Integration of Project Team

The research agenda is broad and requires expertise in different fields: the modeling of the dynamics of soil carbon sequestration, the agronomy of biomass production, spatial variability in landscape, the techniques for co-firing biomass in power plants and of generating and transmitting wind power, in order to develop an economic model to identify optimal patterns of land use and the policies needed to sustain them. ´

The involved researchers have the expertise and analytical infrastructure to carry out this research in an integrated manner. This team is focused, shares a common set of principles and has the desire to spearhead the major effort required to address the issues related to the challenging areas of this effort. By establishing a multi-disciplinary infrastructure to engender the development of future activities, the project combines integrated assessment with practical solutions and demonstrations.

• The Program in Arms Control, Disarmament and International Security (ACDIS) has considerable experience in interdisciplinary research, teaching and outreach, including workshop and project management. A recent example is the ACDIS spring 2006 seminar series “Towards Energy Security and Sustainability” (http://www.acdis.uiuc.edu/Events/Seminar_spring06.php) which involves several members of this project team. The project coordinator integrates resources in the research team, manages project activities and makes contributions to waste management and decision-support tools based on optimal control, dynamic games and agent-based modeling.
• The Department of Geography contributes to spatial modeling of land use and the interaction between ecological, economic and energy systems. The Regional Economics Applications Laboratory (REAL) has experience in modeling transportation networks and energy-economic analysis and assembles students and researcher from several departments and different countries.
• Expertise in the Department of Agricultural and Consumer Economics contributes to the study of the economics of alterative sources of renewable energy in Illinois and its implications for land use, displacement of carbon emissions and carbon sequestration as well as the policy incentives.
• The Plant Biology and Crop Science lab investigates the interaction between biomass crops, agriculture and atmospheric change and leads the research on Miscanthus.
• The Integrated Science Assessment model (ISAM), developed at the Department of Atmospheric Sciences, provides a tool to integrate all aspects of climate change in a global and regional context.
• The Power Systems Group at the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering contributes the methodology on integrated systems analysis and decision-making, with a focus on power grid integration.
• The research is supported by graduate students, to integrate the contributions of the team members under the guidance of the project coordinator and the team to effectively implement the project tasks, in particular grant writing, workshop, data acquisition, publications, presentations and outreach activities.