Question

an essay on innovative solutions environmental challenges in 500 words​

Answer 1

What do bird flight mechanics and renewable energy technology have to do with each other? By combining ongoing Stanford research on both, researchers hope to cut down on the number of birds and bats that collide with wind turbines’ spinning blades.

REIP is designed to help projects that demonstrate promising solution approaches move from the discovery phase of research to the next stages of solution validation and translation. The projects selected for 2017 will each receive $200,000 grants over the next two years (lead principal investigators in bold):

Bird-Safe Wind Turbines: David Lentink (Mechanical Engineering) and John Dabiri (Civil and Environmental Engineering). Despite the potential contribution of wind energy to emissions reductions, wind turbines have significant ecological impacts through the killing of birds and bats that collide with spinning blades. In this way, expansion of wind energy parks around the globe will have a proportional increasing impact on the ecosystem. Many wind energy parks overlap with important bird corridors recognized by the Audubon Society. This project will address this sustainability roadblock by combining recent Stanford research on bird visual flight control and vertical-turbine technology.

Open Space Management Model: Nicole Ardoin (Graduate School of Education) and Deborah Gordon (Biology). This project will evaluate a solutions-focused open space management practicum course the researchers have piloted at Stanford. The practicum models how universities and land trusts might create on-the-ground conservation impact by engaging students and land managers in research to produce conservation solutions. Once evaluated at a local and regional scale, the researchers will expand the work nationally through networked partners, such as the Land Trust Alliance. They aim to develop a digital interactive atlas and other tools; expand to other conservation agencies; enhance research opportunities for students; expand, apply and share evaluative research; and develop model projects and tools to share nationally.