Faculty and other researchers held a summit last month to showcase how Dartmouth’s campus and other nearby areas in northern New England can be labs for building long-term resilience.
For one, New England’s winters are progressively seeing less snow and more frequent midwinter thaws.
“We have all been experiencing changing winters, but it’s surprising that we don’t have much data on how it’s actually affecting snow in New England,” , associate professor of biology, said at the Dartmouth as Living Lab Research Summit on Oct. 7.
To fill this gap, the Hicks Pries lab established a network across Dartmouth lands to measure how the warming winters are altering the snowpack and soil climate and impacting forests and local industries, such as skiing and snowmobiling.
It is among the first cohort of 10 projects supported by the initiative, which fosters climate scholarship, teaching, and hands-on learning. Under the program, campus lands, infrastructure, and spaces become dynamic testing grounds to advance understanding and empower students to work toward a resilient future.
The winter climate network, for instance, is establishing 30 forested study plots across a range of New Hampshire landscapes and latitudes at the Second College Grant, Mount Moosilauke, the , and on campus itself.
The initiative also affords opportunities for faculty to offer field-based courses and for students to conduct research.
At the research summit, attendees heard from last year’s grantees, who shared ideas and preliminary results and got a glimpse into future plans for the initiative.
“The goal is to grow the program, involve more grantees, and build a community of researchers across various disciplines who can exchange ideas and support each other in their work,” said , professor of earth sciences and faculty director of the , one of signature priorities.
Funding for the Living Lab initiative comes from the Climate Collaborative, which combines research, stewardship, and community engagement.
The collaborative’s is designed to support the initiative’s expansion by curating maps of Dartmouth lands and other relevant assets, providing faculty with streamlined access to land resources and data sets, hosting an easily accessible digital repository of all project-related materials, and facilitating applications for future grant proposals. A new call for proposals opened this month.
Dartmouth’s ongoing energy transition from steam to hot water heating—and the installation of geo-exchange borefields and high-capacity heat pumps—is especially rife with research possibilities.
Three different Living Lab projects are preparing to take advantage of associated drilling around campus to peek under the surface to map and understand the region’s geology and its historical evolution.
Another team will install fiber optic cables for temperature sensing in the borewells to study the efficacy of the geo-exchange technologies being deployed.
“Dartmouth is undertaking one of the first large-scale implementations of a project like this, in this kind of climate, and so we’re entering kind of an undiscovered country,” said proposal co-lead and .
Understanding how the efficiency of the heating system evolves with time will help inform mitigating strategies, he said.
Also among the first cohort of awardees is a team of biologists who will oversee the installation of a radio tower at the that will record signals from tagged migratory birds and animals as they travel through the Connecticut River Valley. Professors of Government and have also received a grant to test and develop positive public messaging to promote behaviors to protect the climate.
“The initiative aims to integrate the strengths of Dartmouth’s Arts and Sciences and professional schools to advance climate scholarship,” said Kelly, who looks forward to welcoming and supporting a diverse community of researchers through the program.
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The initiative is facilitating how faculty, students, and staff interact with and gain access to Dartmouth properties, datasets, and systems. Engagement will be provided through a map and a repository where faculty and students can access Dartmouth projects and datasets.
The map will include locations, physical attributes such as utilities, lodging and vehicle access, and a request form for access. The data portal contains descriptions of current and past projects, theses, publications, and datasets. The portal will also provide a hub for community members such as Facilities and Operations and faculty to post research needs and for students to post availability for conducting research.