The Kira Environmental Sensing Lab

The Kira Environmental Sensing Lab uses advanced sensing devices, both in situ and remote, to investigate the environment. Currently, we focus on the urban and agricultural environments.

"The environment is everything that isn't me." Albert Einstein.

Current work

Remote sensing carbon fluxes of urban green infrastructures

The urban population is rapidly increasing, with ~90% of the population predicted to live in cities by 2100. Since urban environments serve as hot spots for greenhouse gas and pollutant emissions, and as the urban areas are destined to become denser, a sustainable urban life requires careful and well-informed urban planning of infrastructures that could adequately mitigate these emissions. A common—albeit debatable—means to achieve this goal is through urban green infrastructures, which are typically considered a net sink for CO2. However, due to the heterogeneous urban land use of these infrastructures, our ability is limited to isolate and accurately quantify their overall impact on the carbon balance of the city. This research combines remote observations and local measurements to both determine the city-level carbon balance of green infrastructures and generate a high-resolution CO2 sequestration map of these infrastructures.

Urban green walls

The urban environment suffers from heat islands and air pollution. Increasing urban vegetation may help increase heat comfort, reduce air pollution, and increase carbon sequestration. Additionally, green walls can be used for urban agriculture and reduce drainage water load. My lab examines all these aspects using a 30m2 green wall site located on the roof of our building. We grow many types of vegetation on the wall, some decorative, and the rest are agricultural (tomatoes, strawberries, green beans, basil, and peppers). We also have a 2m2 chamber to examine heat insolation of green walls.

Reduction of greenhouse gas emissions from cultivated soils

Cultivated soils are the number one source of anthropogenic emissions of Nitrous Oxide (N2O) to the atmosphere. Intensive fertilization in modern agriculture causes an increase in N2O emissions and ammonia (NH3). My lab investigates the impact of environmental conditions on these gaseous emissions and explores new fertilizers and applications to reduce their emission to the environment.

Agricultural monitoring using remote sensing

The growth in the world population demands an increase in food production. One of the tools helping to improve agriculture is remote sensing which improves data accessibility. My lab deals with different aspects of agricultural remote sensing, mainly: plant biophysical traits, agro-ecological carbon fluxes, yield predictions, and plant stress. We use satellite, airborne, and ground systems with advanced machine learning methods to generate high-quality data that can benefit the agricultural community and stakeholders.