News

A cross-disciplinary team supported by a University of Maryland Grand Challenges Grant and led by Professor Daniel P. Lathrop seeks to address critical environmental challenges by mapping and mitigating methane emissions, water losses, and heat waste on UMD’s College Park campus and across the state.

Climate change, and how to mitigate and adapt to it, is one of the grandest challenges currently facing our society. Land use will play a critical role in climate mitigation efforts. Many socio-economic models project unprecedented biofuel crop expansion, coupled with carbon capture and sequestration, in order to achieve 2 degrees warming targets. Unlike the first-generation of biofuel crops that displaced food crops and led to increased food prices, new second-generation biofuel crops, such as switchgrass, are able to grow on marginal lands.

A University of Maryland Grand Challenges Grant supported effort led by Principal Investigator and Assistant Professor of Fire Protection Engineering Fernando Raffan-Montoya, Professor of Fire Protection Engineering Arnaud Trouvé, and Dr.