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Interdisciplinary Research Initiatives
Prof. Turco is active at UCLA, and in the community, in organizing, directing, and carrying out large, interdisciplinary environmental research and education projects. Some current projects are briefly described below. Please connect to the websites indicated for more information on particular activities.
Institute of the Environment (www.ioe.ucla.edu): Prof. Turco is the founding Director of UCLA's new Institute of the Environment (IoE). The IoE was established specifically to organize and perform interdisciplinary research and teaching, focusing on complex environmental problems. The IoE is composed of faculty from a broad range of disciplines--the sciences, public policy, engineering, law, business, and public health, among others. Several current IoE projects are described below.
The IoE has developed a number of facilities at UCLA, including a new Intel-sponsored Regional Environmental Assessment Laboratory and Geographic Information System (REAL/GIS), which also houses a state-of-the-art Remote Sensing Laboratory. The REAL/GIS seeks to carry out integrated regional modeling and environmental data analysis. With regard to teaching, the IoE has launched a number of novel courses, including, "The Environment--A Multidisciplinary Approach." This year-long undergraduate offering is "team-taught" by instructors from at least four departments, each offering concepts, perspectives, and information about the environment from a disciplinary point of view, but with strong integration and resolution.
The IoE also publishes the "Southern California Environmental Report Card," offering an annual assessment of the state of the environment in Southern California. Concentrating on different topics each year, the Report Card aims to inform state and local officials on the success of environmental policies and actions, and to educate the public concerning key issues and developments. Through the "GLOBE in the City" project, which Prof. Turco and other faculty lead, the IoE is attempting to bring environmental science directly to the K-12 classroom.
Los Angeles Watershed Program (www.ask.yongshei): Prof. Turco has played a key role in organizing a campus-wide, multidisciplinary research effort to study Los Angeles water resources and quality. He is principle investigator on an EPA grant that involves a dozen other investigators from eight campus departments. The Watershed team has been collecting data, developing modeling tools, and carrying out studies of watersheds, wetlands, and embayments along the LA coastline. The project has research components in the areas of regional meteorology, hydrology, riverine systems, urban water usage, runoff chemistry, air quality, wetland ecology, coastal ocean processes, and GIS applications. Through the Watershed program, the IoE is seeking to integrate these diverse disciplines to create a quantitative means of assessing water availability and quality throughout the L.A. area. The effort is establishing specific linkages between, for example, precipitation and climatology (addressing historical drought cycles over hundreds of years, as well as shorter-term fluctuations), between hydrology, runoff chemistry and wetland ecology, and between coastal ocean dynamics, pollutant outflow and biogeochemistry.
Southern California Particulate Center and Supersite (www.ask.barile): Prof. Turco, through the IoE, helped to organize a faculty team from UCLA, USC, Cal Tech, UCR and UCI to create a major center on aerosols and their health effects in the Los Angeles region. He is co-Principal Investigator of a major grant that establishes the IoE's Southern California Particulate Center and Supersite (SCPCS). The center is housed at UCLA, and is supported by funding from the EPA and the California Air Resources Board. The SCPCS is unique in pulling together a highly diverse group of researchers from the physical sciences, engineering, health sciences and medicine. Over an initial five year period, the center will focus on airborne particulates, their physical and chemical properties, toxicology, and health impairing effects. Turco's group will carry out simulations and analyses using the air quality model, SMOG, to link observed aerosol properties with natural and anthropogenic sources, on the one hand, and to human exposure assessment, on the other. Modeling will also be used to extrapolate from SCPSS site measurements to regional scales.
Santa Monica Bay Restoration Project: Prof. Turco is a co-Principal Investigator on a project that seeks to connect air pollution with surface water contamination in Santa Monica Bay. The effort represents collaboration between UCLA, EPA, and the Southern California Water Resource Project, with funding from a number of agencies. Turco's group is applying their regional SMOG model to determine the transport, transformation, and deposition of various compounds from urban sources to the coastal waters off Los Angeles. The initial work has focused on nitrates, and trace metals.
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