Above is a photo of UT students visiting the local Collingwood Garden, promoting local, sustainably grown food. At Collingwood Garden, non permanent structures are implemented as well as permaculture, promoting a more active and connected community.

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There are three pillars to sustainable living, environmental, social, and economical. When all three are achieved, sustainability is also achieved. Delving more into environmental, this focuses on the human and inhuman impacts as well as natural cycles that are exerted on the natural surrounding environment.

Researchers:

• Kelley Davis (Cohort 1)

• Kayla Piezer (Cohort 1)

• Mickey Navidomskis (Cohort 1)

• Emily Briese (Cohort 2)

• Dani Zebelean (Cohort 2)

• Brooke Mason (Cohort 2)

Works

Kayla Piezer applied an Ecological Network Analysis for a rooftop garden in UAB. This analysis compared a synthetic system (the urban garden) to a natural system (the natural, cycling ecosystem). It then identifies weaknesses in the system, including the symbiotic relationships, the controls and dependencies, and many more.

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Kelley Davis looked at the exchanges of water between different locations of water basins and began mapping them out.

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Mickey Navidomskis looked at the water footprint of a proposed agro-community in Weber, Utah and worked with the founders to come up viable irrigation methods. Through working with the community Mickey developed a spreadsheet tool that integrated crop coefficients and evapotranspiration data to estimate the area of land that can be supported by rainwater harvesting. 
 

 

 

 

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Emily Briese is applying an Ecological Network Analysis for the international exchanges of virtual water, optimizing the relationships. Later, a sensitivity analysis will be done as well as a relative comparison of the local production of food and water consumption after the initial analysis is done. This will help support the argument of how feasible urban agriculture is within context of water consumption.

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Dani Zebelean is building an online application, called Agua Libre, that incorporates previous research completed by Mickey. The application of Agua Libre will be used to study the connection of climate variables and lettuce yield. Successful development of this application will enable people to plan their urban landscapes and gardens in sustainable ways.

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Brooke Mason is using the FAO’s CROPWAT program to quantify water savings and crop yield of an urban tomato garden for a real-time controlled intelligent irrigation system and a conventional irrigation system for various climatic conditions.

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