Water quality, use, and supply projects
The Phoenix metropolitan area provides a model urban laboratory for developing solutions applicable to hot, arid, rapidly growing desert cities around the world. As in many rapidly developing areas, water is the most limited resource. Long-term ASU research has centered on analyzing and testing practical strategies for managing quality water supplies under conditions of uncertainty and future growth. Results will benefit many other urban areas globally.
Central Arizona–Phoenix Long-Term Ecological Research (CAP LTER) »
Through interdisciplinary projects integrating natural sciences, social science, and engineering, the Central Arizona–Phoenix Long-Term Ecological Research project examines the effects of urbanization on a desert ecosystem and vice versa.
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CI-TEAM Demonstration Project: WaterHUB for Cyber Enabled Training, Education and Research in Water Resources »
Considering the growing importance of water resources issues around the globe, this project addresses the need to train the current and future generations of teachers, students and general public to use cyberinfrastructure (CI) to address water related issues.
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Climate and Population Change and Thresholds of Peak Ecological Water: Integrated Synthesis for Dryland Rivers »
This project seeks to understand how ecosystem services change in response to extraction or addition of water to ecosystems due to population change and climate change.
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Cloud and Fog Processing of Organic Matter »
This project investigates the fate of organic matter in a cloud/fog system.
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Decision Center for a Desert City (DCDC) »
The Decision Center for a Desert City conducts climate, water, and decision research and develops innovative tools to bridge the boundary between scientists and decision makers and put their work into the hands of those whose concern is for the sustainable future of Greater Phoenix.
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Decision Theater (DT) »
The Decision Theater is an immersive, interactive, 3D-visualization facility for collaborative decision making.
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Detection of Engineering Nanomaterials in Drinking Water, Food, Commercial Product »
This project will provide to the emerging nano environmental and health-effects community well-documented analytical techniques and methodologies for quantifying the size, number concentration and mass concentration of engineered nanomaterials within matrices (water, food, biological fluids). This information is critical to assessing nanomaterial dosage and exposure during in vivo or in vitro health effects studies.
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Environmental Biotechnology, Swette Center for (EB) »
The Center for Environmental Biotechnology focuses on developing microbiological systems that capture or develop renewable resources and also prevent or clean up environmental pollution. Center researchers combine engineering with microbiology, molecular biology, and chemistry in order to gain an integrated understanding of how microbial ecosystems work and can be controlled to reclaim polluted water, generate energy from waste substances, and improve public health and sustainability.
Follow the Elements »
The Astrobiology Team at Arizona State University "follows the elements" to help guide the exploration for life beyond Earth, in our Solar System and on planets orbiting other stars.
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Impacts of Urbanization on Nitrogen Biogeochemistry in Xeric Ecosystems »
This research will help identify sources of surface water and groundwater nitrate contamination in arid and semi-arid deserts.
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In situ Sampling Tool for Assessing Bioavailability and Toxicity of Sediments »
This research project addresses the pressing need for better monitoring of toxicant bioavailability in contaminated sediments by introducing the in situ sampling/bioavailability determination (IS2B) approach. The proposed device and mathematical model will inform risk assessment for environmental management for Superfund and other hazardous waste sites.
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International Collaboration to Advance Sustainability Science in the US and Mexico »
Building on complementary skills and perspectives on problems that transcend political borders, we propose to form a new research collaboration between Arizona State University and the Institute of Ecology, National Autonomous University of Mexico (Director, Dr. Dominguez Perez-Tejada) based in the principles and aims of sustainability science.
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Land and Water Use Decision-Making and Ecosystem Services along a Southwestern Socio-Ecological Gradient »
The principal question of this proposal is to understand how decision makers respond to and make land and water use decisions based on measured and preferred ecosystem services on the wildland-rural-urban fringe in the arid Southwest.
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Legacies on the Landscape: Prehistoric Human Land Use and Long-Term Ecological Change »
This collaborative project involving ecologists and archaeologists explores how prehistoric agricultural communities have affected plant communities, soil properties, and biogeochemical cycling for thousands of years. The goal of the project is to build theory about what types of human disturbances leave legacies over different time scales, and gain insights into the ways that today's actions can affect future ecological systems.
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Microbial Ecology to Optimize Beneficial Syntrophies to Improve Microbial Electrochemical and Dechlorinating Systems »
This research provides a novel approach to study biodegrading and bioenergy relevant mixed microbial communities. The results will provide fundamental understanding of the role of homoacetogens in electron and carbon flow in dechlorinating and ARB mixed communities. This will allow exploiting the use of complex renewable waste sources for bioenergy and bioremediation.
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Multi-scale Effects of Climate Variability and Change on Hydrologic Regimes, Ecosystem Function, and Community Structure in a Desert Stream and Its Catchment »
The primary objective of this project is to understand how long-term climate variability and change influence the structure and function of desert streams via effects on short-term responses to hydrologic disturbance.
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Novel Approaches to Studying the Situ Bioremediation of Complex Mixtures »
The long-term goal is to improve the success rate of bioremediation at sites containing complex chemical mixtures by using in situ microcosm array (ISMA) technology.
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Photocatalytic Reduction of Nitrate in Water »
The goal of this project is to explore and optimize the use of photocatalysts as a reductive technology for treating nitrate in drinking water applications. The underlying hypothesis is nitrate can be converted to innocuous aqueous species in drinking water applications using metal-loaded photocatalysts.
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Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons Processing by a Fog Cloud - Field and Laboratory Studies »
This project addresses questions regarding the chemical processing in fog of polynuclear aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), some of which are known to be toxic.
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Quantifying the Effects of Groundwater and Hydrology on the Trophic Structure in Desert Riparian Ecosystems »
Water and energy are essential ingredients of life and key commodities for humans and other living organisms that make up food webs. Curiously, although the role of energy in determining the inner workings of food webs has been thoroughly explored, water has been mostly ignored in food web ecology. The goal of this project is to fill this critical research gap by working to understand how the balance between supply and demand of energy and water affects patterns of abundance and biodiversity in terrestrial food webs.
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Risk Perception, Institutions, and Water Conservation: Enhancing Agricultural Adaption to Future Water Scarcity in Central Arizona »
The objective of this project is to help farmers maximize opportunities to enhance their flexibility in face of climatic stress while also investing in the resilience of the broader social-ecological system on which farmers depend.
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Sinking Rates and Nutritional Quality of Organic Matter Exported from Sea Ice; the Importance of Exopolymeric Substances »
The knowledge resulting from this study will contribute to our understanding of the Arctic Ocean carbon cycle and how it may be modified in response to climate variability.
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Sustainable Infrastructures for Energy and Water Supply (SINEWS) »
The goal of this project is to develop a comprehensive understanding of the sustainability and resilience of the water and energy systems, and to offer solutions that span infrastructure design, management of the physical environment, and socio-economic policy.
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Sustainable Phosphorus Initiative (SPI) »
The ASU Sustainable Phosphorus Initiative (SPI) seeks to build a credible scientific consensus on the dimensions of the phosphorus sustainability challenge, catalyze an interdisciplinary global network focused on phosphorus sustainability, and design and motivate institutional, commercial, and consumer behavior change for conservation and recycling to establish phosphorus sustainability.
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Sustainable Water Resources for Communities under Climate Change: Can State-of-the-Art Forecasting Inform Decision-Making in Data Sparse Regions? »
This project will study decision-making for water resources management in anticipation of climate change in northern Mexico as a case study for the broader arid and semiarid southwestern North America. The goal of the project is to determine whether water resources systems modeling, developed within a participatory framework, can contribute to the building of management strategies in a context of water scarcity, conflicting water uses and highly variable and changing climate conditions.
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Transformation and Transport of Organic Carbon in the Colorado River-Reservoir System »
This project will assess the distribution, composition and reactivity of terrestrial and riverine carbon along a sequence of well-characterized reservoirs in a single watershed.
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Urbanization and Global Environmental Change (UGEC) »
This collaborative project is building greater knowledge and understanding of the bidirectional interactions between global environmental change and cities, present at local, regional, and global scales, and integrating the work of decision makers, practitioners, and academic researchers.
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US-Mexico Border Water & Environmental Sustainability Training (UMB-WEST) »
This project will provide US undergraduate students and graduate students with an international collaborative research experience in water resources management.
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Water and Environmental Technology Center »
The purpose of this award is to start a new I/UCRC "Water and Environmental Technology (WET)" with a focus on water quality and emerging contaminants.
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