Improved understanding and better representation of land surface heterogeneity, diurnal mixed-layer growth, and entrainment at the top of the atmospheric boundary layer is necessary for accurately capturing diurnal land-atmosphere interactions in large-scale models. In this project, Professor Margulis will apply an advanced data assimilation scheme to estimate high-resolution rootzone soil moisture fields over regional domains. This new database will provide the ability to extend previous studies that analyzed the variability and scaling of surface soil moisture fields. The rootzone soil moisture fields will then be used to initialize large-eddy simulations in order to investigate the importance of observed surface heterogeneity and provide insight into feedbacks in the coupled land-atmosphere system under a variety of surface and synoptic conditions. The knowledge gained from these efforts will be used to investigate the representation of the complex interactions using low-dimensional models in an ensemble data assimilation framework.

The education component of the project is centered around providing broad-based environmental education to not only engineering undergraduates, but to those not sufficiently exposed to science, in an effort to increase awareness of environmental issues that are important to our society. Based on this goal, the proposed education plan has three main components:
1) hands-on environmental education outreach to underrepresented minority and women students in Los Angeles high schools;
2) environmental awareness education for non-science and engineering freshman at UCLA; and
3) the incorporation of effective educational techniques, with a focus on better integration of research, into undergraduate engineering courses.

The proposed project aims to make a significant contribution by furthering environmental knowledge and understanding through research and education. Broad impacts from the research plan ultimately will include better estimates of regional water and energy budgets and improved numerical weather and climate prediction, while the education plan ultimately will produce more environmentally aware citizens as well as scientists and engineers who are better equipped to solve future environmental problems.