By Anabel Peterman, Morehead State Public Radio
Officials said eastern Kentucky is disproportionately impacted by climate change thanks to the impacts of logging, mining, and waste dumping. Now, a statewide research project will investigate how the Commonwealth’s weather patterns have changed over time.
Morehead State University will receive $1.1 million to help bridge environmental and engineering research in eastern Kentucky. The National Science Foundation grant will fuel the statewide Climate Resilience through Multidisciplinary Big Data Learning, Prediction, and Building Response Systems (CLIMBS) research initiative.
Jen O’Keefe is a professor of geology and science education at MSU. She said Kentucky has seen an increase in natural disasters, and the CLIMBS project aims to fill a need for research on eastern Kentucky’s weather patterns.
“We can build an awareness of natural changes in water availability and temperature variations over, say, the last 25,000 years or more. With that information in hand, we can work with engineers who are focused on reengineering our infrastructure to be resilient,” said O’Keefe.
Amy Collick is an assistant professor of precision agriculture and agri-tech at MSU. She said just like geology and paleontology provide an insight to the past and current conditions of climate change, the soil used in everyday farming is also a big indicator.
“They have recent history from different management decisions, as well as long term history from their development. Because soils develop from the underlying rock or redistributed rock materials. And that provides that interesting information on historical changes at the surface,” said Collick.
O’Keefe said as part of the program, the CLIMBS researchers will be working directly with members of participating eastern Kentucky communities, especially middle and high school students.
“To observe the studies in process. To be part of the solution. Because we know, no solution in eastern Kentucky will work without the people in place being part of it. They have to be part of the driving force to affect the change we aim to start with the five-year CLIMBS project.”
CLIMBS will also open opportunities for current undergraduate and Craft Academy students at Morehead and other universities statewide.
O’Keefe said the first two years of the project will be spent identifying sites in eastern Kentucky to conduct research on, followed by two years of data analysis and a year of modeling and testing. By the end, researchers aim to have a firm model in place for further climate analysis.
