Spotlight on Recent Interdisciplinary Research

At IonE, we group our research priorities into ten interconnected topical domains, designed to empower researchers to shape their projects and define meaningful, community-engaged outcomes. The following roundup showcases work in decision support, food systems, mitigation and adaptation.

Decision support focuses on developing tools, data and engagement processes that help decision-makers integrate multidisciplinary knowledge into real-world sustainability choices.

• Climate and hazard forecast visualizations are often technically complex, making it difficult for non-experts to understand and use them. IonE Interdisciplinary Decision Support Researcher Apoorva Joshi led research with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) on improving the interpretation of drought forecast visualizations using evidence-based recommendations to redesign graphics (Weather, Climate, and Society). IonE Postdoctoral Fellowship program alum Shubhechchha Sharma and IonE Director of Research Melissa Kenney are co-authors on the research.
• Flood inundation maps can inform evacuation decisions, real-time operations or long-term planning – but only if they’re accessible to audiences. IonE Decision Support Researcher Sajani Kandel led research that provided actionable recommendations to improve the usefulness of NOAA’s Flood Inundation Maps (Hydrological Processes). Postdoctoral Fellowship program alum Shubhechchha Sharma, Decision Support Researcher Apoorva Joshi and IonE Director of Research Melissa Kenney are co-authors on the research.
• Many environmental decision-support tools start out expert-focused and redesigning them for a non-expert audience can be difficult as non-experts want to interact with the tools differently. IonE Director of Research Melissa Kenney was part of a three-person team improving the usability of the U.S. Geological Survey’s WaterWatch tool. Kenney and her colleagues identified a functional change, created an alternative design and empirically tested the alternative’s usability through general public surveys, showing how user-centered design can improve environmental decision support tools (U.S. Geological Survey Scientific Investigations Report).

The food systems domain is concerned with creating sustainable, resilient and equitable food networks, with recent work focusing on gathering fundamental data and providing actionable recommendations.

• IonE Research Scientist Nathaniel Springer led research into the life cycle greenhouse gas (GHG) impacts of soybean and soybean meal around the world, finding that GHG emissions vary widely across and within countries. “This is significant because it illustrates that how and where you grow soybeans matters for its environmental impact, and that broad statements such as ‘Brazilian soybeans are worse for the environment than U.S. soybeans’ may not necessarily be true,” says Springer (Agricultural Systems). Senior Research Scientist Jennifer Schmitt, IonE Associate Rylie Pelton and IonE Postdoctoral Fellow Aurup Ratan Dhar are co-authors on the research.
• Research drawing on IonE’s FoodS³ platform, which is led by IonE Senior Research Scientist Jennifer Schmitt, illuminates the agricultural connection between urban and rural communities, showing how a corn farmer in Minnesota is linked to a Los Angeles carnitas burrito (Nature Climate Change). Senior Research Scientist Jennifer Schmitt, IonE Research Scientist Nathaniel Springer and IonE affiliate Rylie Pelton are co-authors on the research.
• Emerging farmers, especially immigrant farmers, are increasingly important contributors to the Midwestern food system but face significant barriers to success, including limited culturally relevant training and technical assistance related to Midwestern soil health and nutrient management. Supported through an IonE Impact Goals grant, University of Minnesota researchers in collaboration with Big River Farms propose actionable recommendations to improve training for this important group of farmers (Renewable Agriculture and Food Systems). IonE affiliate Julie Grossman is a co-author on the research.

In the mitigation and adaptation domains, which consider ways of slowing and building resilience to climate change, IonE researchers looked at the impacts on humans in the Caribbean and plants in the Midwest prairie.

• To better respond to climate change, it’s important to catalog the risks and identify efforts that are having a meaningful impact. Kenney contributed to research into climate change-related health risks faced by people in Caribbean island nations, with an analysis of strategies used by Cuba’s National Health System. This analysis suggests that other nations could consider similar climate adaptation strategies to increase the resilience of their communities to negative health impacts (Interdisciplinary Journal of Partnership Studies). IonE affiliates Teddie Potter and Heidi Roop are co-authors on the research.
• Changing winters are reshaping tallgrass prairie plant communities, and researchers are trying to identify which management practices are most helpful. IonE Postdoctoral Fellow Katherine Charton found that reduced snow cover coupled with fall burns led to colder winter soils but few community-level changes (American Journal of Botany).
   

Ashley Bergman Humphrey is the Research Communications Specialist at the Institute on the Environment.