Taken from the KGS Website: https://www.uky.edu/KGS/news/2025_2_3_SPaM.php
The Kentucky Geological Survey (KGS) opened a new computational lab on the third floor of the Mining and Mineral Resources Building in January 2025. The Surface Processes and Modelling Laboratory (SP&M Lab) was funded by the NSF EPSCoR ‘Climate Resilience through Multidisciplinary Big Data Learning, Prediction & Building Response Systems (CLIMBS)’ award, which aims to advance Kentucky’s climate resiliency through hazard assessment based on Kentucky-specific scientific research.
The SP&M Lab will focus on CLIMBS project 2, Paleo-Perspectives, which focuses on understanding the changes and variability in Kentucky’s climate over time and interconnected earth system processes in Appalachia Kentucky. This group will leverage natural records of environmental change, such as sediment deposits from past flood events, to provide context and better understand current and future climatic trends. With this information, the group can model the past and future impacts of flood frequency and magnitude in the region. The paleoflood records and models will help disentangle complex climate-flooding relationships and assist in improving risk assessment and management in eastern Kentucky.
KGS geologists Dr. Jason Dortch, Meredith Swallom, Sarah Arpin, and Hudson Koch, along with KGS-EES research assistant professor Dr. Sarah Johnson, EES associate professor Dr. Ryan Thigpen, and EES students will use the SP&M Lab as a workspace for intensive computing and modelling. Renovations of the space began in summer 2024, immediately following news of the CLIMBS award. Dortch has led the effort to convert the space into the new state-of-the-art lab. “The new space and equipment will allow us to expand beyond our current flood-modelling capabilities and investigate flood-related landscape evolution, refine hazard prediction, and understand associated risks to small rural communities,” said Dortch. The interior was completely gutted, and the ceiling redone. The lab now includes five new workstations, each with sufficient memory and processing capabilities to develop workflows for big and complex data. The room also includes access to a dedicated server that will be used to implement developed workflows and code at scale. Few organizations in the region have these computational capabilities.
The intent of the SP&M Lab is to combine and streamline complex workflows to develop integrated surface processes and flood models. The expanded capacity and resources of the lab not only support the current CLIMBS research but will hopefully serve as a catalyst for future multidisciplinary collaborations and research opportunities. “Outstanding facilities are critical for attracting the best researchers and without the CLIMBS funding, building a lab of this caliber would have been impossible,” adds Dortch.
