: June 2010
- Monitoring the Impact of Climate Change on Water Resources in Northern Highland American Legion State Forest in Wisconsin (NHAL): Phase II
Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources, Bureau of Endangered Resources. Principal contact: Carl Watras
Anticipated completion: September 2009
- Identifying Trade-offs Between Biomass Production and Biological Diversity in Wisconsin's Forests and Grasslands to Meet Tomorrow's Bioenergy and Biofuel Needs
Michigan Technological University, School of Forest Resources and Environmental Science. Principal contact: Christopher Webster
Anticipated completion: August 2010
