EAGER SitS: Signaling the Health Of Tree-pit Soil (SHOTS)

这个早期概念的探索性研究（EAGER）土壤信号（SitS）奖是一个高风险/高回报的研究项目，可以为雨水管理绿色基础设施的设计和运行所需的城市雨水渗透建模提供必要的数据。由于建筑物、人行道、停车场和其他不透水的表面覆盖了很高的地表，在潮湿的天气里，一个典型的城市街区产生的雨水径流是相同大小的林地的五倍。这种径流含有包括油、重金属、微粒和营养物质在内的污染物，是造成世界各地城市水体受损的原因。在美国，雨水径流是海岸带污染的主要来源，是湖泊和内陆水体污染的第三大来源。城市土壤可以吸收落在城市边界内的雨水，从而有助于减轻雨水径流的不利影响。然而，城市土壤渗透雨水的能力取决于土壤生态系统的健康状况。以往对城市土壤生态系统健康影响因素的调查主要是人工取样，然后进行实验室分析。这使得很难在空间和时间上收集所需的观测数据，以充分了解城市土壤生态系统的复杂性。如果不能更好地了解土壤生态系统的行为，就很难制定出管理城市土壤的策略，以最大限度地减少城市雨水径流的能力。该项目是非常规和先进电子专家（Kymissis）与地质环境工程和城市可持续性专家（Culligan）之间的跨学科合作，旨在验证无线、低功耗、原位土壤传感系统的概念，该系统具有在广泛环境下监测土壤生态系统的巨大潜力。新的土壤传感系统将在纽约市的城市土壤中进行实地测试。这种原位传感器由Kymissis实验室正在开发的微型、低功耗无线传感器组成。这些低成本的系统使用电路板作为一个整体的机械元件，并结合电容感测非接触式湿度监测，温度监测，先进的电源管理，和蓝牙无线通信中继信息返回到读出计算机。该项目开发的下一代系统还将增加pH值和溶解氧（DO）测量，使传感器能够测量土壤的物理、化学和生物健康指标。该传感系统将用于监测位于纽约市晨兴高地附近的40个城市树坑中的土壤。Culligan之前已经人工收集了这些土壤的水渗透能力与树坑设计和管理特征之间关系的数据。从传感器收集的数据将与先前的数据进行比较，以验证新传感系统的性能。传感器数据也将用于促进对影响城市土壤生态系统服务的因素的理解。该研究项目非常适合当地社区参与与他们社区的雨水管理直接相关的公民科学活动。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

This EArly-concept Grant for Exploratory Research (EAGER) Signals in the Soil (SitS) award is a high risk/high return research project that could provide essential data for the modeling of rainwater infiltration in urban areas needed in the design and operation of green infrastructure for storm water management. As a result of high land surface coverage by buildings, pavement, parking lots, and other impervious surfaces, a typical city block generates five times as much stormwater runoff during wet-weather flow than a woodland area of the same size. This runoff, which contains pollutants including oils, heavy metals, particulates and nutrients, is responsible for the impairment of urban water bodies throughout the world. In the United States, stormwater runoff is the leading source of coastal zone pollution, and the third largest source of lake and inland water body pollution. Urban soils can soak up rain that falls within city boundaries, and thus help mitigate the adverse impacts of stormwater runoff. Nonetheless, the ability of urban soils to infiltrate rainwater is dependent on soil ecosystem health. Prior investigations into factors influencing urban soil ecosystem health have primarily involved manual sampling of soils followed by laboratory analysis. This has made it difficult to amass the number of observations needed, over both space and time, to fully understand the complexities of urban soil ecosystems. Without a better understanding of soil ecosystem behavior, it is difficult to develop strategies for managing urban soils in ways that maximize their capacity to reduce urban stormwater runoff. This project is an interdisciplinary collaboration between an expert in unconventional and advanced electronics (Kymissis) and an expert in geo-environmental engineering and urban sustainability (Culligan) to enable proof of concept for a wireless, low-power, in situ soil sensing system that has significant potential for soil ecosystem monitoring across a wide-range of settings. The new soil sensing system will be field-tested in urban soils located in New York City.The in situ sensors comprise of miniature, low-powered, wireless sensors under development in the Kymissis lab. These low-cost systems use the circuit board as an integral mechanical element, and incorporate capacitance sensing for non-contact moisture monitoring, temperature monitoring, advanced power management, and Bluetooth wireless communication for relaying information back to a readout computer. The next generation system to be developed by this project will also add pH and dissolved oxygen (DO) measurements, enabling the sensors to measure indicators of the physical, chemical and biological health of soils. The sensing system will be used to monitor soils located in 40 urban tree pits within the Morningside Heights neighborhood of New York City. Culligan has prior, manually collected, data on relationships between the water infiltration capacity of these soils and tree pit design and management features. The data gathered from the sensors will be compared to this prior data to validate the performance of the new sensing system. Sensor data will also be used to advance understanding of the factors influencing urban soil ecosystem services. The research program is ideally suitable for involvement of local communities in citizen science activities which directly relate to stormwater management in their neighborhood.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.