CSU Monterey Bay was awarded a $1.13 million grant from the U.S. Geological Survey to support water-use research.
The university’s Department of Applied Environmental Science adjunct faculty and research scientists, AJ Purdy and Lee Johnson, received the award to provide research, support and software engineering to OpenET.
OpenET was publicly started in October 2021 and is a data program that provides satellite-based information on “evapotranspiration” – when water evaporates from the ground or transpires from plants – in accessible and usable formats for stakeholders across the country.
The program provides open, easily accessible satellite-based data for water management in order to maximize the benefits of the United States’ water supplies and lead to more efficient use of water in agriculture.
“OpenET fills an enormous gap in water data,” said Purdy in a CSU Monterey Bay press release. “We look forward to continuing to optimize and improve the delivery of relevant water data to stakeholders and we are eager to have students participate in this work.”
According to the university, the grant funding will support advances in the science behind OpenET and lead to further improvements in the accuracy, reliability and usability of data for water resources management from major watersheds to smaller, individual farms.
Locally, the CSU Monterey Bay team – which includes Purdy; Johnson; department chair and CSUMB/NASA Co-op principal investigator Susan Alexander; and program manager of OpenET and CSUMB senior research scientist Forrest Melton – collects ground-based data in commercial fields to evaluate the OpenET system’s accuracy for major Central Coast specialty crops.
Student assistants will also help with data analysis, laboratory and field-based aspects of the project.
“The new grant builds on a 25-plus-year cooperative research program between CSUMB and NASA, as well as other collaborators,” the university said.
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