FIU researchers receive $5 million grant from NASA

Fernando Miralles-Wilhelm leads a group of researchers and graduate students studying the wetlands of the Everglades and Mexican Yucatan. The research team’s findings could reveal if projected dramatic changes in these ecosystems’ futures are true.

By Grant Smith

A team of four universities led by FIU’s Fernando Miralles-Wilhelm received a $5 million grant from NASA for ecosystem research on the Everglades and Sian Ka’an wetlands in Mexico. The proposal was one of only six out of 53 research proposals that was funded by NASA.

“NASA is particularly interested in the scientific aspects of how ecosystems around the world are changing,” says Miralles-Wilhelm, associate professor of civil and environmental engineering. “They have deployed many satellites that currently monitor the earth’s behavior and the earth’s changes over time.”

The satellite technology provided by NASA, which Miralles-Wilhelm says devotes about 50 percent of its research budget to earth-related subjects, will complement the team’s research.

Miralles-Wilhelm’s colleagues from FIU include Assefa Melesse, environmental studies; Rene Price, earth sciences and SERC; Reinaldo Garcia, ARC; and Hector Fuentes, civil and environmental engineering. The FIU researchers are collaborating with colleagues from Princeton, University of California-Berkeley and University of Miami on the project.

“We’re looking at the next five years of funding to essentially make a quantum leap in our learning and our understanding of how these wetlands behave and change over time,” says Miralles-Wilhelm. One of the crucial observations they hope to make regards the level of fresh water in the Everglades. Theories abound that there will be a significant rise in sea level and that the Caribbean will receive much less rain in the future due to climate change. These theories, which cannot be supported because nobody has done the research, will be investigated using NASA’s satellites.

In order to gauge the information collected from the Everglades, Miralles-Wilhelm needed a controlled environment that was untouched and similar to the Everglades. His team chose a wetland ecosystem in the Yucatan, in the old Mayan grounds of Sian Ka’an. Students have already been there gathering information about the ecosystem and comparing it to the Everglades.

FIU’s ability to recruit young scientists is a critical component of the research team’s success to date and gave the university an advantage when competing for this grant, according to Miralles-Wilhelm.

“[NASA] is really looking at the next generation of scientists that are going to come out of this,” he says. Right now, more people in math, science and engineering are retiring than entering these fields, creating a critical gap in staff needed to continue much-needed research, development and innovation in our country.

In total, the research team will be training 10 doctoral students and as many as 10 more graduate students. NASA will monitor the growth of these students, says Miralles-Wilhelm.

“Projects like this are a vehicle to help [NASA] attract students and diversify these fields,” says Miralles-Wilhelm. “FIU has a distinct advantage in that area.”

Miralles-Wilhelm expects to report his first research findings to NASA in the fall and will continue to update NASA annually for the remaining four years of his grant.