Water Resources Management
Human modification of our natural environment necessitates the need for research that can mitigate our impacts on the environment and manage our resources more sustainably for future generations. SAFL conducts numerous projects looking to quantify the impacts of human actions on water quality and quantity as well as aquatic ecosystems. We work in both urban and rural landscapes to build more resilient responses to the growing impacts of climate change, including but not limited to implementing and improving stormwater practices, working to identify better ways to mitigate flooding in rural areas, providing better guidance for culvert design that takes aquatic organism passage into account, working to minimize the spread of invasive flora and fauna, and minimizing the extent of harmful algal blooms in lakes. We use field campaigns, laboratory experiments, and computational tools to approach complex environmental concerns and issues from multiple directions, culminating in robust research outcomes that advances basic knowledge in a field while also having the potential to influence and guide real-time applications.
SAFL Faculty
Jacques Finlay
John Gulliver
Kimberly Hill
Omid Mohseni
Crystal Ng
Heinz Stefan
SAFL Researchers
Andy Erickson
William Herb
Matt Hernick
Ben Janke
Jess Kozarek
Jeff Marr
Poornima Natarajan
Interested in stormwater specifically? Visit the SAFL Stormwater Research website.
Read more about SAFL water resources management related projects/research:
(filter "Water Resources Management" if needed)
Wind Turbine Generated Sound
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As the wind energy sector grows, environmental impacts and public perception become increasingly important. One common public concern about wind energy farms is wind turbine-generated noise.A major component of this project project was to provide technically defensible data characterizing wind turbine-generated noise and the human response to wind turbine-generated noise.
Development of tower and foundation assessment tools for utility-scale wind turbines
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Wind turbine operators must asses turbine foundation structural health after extreme weather events, or before repower projects. SAFL engineers worked with Barr Engineering to design an inexpensive, noninvasive, and portable system for assessing wind turbine foundation health.
Detection and Perception of Sound by Eagles and Surrogate Raptors
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Could acoustic deterrents be used to prevent eagle and raptor collisions with wind turbines? Researchers from a wide range of backgrounds and institutions worked together on this project to begin acoustic deterrent research for the Department of Energy. This project mapped the hearing range of raptors, collected and categorized eagle calls and vocalizations, and evaluated bald eagle response to various synthetic and natural sounds.