News

After a recent trip to Antartica, Cassandra Brooks (ENVS/INSTAAR) did a Q&A with The Pew Charitable Trusts about Adélie and Emperor penguins and their need for protection. Topics included climate change threats, population declines, protected areas, and hope for the future.

Warming temperatures are causing a steady rise in copper, zinc and sulfate in the waters of Colorado mountain streams affected by acid rock drainage. Concentrations of these metals have roughly doubled in these alpine streams over the past 30 years, a new study finds, presenting a concern for ecosystems, downstream water quality and mining remediation.

For Earth Day, CBS interviewed James Balog, environmental photographer, founder of Earth Vision Institute, and INSTAAR Affiliate. Balog has become one of the foremost chroniclers of human-caused climate change, as his cameras have tracked the dramatic effects – vanishing ice, rising seas, fires, and the toll climate change is taking on all living things. As shown in the 6-minute video interview, ~1200 of his prints were recently acquired by the Library of Congress.

The U.S. National Science Foundation champions research on how plastic impacts the planet. In this article, they highlight five projects that are changing how researchers think about plastic and what happens after it is tossed away. One of these projects is a study led by Alexandra Jahn about how sea ice moves microplastics in polar regions. Working with her are colleagues from NCAR, U Washington, and WHOI.

A multi-university team of researchers, including four members of CU Boulder's Taylor Lab, have identified nearly a hundred genes associated with the birds’ spatial memory, or ability to recall the locations of objects. Their paper, published in the journal Current Biology, also suggests a potential trade-off may exist between having a solid long-term memory and being able to quickly ditch old memories to form new ones.

INSTAAR researcher Peyton Thomas has been awarded the Chancellor’s Postdoctoral Fellowship for Faculty Diversity from CU Boulder. A fish physiologist who studies the impacts of a changing climate on fish growth trajectories, Thomas is a postdoctoral scholar at INSTAAR and in the Environmental Studies program.

The Mountain Hydrology Group will be developing a new snowpack data set to inform water supply management in the western United States, thanks to grant funding from the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation.

INSTAAR is pleased to announce that incoming PhD student Kathryn Gannon is this year’s recipient of the Sarah Crump Graduate Fellowship. Gannon will work with advisor Bella Oleksy to explore murky questions around greenhouse gas emissions from seasonally ice-covered lakes.

Allison Cook, a master’s degree student in the Environmental Engineering program, is passionate about tracing and control of pathogens in the urban environment for stronger public health. With her fellowship, she is investigating E. coli concentrations in storm sewers near Boulder Creek. Her research will help identify the source of the E. coli, which will help mitigation efforts.

Mackenzie Bowden, a PhD student in the Environmental Engineering program, is investigating contaminants from fires at the wildland-urban interface that work their way into streams and present risks to downstream communities and ecosystems.