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 "Photo: courtesy of NEMAC")
Despite being located in an aging office suite and an overheated computer room, UNC Asheville-based National Environmental Modeling and Analysis Center, known as NEMAC, managed more than 8 million dollars in funding during the last five years.
They also met with Sen. Elizabeth Dole and collaborated with the Department of Agriculture, the U.S. Forest Service and the Department of Energy.
"I think you see a passion for what we're working on," NEMAC Director James Fox said about the attitudes NEMAC's staff shares. "This is not research in a lab. It's research we're passionate about."
NEMAC gathers data about the natural world and helps turn it into products and applications that protect, educate and serve the people of the Southeast. According to Fox, NEMAC also seeds 25 percent of its grant money back into the region and local community by employing area workers in technology and science.
Later this month, the organization takes on climate change and water scarcity as politics, business and the environment intersect at the Tennessee Valley Corridor Southeast Partnership Event. A $100-a-head regional economic summit hosted at the Grove Park Inn, the event includes opening remarks from Congressman Heath Shuler.
NEMAC's contribution is "Drought and Power," the latest in its series of educational short films about how water issues directly affect the economic and environmental health of Western North Carolina and nearby Tennessee.
Animated by Asheville CGI artists, written by a local screenwriting team and shown in a custom-made cinema created by an Asheville new media company with clients all over the globe, "Drought and Power" is an all-local production. It's meant to educate area residents about how "old realities," as Fox termed them, are changing.
Old realities are long-held sets of beliefs being challenged, Fox said. As examples, he offered the belief that the climate will stay the same, that drinking water is limitless, and that the cost and availability of cheap energy sources like oil and coal won't affect the way people live.
He pointed out that "new realities" coming into play are complex and at times surprising, he cited as an example a recent Scientific American article showing the water-use impact of different kinds of cars.
Gasoline-powered cars, the graphic showed, use the least water. Ethanol-powered cars, generally regarded as more environmentally friendly, use far more of an increasingly scarce and valuable resource.
According to Fox, in light of the changing understanding of the natural world, NEMAC's job is to seek and provide trusted data, turn the data into graphical information and communicate the story of "new realities" like water scarcity. NEMAC uses media like its "Drought and Power" film to help ordinary people and powerful decision-makers alike make educated, supported decisions based on the best and newest information science has to offer, he said.
"How do we tell these stories effectively and efficiently?" Fox asked. "How can we leverage the talent set of our group to help people make the decisions that need to be made?"
Part of NEMAC's talent set is its 13 paid interns, all UNCA students. Current interns work on projects ranging from global warming research to a hazard database that could help protect area residents from environmental disaster like the "hundred-year flood" that destroyed Asheville homes, businesses and livelihoods in 2004.
Environmental studies student Beth Porter is creating a Geographic Information Systems database that might someday allow people to view information in an online database about a particular site's vulnerability to environmental dangers like floods, fires and hurricanes.
She is also working on a second project that assesses forest biodiversity as it relates to the health of the community, the local economy and the health of forest itself.
Porter called her time with NEMAC a great experience.
"The basics I learn here will help me in the future. I have interest in forest ecology, so GIS knowledge is significant," she said.
"We are a good opportunity to work with a team in the field. We provide exposure to a lot of things students don't get in class, like real-world projects and ways to apply what you're learning," said NEMAC Project Manager Karin Lichtenstein.
NEMAC works with students in many disciplines, she added.
"We've worked with majors in environmental science, multimedia arts, mass communication, computer science, atmospheric science, even economics. We offer a lot of on-the-job training, depending on the position, like GIS skills, database skills, design skills, science communication and oftentimes good networking among the local-regional community in a student's field."
Work at NEMAC always ties back to the student's interest, Fox said.
"We give you meaningful work, you give something back," he said.
For more information, visit www.nemac.org. Internships and student jobs are posted online and outside the center's Rhoades Hall 201 office.
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