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2007 Science Spotlights
"Science Spotlights" are examples of INSTAAR research, education, and societal outreach.
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BOULDER CREEK CRITICAL ZONE OBSERVATORY ESTABLISHED A University of Colorado team led by INSTAAR Suzanne Anderson was awarded funding by the National Science Foundation for a five-year project to establish a Critical Zone Observatory (CZO) in the Boulder Creek Watershed. The project is one of three new CZO awards designed to build the first systems-based observatories dedicated to Earth surface processes. The critical zone is the region from the base of groundwater to the outer limit of the vegetation canopy, essentially the zone that supports terrestrial life. The CU group, which includes INSTAARs Bob Anderson, Nel Caine, Diane McKnight, and Mark Williams, and 10 other scientists at CU and elsewhere, plans to focus on the rocky mountainous portion of Boulder Creek watershed. The project will study how weathering and erosion processes control the architecture of the weathered profile within the critical zone in this eroding landscape. They will then explore how different architectures influence the hydrologic, biogeochemical and ecological functioning of catchments. Boulder Creek watershed encompasses over 2500 m in elevation, and spans a range of vegetation and climate zones. Erosional regimes vary significantly as well, from the glacial scoured headwaters, to the late-Cenozoic fluvial incision of Boulder Canyon, to a band of relatively quiescent topography in between. The Boulder Creek CZO team plans to use these environmental gradients as a set of natural experiments to delve into the processes that shape the Earth’s surface and affect its function. Image: Profile through a portion of the critical zone: soil and weathered rock.
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S. Anderson: INSTAAR Biography R. Anderson: INSTAAR Biography |
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ATMOSPHERIC MONITORING COURSE TAUGHT TO INTERNATIONAL GROUP OF SCIENTISTS Detlev Helmig was invited by Global Atmospheric Watch (GAW) and the Umweltbundesamt (German Environmental Protection Agency) to teach a course on monitoring of atmospheric Volatile Organic Compounds (VOCs) to an international group of scientists, including participants from several eastern European countries, Algeria, Kenya, and Indonesia. He taught the course in Germany in November 2007; it focused on techniques for monitoring VOCs at their atmospheric background levels typically observed at GAW-Network sites. Lectures also covered the role of VOCs in atmospheric oxidation chemistry, and their utility in studying pollution sources and transport. A course like this is offered annually to invited participants from GAW-Network stations to further develop their training in the monitoring of important atmospheric and climate-forcing gases. For more than three years INSTAAR’s Atmospheric Research Laboratory (ARL), led by Helmig, has collaborated with NOAA’s Global Monitoring Division in Boulder to operate a global, 40-station VOC monitoring program. With more than 10 000 air samples (~ 3000 samples annually) analyzed to date, this program is the centerpiece of the GAW-VOC network.
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HUMAN ECOLOGY OF BERINGIA John Hoffecker and Scott Elias have produced a synthesis of environment and human settlement in Beringia, published in book form by Columbia University Press. As during earlier cold periods, falling sea level during the Last Glacial Maximum exposed an immense plain between Northeast Asia and Alaska, joining the hemispheres with a land bridge and creating the continent of Beringia. Permanent human occupation began following the end of the Last Glacial Maximum—before rising sea level had caught up with changing climate and biota—as shrub tundra spread across Beringia. Human Ecology of Beringia describes the archaeology of this twilight shrub tundra world and suggests how its inhabitants coped with an evolving postglacial fauna and continuing scarcity of wood. The book recounts the resurgence of cooler climates during the Younger Dryas and their profound effect on human settlement. And it explores the relevance of Beringian archaeology to the problem of the peopling of the New World. Human Ecology of Beringia also contains an essay on Beringian technology by INSTAAR’s Craig Lee. Image: Portion of the book cover.
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CU-BOULDER SEEKS NEW INSTAAR DIRECTOR The University of Colorado - Boulder seeks applications for the Director of INSTAAR. Candidates must be able to balance the management of the Institute with a vigorous research program and a commitment to graduate education. Print ads will appear in the Sept. 21st issue of Science and the Sept. 25th issue of EOS. Review of applications will begin on October 22, 2007 and continue until the position is filled. Interviews will probably begin early spring semester. Questions and/or nominations of potential candidates can be sent to the search committee chair, Alan Townsend. For more information on the search, visit instaar.colorado.edu/director
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JAMES SYVITSKI STEPS DOWN, Planned changes in the leadership of INSTAAR are underway. James Syvitski completed 12 years of service as INSTAAR Director as of July 2007. Syvitski continues to have appointments as Professor in Geological Sciences and Fellow of INSTAAR. Moreover, he recently added a new title: Executive Director of a new NSF initiative known as the Community Surface Dynamic Modeling System, or CSDMS, which will involve hundreds of scientists from dozens of federal labs and universities around the nation, including CU-Boulder. INSTAAR deeply thanks James for his years of service and commitment to the Institute and its members. The new interim institute Director is James W.C. White. White is a Professor in Geological Sciences and in the CU Environmental Studies Program (ENVS), as well as a Fellow of INSTAAR. His previous administrative position was as Director of ENVS. White will be furthering INSTAAR's short- and long-term goals in the coming year while the institute searches for a new permanent director. For more information on that search, visit instaar.colorado.edu/director Image: Portraits of Syvitski and White.
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FIREPROOFING HOMES DRAMATICALLY REDUCES FOREST FIRE SIZE Patrick Bourgeron worked with Michael Ghil (UCLA) and Vassilis Spyratos (Ecole Normale Superieure) to model the spread of fires in forest ecosystems in Colorado, Montana Utah, New Mexico, Washington and Wisconsin. Their study is the first to systematically look at both houses and trees in forest fire scenarios. They found that the size of fires is directly linked with the density and flammability of houses built in the so-called "wildland-urban interface." Since houses are much more flammable per square yard than forests, homes that erupt in flames can propel forest fires to a critical intensity threshold much more quickly. Thus, fireproofing homes not only preserves structures, but limits the size of forest fires. The study was published in the Sept. 4 print edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Photo: Forest fire. Photo: National Park Service.
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P. Bourgeron: INSTAAR Biography
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GLACIERS AND ICE CAPS TO DOMINATE SEA-LEVEL RISE THROUGH 21ST CENTURY Mark Meier led a team of INSTAAR and Russian scientists who found that Earth's mountain glaciers and small ice caps are contributing more to global sea-level rise than previously anticipated, and even more than the massive Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets combined. Co-authors include CU-Boulder INSTAAR researchers Mark Dyurgerov, Ursula Rick, Shad O'Neel, Tad Pfeffer, Robert Anderson and Suzanne Anderson, as well as Russian Academy of Sciences scientist Andrey Glazovsky. Their paper appears in both the online and print editions of Science magazine (July 19th and August 24th, respectively). The team summarized satellite, aircraft and ground-based data from glaciers, ice caps, the Greenland ice sheet, the West Antarctic ice sheet and the East Antarctic ice sheet to calculate present and future rates of ice loss. They concluded that glaciers and ice caps are currently contributing about 60 percent of the ice delivered to the world's oceans and the rate has been markedly accelerating in the past decade. The contribution is presently about 100 cubic miles of ice annually -- a volume nearly equal to the water in Lake Erie -- and is rising by about three cubic miles per year. The accelerating contribution of glaciers and ice caps is due in part to increased meltwater at the ice surface. Some glaciers are also experiencing increased meltwater at the base of the ice, which can lead to faster sliding of the glaciers against their beds. This is especially the case for tidewater glaciers that discharge icebergs directly into the ocean, and their analogs, the outlet glaciers from the great ice sheets. Many tidewater glaciers are undergoing rapid thinning, stretching and retreat, which in turn causes them to speed up and deliver increased amounts of ice into the world's oceans. Image: Portion of the Columbia Glacier in Alaska, one of the many tidewater glaciers contributing substantially to global sea-level rise in the 21st century. (Photo: Robert S. Anderson, INSTAAR).
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CU Audio Interview with Meier (scroll downward) NSF Video Interview with Meier M. Dyurgerov: INSTAAR Biography |
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JOHN ANDREWS CHOSEN FOR GSA DISTINGUISHED CAREER AWARD John Andrews has been chosen to receive the Distinguished Career Award with the Quaternary Geology and Geomorphology Division of the Geological Society of America. The award will be presented at the QGG awards ceremony at the October 2007 GSA meeting in Denver. Winners in recent years have included P.W. Birkeland, W.B. Bull, N. Rutter, D.C. Ford, W.B. White, and S.C. Porter. From the nomination letter (Peter Clark, Gifford Miller, et al): John T. Andrews owns at least three legacies for Quaternary geology and geomorphology. First, John was responsible for a paradigm shift away from a Last Glacial Maximum (LGM) ice advance extending onto shelves to a model of restricted LGM ice in the eastern Canadian Arctic. Supporting evidence for this model included strong vertical gradients in bedrock weathering and thick sedimentary fills spanning the Quaternary. John embraced many new technologies, including AMS 14C, U-Series, and Amino Acid Racemization, to support the new paradigm, which only recently was shown to favor differential glacial erosion as opposed to long periods without glaciation. Cosmogenic Exposure (CE) dating now indicates that non-erosive cold-based ice covered many coastal sediment fills at the LGM without leaving any trace beyond a few scattered erratics. Second, John made a mid-career transition to the study of ocean sediment cores, initially recognizing Heinrich events in Labrador Sea sediments that suggested partial collapses of the Laurentide Ice Sheet, then participating in numerous ocean sediment drilling projects in areas surrounding Iceland and South Greenland, work that continues today. Third, perhaps John's most enduring legacy has been to populate our profession with 29 Ph.D.'s and an even greater number of students with M.S. degrees. Image: Portrait of John Andrews.
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GIFFORD MILLER INTERVIEWED FOR NOVA DOCUMENTARY ON AUSTRALIAN PLEISTOCENE MEGAFAUNA Gifford Miller provided commentary for "Bone Diggers", a new NOVA documentary which documents the discovery of pristine skeletal remains of Pleistocene megafauna in remote Australian limestone caves. Miller was not involved in the cave work; instead his role was to offer an expert's perspective on the research, which was performed by a team from the Western Australia Museum. The cave fauna includes the first ever complete skeletons of Thylocolea, the "drop cat" or marsupial lion, and several new species of kangaroos. The fossils are mostly from the mid Pleistocene, when there was a natural long-drop opening to the caves. The animals accidentally fell in and could not get back out, so died without any scavaging. In addition to the fascinating paleotological material, the team independently evaluated climate and vegetation. They found that climate at the time the animals were living was similar to that of the present day, but that the vegetation was completely different. Their results reinforce the conclusions of Miller's group that megafaunal extinctions ca. 50,000 years ago are related to a fundamental reorganization of ecosystems across Australia, not driven by climate change. The documentary premiered on June 19th on most PBS stations. Image: Gifford Miller doing field work in Australia.
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ATMOSPHERIC CO2 PULSES AT THE END OF THE LAST ICE AGE ORIGINATED FROM THE DEEP OCEAN Tom Marchitto, Scott Lehman, Jaqueline Flückiger (former INSTAAR, now at ETH Zürich), and colleagues from Kent State and Lamont-Doherty have identified a mechanism for the enormous carbon dioxide increase in Earth's atmosphere at the end of the last ice age: abrupt changes in deep ocean circulation. The team analyzed sediment cores from the North Pacific, using radiocarbon (carbon 14) in benthic foraminifera shells as a tracer and chronometer to track the escape of carbon from the deep sea through the upper ocean and into the atmosphere during the last 40,000 years. They discovered two large CO2 "burps", one about 18,000 years ago and one 13,000 years ago. During both releases, the carbon delivered to the upper ocean and atmosphere was "very old," suggesting that it had been stored in the deep ocean and isolated from the atmosphere for thousands of years. Both events correspond closely in time with abrupt deep-sea circulation changes believed to have been caused by ice sheet melting in the North Atlantic. Thus, rapid changes in the ocean circulation system dramatically altered how carbon-rich deep water rose to the surface to release its carbon to the atmosphere. The teams' research helps improve not only understanding of why glacial times came and went in the past, but how the oceans may respond to future climate change. Image: Researchers using sophisticated research vessels extract deep-sea sediment cores from oceans around the world to chart past climate change.
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JAMES SYVITSKI TO LEAD NEW NSF EARTH-SURFACE MODELING EFFORT James Syvitski was awarded $4.2 million by the National Science Foundation in a cooperative agreement over five years to lead a national effort to model the changing face of the Earth's surface. Syvitski will be the executive director of the new NSF initiative, known as the Community Surface Dynamic Modeling System, or CSDMS, which will involve hundreds of scientists and students from dozens of federal labs and universities around the nation, including CU-Boulder. CSDMS will study how landscapes and seascapes change over time, and how materials like water, sediments and nutrients are transported from one place to another. These studies will provide a better understanding of the Earth system and allow better predictions about areas at risk to phenomena like deforestation, forest fires, land-use changes and the impacts of climate change. The national CSDMS team will use powerful supercomputers to model the evolution of landscapes and sediment basins on time scales ranging from individual events like modern-day floods or landslides to processes taking place over millions of years. The researchers will use the models to focus on complex interactions involving rock, soil, water air, ice and living organisms and how they regulate the natural habitat and determine the availability of life-sustaining resources. The NSF award for the project will be augmented with financial and in-kind support from other federal agencies, including NASA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the Office of Naval Research, the Army Research Office, the Army Corps of Engineers and the U.S. Geological Survey. Image: Portrait of James Syvitski
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BOULDER MIDDLE SCHOOL STUDENTS VISIT INSTAAR AND NSIDC More than 170 eighth-graders from Boulder's Southern Hills Middle School visited the Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research (INSTAAR) and the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) on Tuesday, April 24, for an excursion involving lab tours, talks, science games and a field trip along Boulder Creek. The eighth-graders sampled the aquatic insect life along Boulder Creek during the visit as part of an ecosystem education project coordinated by INSTAAR. They also toured INSTAAR's sediment, radiocarbon, stable isotope, dissolved organic matter, pollen and tree-ring dating labs. The event included talks by INSTAAR faculty on global warming and the Arctic, the archeology of glaciers, life in Russia 40,000 years ago, and volcanoes in Antarctica. The Southern Hills students also toured facilities at NSIDC, which conducts research around the world and archives and distributes data on snow, avalanches, glaciers, ice sheets, sea ice and ice cores. Image: Bruce Vaughn (INSTAAR) points to a map of shrinking Arctic sea ice during a presentation to a group of middle school students. Photo: C.A. Cass (CU Boulder).
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INSTAAR BIENNIAL REPORT 2005-2006 INSTAAR's InfoCenter-Web-Report committee has produced a new biennial report that illustrates the wealth of our recent research, education, and outreach activities. Playing a large role in the production of the report were Larry Bowlds, Detlev Helmig (committee chair), Marcia Kelly, David Lubinski, and Shelly Sommer. The committee thanks all those in the INSTAAR "family" who contributed content. Image: Portion of the report cover.
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2005-2006
Report (PDF, 5 Mb) |
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NIWOT RIDGE SELECTED AS A CORE SITE FOR THE NATIONAL ECOLOGICAL OBSERVATORY NETWORK (NEON) A team of INSTAAR, CU-boulder, and other researchers - lead by Mark Williams - helped Niwot Ridge be selected as one of 20 core sites for the new National Ecological Observatory Network (NEON). The team leveraged extensive ongoing research programs on the Ridge that provide a firm foundation for future NEON activities, including the Niwot Ridge LTER project (PI M. Williams), Niwot Ridge Ameriflux project (PI R. Monson), and the Alpine Microbial Observatory (PI S. Schmidt). NEON is the largest ecological project ever attempted by the National Science Foundation. It will be the first national ecological measurement and observation system designed both to answer regional- to continental-scale scientific questions and to have the interdisciplinary participation necessary to achieve credible ecological forecasting and prediction. As such, NEON will transform the way science is conducted by enabling the integration of research and education, from natural to human systems, and from genomes to the biosphere. Social scientists and educators will join ecologists and physical scientists in NEON planning and design and participate as observatory users, recognizing that we live on landscapes that are, to varying degrees, human-dominated ecosystems. The NEON Core Sites, including Niwot Ridge, are located in areas of minimal human influence and will form the stable, fixed elements of the NEON design, which also includes relocatable gradient sites and mobile (truck mounted) laboratories. The Core Sites will be in place for 30 or more years, have extensive sampling and instrumentation, and serve as a base for staff operating the site and associated gradient and mobile laboratories. Image: Continental Divide from Boulder showing the grasslands to glacier gradient that is part of the Niwot Ridge core site for NEON. Photo: Casey A. Cass (CU-Boulder).
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Coresites (PDF) |
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GLOBAL WARMING TO CHANGE SKI INDUSTRY IN WESTERN USA Mark Williams and Brian Lazar (former INSTAAR student, now at Stratus Consulting) presented a study of the potential affects of global warming on Park City to more than 1,000 of the town's 8,500 residents, who crowded into the local auditorium to hear that temperatures are projected to rise 6 to 15 degrees Fahrenheit and that the snowpack will likely be substantially reduced by the end of the century. Williams and Lazar modeled seven different scenarios, built upon prior work by United Nations teams of experts. All scenarios predict dire consequences for the winter sports industry. If the world continues to accelerate its use of carbon-based fuels that create greenhouse emissions, then Park City's mountains will likely become virtually snow free. Even with dramatic cuts in greenhouse emissions, the ski season at the turn of the century could extend only from Christmas to President's Day, eliminating the profitable shoulder season in the ski and snowboard industry. The study was funded by the POWDR Corporation, which operates Park City Mountain Resort.
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EARLIEST EVIDENCE OF MODERN HUMANS
IN EUROPE DISCOVERED BY INTERNATIONAL TEAM Results published in the Jan. 12, 2007 issue of Science. Image: bone and ivory artifacts found at Kostenki.
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http://instaar.colorado.edu/research/science_spotlights.html
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