Jonathan Winter
Dartmouth College, NH·Earth & Environmental Science
Solar farms are increasingly built on farmland, competing with crops, orchards, vineyards and pastures. Little is known about how these installations affect the land, agriculture and nearby communities.
- Fields
Earth & Environmental Science
Plant Science & Agriculture
Engineering
- Topics
agrivoltaics
agroenergy
solar energy
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through Aug 2030
What they work on
- Measure how existing solar facilities on agricultural land change soil and habitat conditions, the water cycle and crop production, using new field data collection.
- Launch a first-of-its-kind research facility to collect data on how solar installations affect farmland and surrounding communities.
- Assess the economic returns and community effects of agroenergy landscapes, combining modeling and life cycle assessment with input from an advisory group of farmers and community members.
- Turn the findings into decision-support tools and designs for new solar installations that serve farmers, utilities and the public.
More about the research
Careful design and siting could instead bring benefits such as higher farm income, better water resources, richer soil and improved habitat for plants and animals.
Why it matters
As solar development spreads across agricultural land, farmers, utilities and rural communities face hard choices about land use. This work could provide data and decision-support tools showing how to site and design solar installations so they also raise farm income, protect water and soil, and support habitat. It could help guide installation design and policy.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Sujith Ravi
Temple University, PA·Earth & Environmental Science·Early-career
Measure how solar photovoltaic panels interact with the soil and vegetation beneath them, using field experiments that grow selected crops alongside the panels.
Ariane De Bremond
University of Maryland, MD·Earth & Environmental Science
Coordinate land system science worldwide through the Global Land Programme office by setting research agendas, leading synthesis of place-based case studies, and supporting core methods in modeling, monitoring and case study research.
Javad Mohammadpour Velni
Clemson University, SC·Engineering
Integrate photosynthesis models with real-time biophysical measurements to optimize environmental settings such as light and climate for crop growth in controlled-environment agriculture facilities.
The school
Dartmouth College: 16 labs on PI Pages, $418M a year on research, 104 research doctorates a year.
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