[Enviro-lunch] This Thursday 3/7: Majdi Abou Najm

[Jing Yan]

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Hello Everyone,

Please join us this Thursday Mar. 7 for this week's Enviro-Lunch talk by Dr. Majdi Abou Najm from University of California, Davis, at 12-1pm in room SE2-224.

If you're willing to meet the speaker for lunch or individual conversations, please contact us.



Revisiting soil pore structure for sustainable water-energy-food nexus

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High interdependencies among water, energy, and food required an integrated approach known as the Nexus. An integrated framework for the nexus with focus on water and food is presented through an optimization model developed for optimal resource allocation towards sustainable water and food security. The model considers a wide range of nutritional, socio-economic, agricultural, environmental, and natural resources constraints. The core objective of this model is to maximize the composite water-food security status by recommending an optimal water and agricultural strategy. The role of soil pore structure, being the medium where the bulk of biophysical processes take place, will be featured given its integral role to the nexus. Specifically, the talk demonstrates how advancements in pore structure understanding and characterization can improve much of our ability to model fluxes of water, contaminants, nutrients, and greenhouse gases. I share results of a new method utilizing non-Newtonian fluids for pore structure characterization, showing great promise with a low-cost and a scalable method. The results advance our knowledge towards conceptualizing the complexity of porous media to impact applications in fields like irrigation efficiencies, vadose zone hydrology, soil-root-plant continuum, and carbon sequestration.



Bio: Dr. Abou Najm's research group focuses on optimizing the biophysical processes along the water-soil-plant-atmosphere continuum for sustainable resource management. He utilizes systems approach to optimize the water-energy-food nexus through improved understanding of the system-connections and governing processes. He is particularly interested in the soil pore structure being the medium where the bulk of soil biophysical interactions take place. He is also involved in sustainable designs for poverty alleviation under humanitarian engineering context.





When: Thursday 3/7, 12pm - 1pm



Where: SE2-224



Coffee will be provided, please bring your own mugs.



We look forward to seeing you,



Jing & Jennifer



Organizers for Spring 2019: Jing Yan and Jennifer Alvarez

Faculty coordinator: Asmeret Asefaw Berhe



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