DoLA's Green Infrastructure Landscape Lab (GILL) is focused on developing and evaluating innovations in sustainable urban water management at multiple scales—from the gutter to the watershed. We employ evidence-based design processes to inform the design of various nature-based interventions for watershed health in semi-arid environments. Students working with the GILL lab have opportunities to combine creative design skills with the rigorous methods of science and consider how site-scale insights can be upscaled to city-wide impacts. Students also build their capacity for design research by participating in various lab and field-based water quality monitoring, computer simulations of urban hydrology and Green Infrastructure (GI) performance using the latest modeling tools. Research assistants should have a strong interest in design, a desire to expand their skills, and be willing to get their hands dirty with real-world pilot-scale green infrastructure interventions in partnership with local stakeholders.  

 

Research Assistants working with GILL will have opportunities to: 

· Work directly with local stakeholders and decisionmakers to improve local landscapes. 

· Conduct research of landscape perception using biometric sensors (heartrate, galvanic skin response, etc).   

· Assist with urban biodiversity research in the field (collection, iNaturalist, building a digital herbarium of spontaneous urban plants). 

· Visualize time-based landscape processes using the latest programs and tools. 

· Monitor water quality and other performance factors at pilot-scale green infrastructure projects in semi-arid urban environments. 

· Learn how to setup lab-based experiments using cutting edge technology such as the FarmBot system. 

· Create dynamic Hydrological Modelling (running computer simulations of water flows through          landscapes).