Central America has a bull's-eye on its forehead when it comes to
natural disasters.
Associate
Professor Gregg Bluth (GMES) counts them off. "Earthquakes,
volcanoes, hurricanes . . . There's a lot of need there, and their
personnel are stretched pretty thin."
Enter a new, multi-faceted Michigan Tech program
made possible through a five-year, $2.3 million grant from the National
Science Foundation. The funding supports an array of projects, including
the new Peace Corps Master's International program in Natural Hazards.
Taken together, they will use remote sensing to
make life better for people in Guatemala, El Salvador, Nicaragua
and Ecuador.
The
project combines research and education and is known officially
as "Remote Sensing for Hazard
Mitigation and Resource Protection in Pacific Latin America."
One of the primary natural hazards the researchers
will address are the dozen or so active volcanoes in the region.
Scientists routinely use remote sensing to monitor
volcanic activity in hopes of predicting eruptions. These methods
can be very effective in countries where there may be few trained
scientists to personally monitor a wide range of geologic hazards.
However, these methods require a long-term commitment to become
a part of an overall hazard mitigation strategy.
"There isn't enough confidence in these methods,
which take time and testing to establish for different volcanic
settings," Bluth notes. The researchers hope that by establishing
a long-term presence, in part through the Peace Corps program, and
by working closely with their Latin American partners, these methods
will gain more credibility and become a permanent part of the regions’
hazard mitigation programs.
Eruptions, while catastrophic, are rare events,
so the researchers will also use remote sensing technology to address
a need faced--day in and day out--by local populations: clean drinking
water.
With a portion of the NSF grant, researchers will
use satellite images not only to analyze volcanic emissions, but
also to help find good sources of water. "We also plan to use
satellites to study land cover and land use," Bluth says. "Using
satellite images, you can see features on the surface which represent
subsurface fractures, where groundwater may be more accessible."
On the ground, students will be using a different
kind of remote sensing, seismic reflection, to study the water table.
"One of the region's persistent problems is
finding good sources of drinking water," Bluth said. "Our
research is aimed at coupling satellite data with geophysical surveys
to identify more productive areas for future drilling."
That portion of the project will be undertaken by
Associate Professor John Gierke (GMES) and students in the Aqua
Terra Tech Enterprise, who will head to Boaco, Nicaragua, in December
to begin fieldwork.
Currently, most of Boaco's 34,000 residents are
without running water for all but a couple hours a day, a few days
per week, due to inadequate supplies and storage capacity.
In addition, the researchers will work with geoscience
agencies from the four participating Latin American countries. Each
nation has a different set of tools to address hazard mitigation,
and the team hopes that by encouraging cooperation, people throughout
the entire region will benefit.
In addition to fostering science, education and
the wellbeing of the local citizenry, the program should raise Michigan
Tech's profile among other universities, Bluth adds. "We've
got good collaborations going with the University of Hawaii and
others," he says. "Students from around the country are
coming here for grad school, since we offer some unique and very
active programs in volcano remote sensing, geophysics and hydrogeology."
The co-principal investigators on the NSF grant
are Gierke, graduate student Essa Gross and Professor Bill Rose
(GMES). For more information, visit http://www.geo.mtu.edu/rs4hazards/
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