If you have an idea for a campus water research project, the deadline to apply for a grant through UW's Green Seed Fund is coming up!
About $250,000 is available for sustainability research projects on the UW campus, but applications need to be in by Dec. 3. All projects must have at least one student, faculty and staff member. The year the fund is specifically looking for research projects on the theme of water.
If you're looking for an idea, the UW's most recent Salmon Safe certification included recommendations to monitor water quality in University Slough for heavy metals and other contaminants that might leach from the former Montlake landfill, as well as a recommendation to research and monitor the shoreline of University Slough and Lake Washington near campus to better understand seasonal use of rearing habitats by salmon. Staff from Facilities Services would be interested in working with a research team on this project.
UW Transportation Services would also like to work with a team on a project researching campus stormwater runoff from parking lots and roads and how it affects the surrounding landscape.
If you want to connect with a staff member regarding either of these projects, email sustainability@uw.edu for more information.
Other possible ideas for a project:
- Irrigation/irrigation scheduling
- Repurposing waste water from Central Plant cooling towers
- Improving management of stormwater run-off
- Assessing the value of already-installed rain gardens, bioswales, and cisterns
- Water reclamation
- Landscaping/zero-scaping, including landscape typologies that reduce reliance on water, while maintaining and enhancing the rich and diverse campus landscape quality, including vegetation type, irrigation, and maintenance
- Large scale, system oriented projects, or projects that could be replicable to multiple parts of campus