Redlands Institute, University of Redlands

U.S.A.
http://www.institute.redlands.edu

The Redlands Institute is an applied research group that promotes collaborative, interdisciplinary research on environmental problems and opportunities. Using advanced tools for geospatial data management, analysis and visualization, project teams seek to synthesize and envision complex information about environmental sustainability and its relation to social and economic well-being. Knowledge derived from this process is examined for policy and management implications, and integrated for effective use in decision support systems, thematic atlases, and web-based dissemination. The Institute offers internship programs, workshops, and technical assistance for students and faculty in a professional research environment designed to enhance the University's teaching mission. Partnerships with public, private and not-for-profit organizations are invited for the purposes of improving the Institute's applied research capacity and public outreach.

Major current projects include the Salton Sea Database Program (SSDP), a $4 million congressionally funded project to facilitate evaluation of restoration alternatives for California's largest lake--a closed basin near the California-Mexico border which provides habitat for several million birds using the Pacific flyway. The Sea is threatened by increasing salinity, agricultural run-off and pollution.

An additional $4 million study is underway to improve science-based estimates of threatened desert tortoise populations and habitat in the Western Mojave Desert, particularly within the context of the proposed expansion of Ft. Irwin National Training Center (NTC). Blending environmental science and information science, the researchers are attempting to optimize methods and technologies for the collection, compilation, analysis, management, synthesis, and visualization of desert tortoise-related data.

The organizational structure of the Institute is designed to promote the goal of "Learning and Working in Collaborative Systems." The Institute's cross-cutting research themes include:

• Educating Future Leaders
• Envisioning Complex Information
• Building Sustainable Communities
• Fostering Benign Design
• Converting Science into Policy (and Integrating Science, Policy, and Management)
• Facilitating Adaptive Management

Representative Projects

PROJECTS
Please revisit this page, project descriptions will be coming soon.

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