A UT associate professor is helping lead part of a NASA-funded research project in Puerto Rico aimed at studying water quality and its impacts on local communities and marine life.
The project, “Watersheds, Water Quality and Coastal Communities in Puerto Rico: An Interdisciplinary Island Landscape to Coast Ocean Assessment with Socioeconomic Implications,” or Water2Coasts, builds on previous NASA research associate processor Carlos Ramos-Scharrón also worked on. In this study, which started in November, Ramos-Scharrón will lead the watershed-monitoring component with a team in Puerto Rico to monitor the water turbidity and nutrients of over 17 watersheds.
“Basically, what we’re trying to do is build this data set so that we can hopefully explain why some corals are not doing as well as others based on water quality,” Ramos-Scharrón said. “Then we can connect that with water coral reef management strategies that not only try to attend (to) what’s happening locally with the corals, but also what’s happening on the watersheds that are draining towards them.”
The research uses NASA satellite data studying water quality from far distances and sondes, a hands-on device that can detect water quality parameters like temperature and conductivity.
Ramos-Scharrón said that unlike other projects where researchers divide and individually investigate, Water2Coasts instead aims to foster collaboration among different branches and leads of the research group.
“Typically, everybody just goes on their own and then at the end, you try to push things together,” Ramos-Scharrón said. “We’re trying to develop the project by having objectives that need both, let’s say social scientists and myself, so those questions you think about right from the start.”
One of the project’s end goals is to make a data set open for the public to use, and allow anyone, including stakeholders and organizations, to view the findings of the research, according to a press release. Ramos-Scharrón said Water2Coasts is even considering involving local townsfolk in the research and bringing a community-based coordinator onboard.
“It’s really interesting how people relate to nature and how caring many people are with nature and their personal history, how they have an emotional attachment to water or the land,” Ramos-Scharrón said. “They open up and tell you those stories.”
