News

Mountain tourism brings revenues to Nepal but leaves a mess behind. Local and international groups are offering new cleanup strategies. INSTAAR research scientist Alton Byers and his colleague Suzanne OConnell discuss the scope of the problem, pollution from the waste, and solutions for sustainable tourism.

Five questions and answers with Michael Dyonisius, a postdoc with INSTAAR’s Laboratory for AMS Radiocarbon Preparation and Research, a keen investigator of greenhouse gas fluxes, and an occasional ukulele-playing indie pop fan. Read on to learn about Michael’s work, inspirations, and life.

As a student assistant in INSTAAR's front office, Joe has been a beacon: his creative problem-solving and hard work are matched only by his kindness and generosity of spirit. Turns out his degree program (Leeds School of Business) was equally impressed.

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.