2026 Impact Goal Projects Advance Sustainability Across Minnesota

Water and land was the most common of IonE’s 10 sustainability domains, serving as the primary focus area for three projects and a secondary domain for three others. Examples include assessing cyanobacterial threats to Lake Superior, remediating contamination in Tribal waters and cultural foods, and supporting culturally-grounded education aimed at restoring relationships with Manoomin (natural wild rice).

“We were inspired by the level of actionable, solution-driven proposals,” says Jessica Hellmann, IonE executive director. "What makes these projects especially compelling is their commitment to pursuing cutting-edge research while forming new collaborative teams and having measurable impact."

Project teams and community partners represent multiple campuses, Extension, community organizations and local, federal and Tribal governments, as well as universities from across the country. The projects reflect the grantmaking program’s emphasis on developing solutions and tools with the communities and partners positioned to use them. For example, one project will partner with communities across Minnesota to create community-based theater performances that explore sustainable farming practices.

“These projects are not just asking important questions, they’re also building the partnerships and relationships needed to turn ideas into lasting change for Minnesota communities,” says Melissa Kenney, IonE director of research and knowledge initiatives.

Brief excerpts of each of the 2026 projects can be found below.

Excerpts are based on information provided by project teams in their proposals and have been lightly adapted for length and consistency.

AI’s Hidden Thirst: A predictive decision-support tool for data center water circularity and governance

Domains: Decision Support, Water & Land, Environmental Justice

As generative AI expands, the demand for digital services is driving a rapid construction boom of hyperscale data centers. A hyperscale data center handling billions of daily requests can use one million to five million gallons of water daily, comparable to the total daily residential water consumption of a mid-sized city in Minnesota. This rapid expansion has created a data gap between data center developers and local municipalities: regulators and communities lack the tools to verify complex infrastructure impacts, while data center developers need to predict how dynamic AI workloads translate into physical water stress. Furthermore, attempts to save water consumption through internal recycling (circularity) can concentrate heavy metals, biocides, corrosion products, and treatment chemicals in blowdown, shifting part of the burden from water quantity to water quality.

To address the data gaps in water demand for hyperscale data centers, this project builds upon the foundational IonE Mini Grant that modeled the micro-level water consumption of graphic processing unit (GPU)-based AI workloads. Co-designed with the Freshwater Society and the UMN Morris Clifford J. Benson Center for Community Partnerships, the project extends a proof-of-concept from GPU-level modeling to a facility-level, community-driven predictive decision support dashboard. Freshwater and Benson Center will help design stakeholder metrics, community impact reports, and educational materials. The aim is to empower regulators, communities and data center operators to collaboratively optimize water circularity and mitigate cumulative chemical and thermal pollution across Minnesota’s watersheds.

Assessing Emerging Cyanobacterial Threats to Lake Superior

Domain: Water & Land

Over the past 9,000 years, Lake Superior and its watershed have experienced significant changes, including glacier retreat, ecosystem repopulation, and increased human activity. In the last century, anthropogenic activity in the watershed has made its imprint on the lake. Coupled with changing lake chemistry and rising temperatures, the lake’s biology is also responding, leading to emerging issues such as cyanobacterial blooms. Diverse cyanobacteria inhabit lakes and rivers within the watershed and occasionally enter Lake Superior, posing major environmental concerns and public access challenges for natural resource managers.

This project aims to quantify emerging cyanobacterial threats, assess whether the lake’s chemistry offers future resistance to bacterial blooms, and inform mitigation strategies and policy development to protect the vital natural resource that is Lake Superior.

Assessing the Co-Benefits of Residential Weatherization During Wildfire Smoke Events

Domains: Adaptation, Environmental Justice

As climate change intensifies, wildfire smoke is an increasing threat in Minnesota. With this comes fine particulate pollution, which can infiltrate homes and cause adverse human health outcomes. Current mitigation strategies focus mainly on filtration from heating, ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC) systems. Alternatively, weatherization provides an opportunity to reduce wildfire smoke exposure by preventing it from infiltrating the home.

This project team hypothesizes that weatherization will enhance protection from smoke and local pollution while delivering co‑benefits such as lower energy use, reduced cost burdens, improved indoor comfort during heat waves and better health. This team will study how residential weatherization reduces infiltration of outdoor wildfire smoke and cumulative air pollution through a partnership with Hennepin County, which will result in weatherizing 20 homes within environmental justice communities.

Circular Bioprocessing of Ethanol Carbon Dioxide and Thin Stillage for Sustainable Food Ingredient Production Using Microalgae

Domains: Food Systems, Clean Energy, Natural Capital

Ethanol production in Minnesota generates large volumes of carbon dioxide emissions and nutrient-rich thin stillage (a liquid byproduct of the ethanol distillation process) that remain underutilized, representing both an environmental burden and a missed economic opportunity.

This project aims to develop and evaluate a microalgal cultivation platform to simultaneously capture industrial carbon dioxide and upcycle thin stillage into high-value proteins, lipids and hydrocolloids. By quantifying carbon dioxide utilization efficiency, biomass productivity, and ingredient yields, this research will assess the feasibility of transforming ethanol byproducts into sustainable food ingredients. The ultimate aim is to advance Minnesota’s circular bioeconomy and climate mitigation efforts.

Closed-Loop Thermochemical Destruction of PFAS for Water and Land Systems at Prairie Island Indian Community

Domain: Water & Land

Per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) are long-lasting compounds with strong carbon-fluorine bonds, making them resistant to breaking down in the environment. In Minnesota, PFAS have been detected in groundwater and private wells, particularly in shallow sand and gravel aquifers influenced by historical industrial releases. For the Prairie Island Indian Community (PIIC), PFAS is not only a water-quality concern, but also a land and ecosystem issue. A recent research collaboration between the PIIC and University of Wisconsin Sea Grant partners has detected PFAS in several traditional foods, including maple syrup and walleye, with PFAS concentrations also identified in wells on PIIC Tribal lands.

This project aims to determine whether PFAS concentrated from groundwater and culturally important plant communities at PIIC can be verifiably mineralized and permanently removed without secondary contaminant redistribution. The research will test a closed-loop treatment strategy that combines PFAS concentration from water and plant materials with catalytic microwave-assisted pyrolysis and fluorine mass-balance verification. If successful, the work will provide decision-ready scientific evidence to help PIIC and other Minnesota communities evaluate remediation approaches that eliminate, rather than merely transfer, PFAS.

Conservation Risks of Sustainable Aviation Fuel in a World of Substitutable Feedstocks, Fragmented Policy, and Rising Demand for Decarbonization Solutions to Aviation Emissions

Domain: Clean Energy

Decarbonization is a key solution for reducing atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations and lowering global temperatures; however, not every sector can decarbonize in the same way or to the same extent. The aviation industry has been seen as difficult to decarbonize since electrification poses multiple challenges, such as low energy densities, safety concerns and lagging technological advances. Despite this, bioenergy has emerged as a potential market to help the aviation industry begin to decarbonize. Aviation bioenergy, or sustainable aviation fuels (SAF), can be derived from a variety of feedstocks, making it an attractive solution, particularly for other industries (e.g. logging, agriculture) that produce otherwise unusable biowastes. Local and global SAF policies are both creating new market opportunities and putting pressure on existing markets for biomass feedstocks.

This project will develop a spatial land-use change model to evaluate policies that aim to promote SAF expansion in Minnesota while mitigating negative impacts on soil health, water quality and biodiversity. Test scenarios will be developed in conjunction with community partners and disseminated in short briefs through community partner networks, informing state government and corporate policy.

Decision Support for Lake Sustainability: Safeguarding recreational boating and protecting Minnesota lakes through science-based guidance

Domains: Decision Support, Water & Land

Minnesota’s 14,000+ lakes are central to recreation, family traditions and community life. Protecting lake health while keeping recreational access equitable is both an environmental and social priority. One contentious issue for lake communities is agreeing on where and how large power boats – specifically wakesurfing boats – can operate. Both social and ecological challenges arise, as wake boats in wakesurfing mode can disrupt other types of lake recreation and damage lake bottoms and shorelines, potentially undoing years of lake stewardship gains. Lake associations and decision-makers are under growing pressure to set policies and create educational materials to address these issues.

This project team aims to address these types of lake management challenges by identifying the barriers that are preventing lake managers from implementing recommended practices. The project will test and evaluate decision support strategies designed to overcome these barriers and increase adoption. The ultimate question they seek to answer is: What types of research-to-implementation models will lead to the greatest adoption of science-based decisions to protect lake ecosystems?

Prairie Restorations: Arts-based engagement for sustainable farming futures

Domains: Food Systems, Water & Land

Despite incentives to maintain Minnesota’s remaining prairie, grasslands continue to be threatened due to cropland expansion. Sustainable farming practices can lack buy-in from landowners who see these policies and practices as impractical and costly. Community-based theater offers an innovative communication tool, providing space to explore perspective differences and animate transformative practices.

Partnering with outstate communities and an Indigenous science educator, this project will translate scientific research, sustainable farming practices and farmer narratives through co-developed theatrical performances in Minnesota communities. The project will measure shifts in systems thinking and understanding as well as potential shifts to more sustainable food growth across outstate and urban sites. A documentary will extend the project’s impact.

Restoring Relationships with Manoomin: Water, science, and culturally grounded education on the Red Lake Nation Reservation

Domains: Water & Land, Food Systems, Environmental Justice

Manoomin (natural wild rice) has declined across the Red Lake Reservation due to unknown reasons that likely include not only biophysical stressors, but also the scarcity of Tribal members with both the Ojibwe knowledge and western science needed for its stewardship.

This project will generate Red Lake’s first ecohydrological datasets focused on Manoomin waters through cross-cultural programming for a tiered cohort of Tribal students (high school to Master’s-level) who represent next-generation land and water care-takers. This serves as an opportunity to investigate what Tribal community restoration can look like, by renewing relationships among Manoomin, water, science and culturally-grounded education.

Environmental Humanities Initiative Support

Domain: Planetary Health

This project was funded outside the competitive RFP process as a strategic Impact Goals investment. The Environmental Humanities Initiative (EHI) has served the University of Minnesota for a decade as the only unit in the College of Liberal Arts where faculty, students and staff can pursue interdisciplinary research and collaborative work in the environmental humanities. Environmental humanists bring cultural, historical, political and economic expertise to planetary and local networks of human, animal and plant life. The EHI supports faculty research, pedagogical experiences and community outreach and engagement.

This non-competitive project will support the EHI to continue its work and prepare for future competitive funding by aiding the development of platforms through which it publicizes EHI collaborative projects, research, events and curricular activities.

Molly Stroh is the Communications & Editorial Fellow at the Institute on the Environment.