Research Highlights

October 2020

Benjamin Ruddell, director of the School of Informatics, Computing, and Cyber Systems (SICCS); Caryn Potter, alumna in climate science solutions; and Richard Rushforth, assistant research professor of SICCS co-authored the article, “Guidance on the usability-privacy tradeoff for utility customer data aggregation” published in Utilities Policy. The article presents a statistical analysis of the tradeoff between usability and privacy for utility customer data in Los Angeles.

Logan Berner, assistant research professor of SICCS, and Scott Goetz, professor of SICCS, co-authored the article, “A narrow window of summer temperatures associated with shrub growth in Arctic Alaska” published in Environmental Research Letters. The study analyzed a shrub ring-width network of 18 sites across the North Slope of Alaska to assess shrub temperature sensitivity and to compare radial growth patterns with satellite normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) data since 1982.

• • Berner also co-authored the article, “Periglacial vegetation dynamics in Arctic Russia: decadal analysis of tundra regeneration on landslides with time series satellite imagery” published in Environmental Research Letters. The study applies a novel satellite-based NDVI analysis to investigate the vegetation regeneration patterns of active-layer detachments following a major landslide event in West Siberia in 1989.

Associate professor Matthew Bowker, assistant research professor Anita Antoninka, Regents’ professor Pete Fulé and graduate student Henry Grover, all from the School of Forestry, were awarded a $484,829 grant from the United States Deparment of Agriculture National Institute of Food and Agriculture. The project is titled “Pelletized fire mosses to enhance soil health after high severity forest fire.”

Abolfazl Razi, assistant professor of SICCS; Fatemeh Afghah, associate professor of SICCS; and Fulé co-authored the article, “Wildfire Spread Modeling with Aerial Image Processing” published with the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers. The article proposes a new data-driven model for fire expansion which uses reference-based image segmentation for vegetation density estimation and incorporates it into fire heat conduction modeling.

The Department of Astronomy and Planetary Science has had several faculty members publish papers, among other notable achievements.

• • Associate professor Joshua Emery co-authored the article, “Evidence for sulfur-bearing species on Callisto’s leading hemisphere: Sourced from Jupiter’s irregular satellites or Io?” published in Earth and Planetary Astrophysics. The study investigates whether sulfur-bearing species are present on the icy Galilean moon Callisto by analyzing eight near-infrared reflectance spectra collected over a wide range of sub-observer longitudes.
  • Associate chair and assistant professor Mark Salvatore has had multiple publications since the beginning of the year with various collaborators. Check out his work below.
    • Remote characterization of photosynthetic communities in the Fryxell basin of Taylor Valley, Antarctica (co-authored with graduate student Schuyler Borges)
    • Mineralogy of Vera Rubin Ridge from the Mars Science Laboratory CheMin Instrument
    • The McMurdo Dry Valleys of Antarctica: A geological, environmental, and ecological analog to the martian surface and near-surface. In Mars Geological Enigmas: From the Late Noachian Epoch to the Present Day
    • The Chemostratigraphy of the Murray Formation and Role of Diagenesis at Vera Rubin Ridge in Gale Crater, Mars, as Observed by the ChemCam Instrument
    • Synergistic Ground and Orbital Observations of Iron Oxides on Mt. Sharp and Vera Rubin Ridge
    • Evidence for a Diagenetic Origin of Vera Rubin Ridge, Gale Crater, Mars: Summary and Synthesis of Curiosity’s Exploration Campaign
    • Iron Mobility during Diagenesis at Vera Rubin Ridge, Gale Crater, Mars
    • Analyses of High-Iron Sedimentary Bedrock and Diagenetic Features Observed with ChemCam at Vera Rubin Ridge, Gale Crater, Mars: Calibration and Characterization
    • Evaluating Alternative Metacommunity Hypotheses for Diatoms in the McMurdo Dry Valleys Using Simulations and Remote Sensing Data
  • David Trilling, interim chair and professor, virtually presented at a conference held in Germany entitled, “Ground-based thermal infrared astronomy – past, present and future.” The conference had nine speakers from all over the world who spoke their own native languages. Trilling presented work titled, “Asteroids in the Solar System as seen by NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope and James Webb Space Telescope.”
  • Assistant professor Cristina Thomas presented some of her work at Caltech as a speaker for its Latinx Heritage Month: STEMinar series. Thomas was also quoted in the article, “How to Build a Spacecraft to Save the World,” speaking about the asteroid Didymos and its system.

Amirhossein Arzani, assistant professor of mechanical engineering, co-authored two papers, “Data-driven blood flow modeling with sparse representation” and “Hemodynamic data assimilation using model order reduction and Kalman filter” published in the Bulletin of the American Physical Society and will be presented at the 73^rd Annual Meeting of the American Physical Society Division (APS) of Fluid Dynamics in November. APS is a nonprofit membership organization that works to advance and diffuse knowledge of physics through its research journals, scientific meetings and education, outreach, advocacy and international activities.

Ryan Behunin, assistant professor of applied physics and materials science, published the article, “Optomechanical cooling in an optical fiber” in the Bulletin of the American Physical Society. The paper will be presented at the virtual 2020 Annual Meeting of the APS Four Corners Section.

Assistant professor of SICCS Igor Steinmacher co-authored the summary titled, “Summary of the 1^st ICSSP-ICGSE Joint Event” in ACM SIGSOFT Software Engineering Notes. The article discusses the inability of bringing together the International Conference on Software and System Processes and the International Conference on Global Software Engineering in a virtual format.

Carol Chambers, professor of forestry and president of The Wildlife Society, participated in presentations and discussions at The Wildlife Society’s 2020 Annual Conference. She led a panel discussion, “Women of Wildlife in the Field,” was part of another panel titled, “Dismantling Systemic Racism in the Wildlife Profession” and conducted a virtual networking event to develop relationships among women.

T. Mark Montoya, associate professor of ethnic studies, authored the chapter, “Navigating Institutional Borderlands: An Inside Perspective from the Outside” for the forthcoming volume of Amplified Voices, Intersecting Identities: First-Gen PhDs Navigating Institutional Power. The chapter focuses on the challenges and opportunities first-generation students of color face when navigating academia, particularly graduate students, and specifically centers border-crossing experiences of racism, survivor’s guilt and impostor syndrome as hierarchies of power in academia.

Fatemeh Afghah, associate professor in the School of Informatics, Computing, and Cyber Systems (SICCS), co-authored the article, “Multi-level Feature Learning on Embedding Layer of Convolutional Autoencoders and Deep Inverse Feature Learning for Image Clustering” published in Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition. The article introduces multi-level feature learning alongside the embedding layer of Convolutional Autoencoder as a novel approach in deep clustering.

Professor of forestry Richard Hofstetter, undergraduate student Brennan Copp and postdoc Ivan Lukic co-authored the article, “Acoustic noise of refrigerators promote increased growth rate of the gray mold Botrytis cinerea” published in the Journal of Food Safety. The article describes how sound can affect the growth of fungi and found that sounds produced by a refrigerator can increase the growth of fungus.

Professor of biological sciences Catherine Propper, associate professor of anthropology Lisa Hardy and alumna Brittni Howard co-authored the article, “Role of Farmer Knowledge in Agroecosystem Science: Rice Farming and Amphibians in the Philippines” published in Human-Wildlife Interactions. The study used focus groups and interviews to engage 22 individuals involved in rice agriculture operations in Laguna, Philippines, to learn more about farmer perceptions and knowledge of amphibians in their rice fields.

Professor in the School of Earth and Sustainability Abraham Springer co-authored the article, “Springs ecosystem classification” published in Early View. The article reviews historical literature on springs classification variables and presents a conceptual springs ecosystem model that clarifies the central role of geomorphology in springs ecosystem development, function and typology.

Carol Chambers, professor of forestry, was sworn in as the new president of the Wildlife Society on Oct. 1. Chambers serves as only the third female president since the society’s founding in 1937.

Venkata Yaramasu, assistant professor of SICCS, was awarded $25,000 by the Technology and Research Initiative Research Fund (TRIF) Small Research Equipment Acquisition Program for the project, “Data Acquisition, Control and Charging of Drones.” The goal of TRIF is to stimulate Arizona’s knowledge-based economy by supporting innovation, entrepreneurship, research and development and workforce development, as well as the infrastructure needed to advance in these areas.

Julie Mueller, lead project director and economics professor, was awarded a USDA NIFA Environmental and Resource Economics research grant for $500,000 with co-project directors Abraham Springer, professor in the School of Earth and Sustainability (SES), and Ryan Fitch, assistant professor of economics. The grant will fund two master’s students for two years in SES and will incorporate non-market values of springs into rangeland management plans on the Coconino and Kaibab National Forests.

Scott Goetz, professor in the School of Informatics, Computing, and Cyber Systems (SICCS), and Patrick Jantz, assistant research professor of SICCS, co-authored the article, “Change in terrestrial human footprint drives continued loss of intact ecosystems” published in One Earth. The results of their study show an urgent need to safeguard Earth’s last intact ecosystems and that greater efforts are needed to ameliorate human pressures.

• Goetz also co-authored the article, “Climate-driven risks to the climate mitigation potential of forests” published in Science. The study synthesizes the current understanding of climate-driven risks to forest stability from fire, drought, biotic agents and other disturbances, and reviews how efforts to use forests consider and could more fully embrace current scientific knowledge to account for these climate-driven risks.

Professor of applied physics and materials science Bertrand Cambou and graduate research student Sareh Assiri co-authored the article, “Cryptography with Analog Scheme Using Memristors” published in the ACM Journal on Emerging Technologies in Computing Systems. The article addresses mainstream cryptographic schemes, characterizes memristors and investigates how different memristor cells for each message to encrypt have the potential to mitigate mainstream attacks.

Ecoss director Bruce Hungate, professor Jane Marks, research professor Paul Dijkstra, professor George Koch and alumnus Adam Siders co-authored the article, “The Influence of Leaf Type on Carbon and Nitrogen Assimilation by Aquatic Invertebrate Communities: A New Perspective on Trophic Efficiency” published in Ecosystems. The study found that invertebrates assimilated more carbon and nitrogen from slowly decomposing leaf litter than from rapidly decomposing litter, challenging traditional ideas about litter quality in stream food webs.

Mark Manone, associate professor of practice and chair of the Department of Geography, Planning and Recreation, was awarded the National Geographic Society (NGS) grant. The goal of his project is to create a product that will expand the focus of Power of Data, a highly effective professional learning and development model that helps educators build the skills necessary to design learning activities using an instructional framework called Geospatial Inquiry. Manone plans to include NGS assets and to emphasize the integration and complementary nature of geography and science, increase accessibility and improve the technical literacy of educators in Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado and Utah.

Assistant professor of forestry Matthew Bowker co-authored two articles with professor Bo Xiao of the Chinese Agricultural University, who recently completed a year-long sabbatical visit to NAU. “Estimation of annual CO₂ efflux of moss biocrust through measuring and simulating its respiration rate in a semiarid climate” was published in Geoderma and measured respiration rate of moss-dominated biocrust and bare soil along with temperature and moisture for 100 days each in a semiarid climate on the Chinese Loess Plateau. “Biocrusts strongly decrease soil surface albedo, altering land-surface energy balance in a dryland ecosystem” was published in The Science of the Total Environment and studied biocrusts to investigate their temporal dynamics and potential influences on surface albedo and energy balance.

David Auty, associate professor of forestry, and Andrew Sánchez Meador, executive director of the Ecological Restoration Institute, co-authored the article, “lidR: An R package for analysis of Airborne Laser Scanning (ALS) data” published in Remote Sensing of Environment. The article discusses the lidR package, a free and open source software designed to facilitate transparent and reproducible workflows for processing ALS data, which is quickly becoming the industry standard.

Amirhossein Arzani, assistant professor of mechanical engineering, co-authored the article, “Super-resolution and denoising of 4D-Flow MRI using physics-Informed deep neural nets” published in Computer Methods and Programs in Biomedicine. The article discusses physics-informed machine learning and was a collaboration with the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and the University of Magdeburg in Germany.