Two UC Davis researchers have each been awarded a $60,000 grant to initiate California river projects. 

Jay Lund, director of the Center for Watershed Sciences, and Michael Miller, an assistant professor of genetics, are among 11 recipients announced Friday (March 7) by the Center for Information Technology Research in the Interest of Society (CITRIS).

Lund and fellow engineering professor Roger Bales at UC Merced aim to quantify the economic benefits of improved hydrological forecasting. 

Earlier and more accurate predictions of reservoir inflows to power dams would be particularly valuable for management of California’s integrated power grid, they said. Wind and solar power systems depend on hydropower to smooth rapid changes in weather.

Miller and YangQuan Chen, an assistant professor of engineering at UC Merced, plan to develop a low-cost drone that can efficiently grab water samples for evidence of species.

Genetic material shed through wastes, mucus and cellular sloughing can be isolated from water samples. Analysis of this “environmental DNA” allows researchers to find species without actually seeing them. This enables early detection of invasive organisms, rare species of low abundance and nonlethal sampling, the researchers said.

CITRIS promotes collaborative public-interest research on information technology between the UC campuses at Berkeley, Santa Cruz, Merced and Davis, including its Medical Center.

“Bringing together groups from diverse fields can yield unique solutions to societal challenges,” Costas Spanos, the CITRIS director said in a new release.

Miller and Chen said a river-worthy Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) would indeed be unique.

“The concept of an (unmanned aerial vehicle) landing on and taking off from a moving body of water while maintaining a specified GPS coordinate is completely novel and untouched,” the scientists wrote in their grant proposal.