Cyber Sistas - Space Apps Challenge

Cyber Sistas| Rise to Resilience!

Project Details

The Challenge | Rise to Resilience!

You are a newly appointed Regional Green Engineer. Your challenge is to develop green infrastructure solutions for complex challenges in water management and risk reduction.Create a tool to assess the characteristics of an urban or rural area of your choice, and integrate green infrastructures, or nature-based solutions, into that region’s development plans to1) reduce flood and/or drought risk2) establish sustainable land use practices3) support water management, and/or 4) produce local economic opportunities.

LSAP - Land Sustainability Action Plan

LSAP, or the Land Sustainability Action Plan, is an assessment that creates an action plan for Californian governments to improve their drought management and sustainable infrastructure in building and transportation.

Code Share: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1F0zFpYlH1c...

Rise to Resilience - Cyber Sistas - LSAP (Land Sustainability Action Plan)

Our team selected the Rise to Resilience Challenge because it reflects our values as JROTC Cadets and Girl Scouts.

Madeline Vagnuolo- Front end programmer, questionnaire coder, and website assist (Python, CSS, HTML)

Emily Moody- Back end programmer and website development (Python, CSS, HTML)

Meghan Calahan- Video creator and editor, audio and visuals specialist (Open Shot)

Ella Duus- Researcher, content writer, voiceover, and presenter

Background

California has suffered from drought for years. In 2015, California was once more taking stock of its water supply, coming out of the winter season in its fourth year of drought. According to the National Drought Mitigation Center, the proportion of the state’s area in severe drought had not significantly changed since a year before, at 98%. However, the proportion classified as under exceptional drought conditions leaped from 22% to 40%. Much of the worst hit area is in the Central Valley, where the dominant land use is irrigation-dependent agriculture. Also included in the exceptional drought category are the Sierra Nevada Mountains and a large swath of the central and southern coasts.

About 15 percent of California’s electricity is provided by hydroelectric turbines operating on large water reservoirs. Those reservoirs are abnormally low, reducing hydropower’s contribution to the state’s energy portfolio. TTo compensate, the state needs to rely more on non-renewable sources like natural gas. Fortunately, in 2015 utility-scale solar power reached new heights, now at 5% of California’s energy portfolio.

California’s grasslands, chaparral, and savannas are fire-adapted ecosystems, but this prolonged drought is keeping the vegetation tinder dry and vulnerable to intense wildfires. These wildfires create air pollution, displace and kill wildlife, and damage property. While much of the wildlife in California can weather temporary dry conditions, a prolonged drought can lead to increased mortality and reduced reproduction. Drought is an additional stressor affecting endangered species already burdened by habitat loss, invasive species, and other conservation problems. Many species of migratory fish are endangered in California, notably salmon. Low river flows due to the drought reduce access to spawning grounds.

People will also feel the effects of the drought. Farmers in California are heavily dependent on irrigation to grow crops like alfalfa, rice, cotton, and many fruits and vegetables. California’s multi-billion dollar almond and walnut industry is particularly water intensive, with estimates that it takes 1 gallon of water to grow a single almond, over 4 gallons for a single walnut. Beef cattle and dairy cows are raised on forage crops like hay, alfalfa, and grains, and on vast pastures that require rainfall to be productive. Competition for water needed for agriculture, domestic use, and aquatic ecosystems, are leading to conflicts over water use. Compromises need to be made, and again this year large swaths of farmland will remain fallow, and the fields that are farmed will be producing less. This will lead to price increases for a wide variety of foods.

Procedure and Challenges

We first brainstormed the best, simplest way to communicate the necessary changes. We recognized that the major clients will be town governments, so we researched and created a questionnaire that assesses the three categories: drought risk, water management, and sustainable land use. We derived the questions from NASA reports and debriefs on drought and sustainable living. Depending on the answers to the questions, paragraphs and strategies will be added to that town’s action plan. We coded this questionnaire in Python. We decided to make LSAP a website. Emily, one of our coders, coded our website from scratch and planned to actually get it on the internet through AWS, but she had to leave. We overcame this challenge by reassessing and deciding to redistribute our time to our video and questionnaire, so we switched our website to a local host. The website was in HTML, CSS, and Python. We also created a mockup image of our layered data: groundwater depletion and flood risk. This would take a lot of expertise and time to actually do along with our other parts, but in the future, we would definitely add this feature as to further support the people of California. We also encountered the challenge of technical editing difficulties. One of the video clips we used was not compatible with the Open Shot editing software, so it crashed, and was not recoverable. This resulted in about five hours being completely wasted on the video. However, this provided an opportunity for further editing, and we designed a new logo that better suited our purpose. The video is still adequate for its purposes, and focuses on content, not editing and photoshop tricks.

Conclusion

Our team was very satisfied with our end product, and it met our goal for a functional, easy to use solution to this challenge. We faced many obstacles, some of which were technical difficulties and figuring out difficult parts of code, but we persevered and it paid off. We were very happy with the high quality of teamwork and camaraderie that our team had. As the Girl Scout Law says,

““I will do my best to be

honest and fair,

friendly and helpful,

considerate and caring,

courageous and strong, and

responsible for what I say and do,

And to respect myself and others,

respect authority,

use resources wisely,

make the world a better place, and

be a sister to every Girl Scout.”

We believe through This project we have been helpful, considerate, caring, responsible, courageous, used resources wisely, been sisters to each other, and most importantly created something that will make the world a better place.

Resource Page

https://smap.jpl.nasa.gov/

https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/features/DroughtFacts

https://search.earthda

https://floodmap.modaps.eosdis.nasa.gov/NorthAmerica.php

ta.nasa.gov/search/granules?p=C1597928934-NOAA_NCEI&m=-0.0703125!0!2!1!0!0%2C2&tl=1555708572!4!!

https://earthdata.nasa.gov/collaborate/open-data-services-and-software/api

https://smap.jpl.nasa.gov/

https://www.preventionweb.net/files/63030_ecjrcdroughtriskassessmentandmanage.pdf

https://drought.unl.edu/Education/DroughtIn-depth/TypesofDrought.aspx

https://www.unisdr.org/files/43291_sendaiframeworkfordrren.pdf

https://www.ppic.org/publication/floods-in-california/