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2011 Science Spotlights
"Science Spotlights" are examples of INSTAAR research, education, and societal outreach.
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STREAM TEAM STUDENT BLOGS FROM THE DRY VALLEYS OF ANTARCTICA INSTAAR graduate student Alia Khan is blogging from one of the most remote field sites in the world. She is sending posts to the New York Times “Scientists at Work” series from a campsite in the McMurdo Dry Valleys of Antarctica. Khan is a member of the “Stream Team,” a changing group of researchers who study water and ecology in the cold desert on the shore of McMurdo Sound. The Stream Team is led by Khan’s adviser Diane McKnight (INSTAAR and Civil, Environmental and Architectural Engineering), who has been working in Antarctica for over 20 years as part of the Long-Term Ecological Research program (http://www.mcmlter.org/). Khan is working as a field hydrology research assistant, measuring the flow of ephemeral summer streams. She is living in the Dry Valleys over the austral summer, from late October through January.
Stream Team members Alia Khan and Tyler Kohler (INSTAAR) at the Happy Camper survival school with Mt. Erebus in the background. Photo by Alia Khan, October 2011. Khan, who is earning a master’s degree from CU, reveals the everyday details of life during a long-term field project, including routines, challenges, and moments of sheer beauty. Researchers ride helicopters or hike miles to check stream gauges; chip drinking water from frozen lakes; and collect wastewater, including dishwater and urine, in 50-gallon drums for transport out of the pristine environment.
Chris Jaros, Tyler Kohler, and Alia Khan (all INSTAAR) in the stream gauge box at the Lower Onyx site in the Dry Valleys. The box can double as an emergency shelter. Photo by Alia Khan, December 2011. In her first post, Khan describes her first camping experience in Antarctica. After a teammate had a hot water spill in the tent, they hiked two kilometers through howling wind for a dry sleeping bag: “As we walked, the sun crested over the horizon as fine snow blew across the hard-packed snow below it. In the background Mount Erebus (an active volcano) protruded through clouds in the distance. It was one of the most majestic walks of my life, despite the chilling temperatures.” Khan contacted the Times after seeing an INSTAAR postdoctoral researcher’s video on a Times science blog (http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/01/13/studying-soil-in-antarctica-there-is-an-explanation/ ). “Mike SanClements wrote a Dot Earth post last year,” she writes from the Dry Valleys, “and that inspired me to try to do something when I came down this year.” She will post to the Scientists at Work series half a dozen times over a month-long period.
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Extreme Ecology in a Polar Desert Awakening Streams and Mummified Seals A Second Home in the Dry Valleys |
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USAID, CU-BOULDER PARTNER TO STUDY WATER RESOURCES IN ASIA MOUNTAINS One third of the word's population relies on supply. The United States Agency for International Development has commissioned a University of Colorado Boulder team to assess snow and glacier contributions to the water supply of ten Asian countries. Richard Armstrong (CIRES & NSIDC) and Mark Williams (INSTAAR & Geography), the two faculty members leading the four-year study, said the aim is to provide a comprehensive, systematic assessment of freshwater resources in High Asia region, which encompasses five mountain ranges and watersheds totaling roughly 1 million square miles—roughly equal to one-third of the contiguous United States. While about one-third of the world’s population depends to some degree on fresh water within the so-called “High Asia” hydrological system, not enough data exists on river and stream flows and the contribution of seasonal snow and glacier melt to paint an accurate picture of the water resources there, said Armstrong. Williams added, “The sources of water in High Asia feeding the major foothill regions where most of the people live are the crux of this study.”
CU-Boulder graduate student Adina Racoviteanu collected snow and ice samples for isotopic analyses near the summit of Mt. Mera, Khumbu region, Nepal as part of an INSTAAR research effort. Makalu, the fifth highest mountain in the world at 27,825 feet, is visible in the far left background. Photo courtesy Mark Williams, University of Colorado The High Asia mountain ranges, including the Himalaya, Karkoram, Hindu Kush, Pamir and Tien Shan, funnel water into the major river basins of the Ganges, Brahmaputra, Indus, Amu Darya and Syr Darya. The ranges straddle Bhutan, Nepal, China, India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan. This assessment will be crucial in helping to forecast the future availability and vulnerability of water resources in the region, beginning with accurate assessments of the separate contributions to rivers from melting glacier ice and seasonal snow. Such data ultimately will provide a better understanding of the timing and volume of runoff in the face of climate change, said the researchers. “What’s really driving this study are questions about water security,” said Williams. “There is a lot of international interest in accurate water resource data from the High Asia region and what the water security consequences are, since water conflicts between countries can escalate rapidly. This study should provide answers as to what is real and what is false.” The researchers will use remote-sensing satellite data from NASA, the European Space Agency and the Japanese Space Agency to develop time-series maps of seasonal snowfall amounts and recent changes in glacier extent, said Williams. They also will use local meteorological and river discharge data from throughout the High Asia study area. “Once we have a picture of recent and current conditions, we can go forward and run computer ‘melt models’ based on the temperatures at various elevations, giving us trends in snowmelt and glacier melt by region and time,” said Armstrong. “That’s when we start to come up with water volumes for individual rivers and streams from both melting snow and ice.” The modeling results will be verified using geochemical and water isotope tracer techniques developed at CU that allow researchers to follow water as it courses through mountain landscapes. Previous studies by Williams and his research group showed high mountain groundwater in Colorado dominated by snowmelt can be locked underground for decades before emerging into downstream waterways. “These isotopic and geochemical measurements provide unique fingerprints, allowing a CSI-like approach to tracing water sources,” said Williams. Critical to the project is the university’s expertise in remote sensing research through NSIDC -- including assessing changes in snow and ice cover -- and INSTAAR’s research on the physical, chemical and biological processes in “critical zones,” the areas between treetops and groundwater. INSTAAR administers both the Long-Term Ecological Research site at Niwot Ridge west of Boulder and the Critical Zone Observatory project in the Boulder Creek watershed for the National Science Foundation. One of the biggest project challenges will be to obtain data from some of the most remote regions on Earth, said Williams. The water, rain and snow samples collected by collaborators within the study area will be sent back to CU-Boulder for analysis. The research will bring together scientists and government officials in the countries of High Asia to coordinate and compare results on what part of river flows come from glaciers and seasonal snow. USAID support will contribute to the research and coordination and CU-Boulder will make its archived and new data on snow and ice easily available to all the countries and their citizens. The CU team will hire Asian project managers and collaborate with research scientists affiliated with various Asian institutes. A number of CU undergraduate and graduate students will be involved in the study and support will be available to Asian students by way of funding provided to Asian project partners. “One of the main project goals is to transfer scientific understanding to people in the region who can continue these measurements and analysis once the USAID project is finished,” said Armstrong. “The idea is to provide the local population with the information they need to make decisions that will increase sustainability as land use and climate change.”
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JOHN ANDREWS ELECTED AAAS FELLOW John Andrews has been elected Fellow of the prestigious American Association for the Advancement of Science for 2011. Each year the AAAS Council elects Fellows whose “efforts on behalf of the advancement of science or its applications are scientifically or socially distinguished.” Andrews, a fellow of INSTAAR and professor emeritus of Geological Sciences, was cited for his leadership and seminal contributions to glacial geology and paleoclimatology in high latitudes for more than 40 years, especially in abrupt climate change and ice sheet dynamics.
Founded in 1848, AAAS is an international nonprofit organization that includes 262 affiliated societies and academies of science, serving 10 million individuals. It works to advance science for human well-being through projects, programs and publications in science policy, science education and international scientific cooperation and publishes the journal Science.
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J. Andrews: INSTAAR Profile |
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SUNDANCE FILM FESTIVAL TO FEATURE DOCUMENTARY CHASING ICE, ABOUT EXTREME ICE PROJECT
Jeff Orlowski, Adam LeWinter, and James Balog of EIS at Columbia Glacier, Columbia Bay, Alaska at site of EIS AK-2 “Waterline” camera. Photo courtesy of Extreme Ice Survey. Orlowski joined the EIS team in 2007. He filmed Balog across the Arctic as EIS worked to install solar-powered, time-lapse cameras in Greenland, Iceland and Alaska. “It was a fulltime job just keeping up with James. But after a year of documenting him and his team’s camera network, I knew that we had the footage to tell an important and powerful story that needed to be shared,” Orlowski said. EIS PROMO from Extreme Ice Survey on Vimeo.
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JOHN HOFFECKER’S TEAM UNEARTHS FIRST PREHISTORIC CAST BRONZE ARTIFACT FOUND IN ALASKA A team of researchers led by John Hoffecker has discovered the first prehistoric bronze artifact made from a cast ever found in Alaska. The small, buckle-like object was found in an ancient Eskimo dwelling and likely originated in East Asia. The artifact consists of a rectangular bar connected to a broken circular ring, said Hoffecker. It was found in August by a team excavating a 1,000-year-old house dug into the side of a beach ridge by early Inupiat Eskimos on the Seward Peninsula, within the Bering Land Bridge National Preserve. Both sections of the artifact are beveled on one side and concave on the other, indicating it was manufactured in a mold, said Hoffecker
The prehistoric cast bronze artifact, about 2 inches by 1 inch and less than an inch thick, is the first to be found in Alaska. Photo courtesy University of Colorado. “I was totally astonished,” said Hoffecker. “The object appears to be older than the house we were excavating by at least a few hundred years.” Hoffecker and Owen Mason, an INSTAAR affiliate and co-investigator on the Cape Espenberg excavations, said the bronze object may have been used as part of a harness or horse ornament prior to its arrival in Alaska. Its function on both continents still remains a puzzle, they said. Since bronze metallurgy from Alaska is unknown, the artifact likely was produced in East Asia and reflects long-distance trade from production centers in either Korea, China, Manchuria or southern Siberia, according to Mason. It conceivably could have been traded from the steppe region of southern Siberia, said Hoffecker, where people began casting bronze several thousand years ago. Ancient Alaskan Artifact. A 3.5 minute video about the first ever cast bronze artifact unearthed in Alaska. Video courtesy University of Colorado. Alternatively, some of the earliest Inupiat Eskimos in northwest Alaska -- the direct ancestors of modern Eskimos thought to have migrated into Alaska from adjacent Siberia some 1,500 years ago -- might have brought the object with them from the other side of the Bering Strait. The Seward Peninsula abuts the Bering Strait separating Alaska from Siberia. The peninsula was part of the Bering Land Bridge linking Asia and North America during the last ice age when sea level dropped dramatically, and may have been used by early peoples as a corridor to migrate from Asia into the New World some 14,000 years ago. The artifact was discovered in August by University of California, Davis, doctoral student Jeremy Foin under 3 feet of sediment near an entryway to a house at Cape Espenberg. Other project members included Chris Darwent of UC Davis, Claire Alix of the University of Paris, Nancy Bigelow of the University of Alaska Fairbanks, Max Friesen of the University of Toronto and Gina Hernandez of the National Park Service.
A National Science Foundation-funded excavation led by CU-Boulder to look at human response to climate change on the Seward Peninsula in Alaska some 1,000 years ago has yielded a bronze artifact that was found inside an ancient house dug into the side of a sand-covered beach ridge once occupied by Inupiat Eskimos. The object is the first prehistoric bronze artifact made from a cast ever found in Alaska and appears to have originated in East Asia. Photo courtesy University of Colorado. “The shape of the object immediately caught my eye,” said Foin, who spotted the soil-covered artifact in an archaeological sifting screen. “After I saw that it clearly had been cast in a mold, my first thought was disbelief, quickly followed by the realization that I had found something of potentially great significance.” The CU-led excavations are part of a National Science Foundation-funded project designed to study human response to climate change at Cape Espenberg from A.D. 800 to A.D. 1400, a critical period of cultural change in the western Arctic, said Mason. “That particular time period is thought by some to be an analog of what is happening to our environment now as Earth’s temperatures are rising,” said Mason. “One of our goals is to find out how these people adapted to a changing climate through their subsistence activities.” The Cape Espenberg site has yielded a treasure trove of several thousand artifacts. The bronze artifact unearthed in August is currently under study by prehistoric metallurgical expert and Purdue University Assistant Professor H. Kory Cooper.
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NSF AWARDS INSTAAR LARGEST ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES AWARD IN CU-BOULDER HISTORY: A $5.9 M GRANT FOR ALPINE ECOSYSTEM RESEARCH The National Science Foundation has awarded INSTAAR a six-year, $5.9 million grant to continue intensive studies of long-term ecological changes in Colorado's high mountains, both natural and human-caused, over decades and centuries. The grant is the largest environmental sciences award in CU-Boulder history, said INSTAAR Fellow and geography department professor Mark Williams, principal investigator on the grant. In 2005, NSF awarded CU-Boulder a $4.9 million renewal grant for environmental studies at the Niwot Ridge site. As one of five initial LTER sites selected by NSF in 1980, Niwot Ridge is now one of 25 such sites in North America and the only one located in an alpine environment. The renewal grant will allow faculty, graduate students, and undergraduates to continue key environmental studies at the Niwot Ridge Long-Term Ecological Research (LTER) site west of Boulder. The study site, considered extremely sensitive to climate change, is adjacent to the Mountain Research Station and encompasses several thousand acres of tundra, talus slopes, glacial lakes and wetlands stretching to the top of the Continental Divide.
John Murgel locates a plot on Mount Albion just south of the Niwot Ridge Long-Term Ecological Research site. North and South Arapaho Peaks and the Arapaho Glacier provide the backdrop. Photo: William Bowman, INSTAAR. “CU-Boulder has a worldwide reputation for monitoring global climate change from Greenland to Antarctica and its impacts on natural ecosystems and human populations,” said Vice Chancellor for Research Stein Sture. “To direct such a key program in our own backyard for the National Science Foundation is crucial from an environmental science standpoint and unique in that it provides a spectacular training ground for our students to work side-by-side with some of the world’s best climate change scientists.” The LTER grant funds research for about 15 CU-Boulder graduate students and 25 to 30 undergraduates annually, Williams said, and more than a dozen CU-Boulder faculty members are co-investigators on the new program grant. Twelve undergraduates are conducting research at the Niwot Ridge site as part of the NSF's Research Experience for Undergraduates program, said William Bowman, INSTAAR fellow and director of CU-Boulder’s Mountain Research Station for the past 20 years. Bowman is also mentoring a student researcher at Niwot Ridge from Fairview High School in Boulder. The Niwot Ridge site has been gaining stature by the consistent, high-quality research that has resulted in many publications in top-tier science journals, said Bowman, also a professor in the environmental biology department. He added that more than half of the research on Niwot Ridge is by scientists and students from around the world that are not associated with the LTER program.
Former CU-Boulder postdoctoral researchers Amy Miller (blue coat) and Katie Suding (black coat) are shown here with other members of a research team conducting a study involving nitrogen deposition on the tundra of the Niwot Ridge Long-Term Ecological Research site west of Boulder. Photo: William Bowman, INSTAAR. Researchers on Niwot Ridge have charted long-term meteorological measurements that indicate a slight warming of the climate there. Williams noted that the temperatures are significant because even small changes in alpine ecosystems can cascade down and have negative effects on other ecosystems. “The primary climate driver of the Niwot Ridge site is snow, and the mountains are our water towers,” said Williams. “As the alpine climate changes, one of the biggest impacts on humans will be a change in water resources. Even if we end up with the same amount of precipitation, in the form of less snow and more rain, we are going to end up with less usable water for municipalities.” There already are some indications that the snowline in the Rocky Mountains is moving upward, which will affect the abundance and distribution of plants and animals and likely shorten ski seasons at resorts throughout the West in the future, he said. CU-Boulder researchers also have charted a doubling in atmospheric nitrogen deposition on Niwot Ridge in the past several decades that is now adversely affecting some aquatic and terrestrial life on the ridge, said Williams. In addition, researchers are keeping a close eye on existing populations of the American pika, a small mammal found in rocky talus slopes as high as 13,000 feet on Niwot Ridge. “Many consider the American pika a ‘sentinel species’ in terms of measuring the effects of climate change,” said Williams. Nine of the 25 populations the in Great Basin of Nevada documented between 1898 to 1990 had disappeared by 2008, apparently the result of warming temperatures.
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STREAM PARADOX SOLVED? In recent decades, the diatom Didymosphenia geminata has emerged as a nuisance species in river systems around the world. Often known as didymo, the single-celled alga is able to colonize and dominate the bottoms of some of the world’s cleanest waterways, forming thick mats. The freshwater alga has become notorious. Didymo has taken over low-nutrient rivers in North America and Europe and invaded water bodies in the Southern Hemisphere, including those in New Zealand and Chile. Its blooms alter food webs and have the potential to impact fisheries. Didymo presented scientists with a puzzle. Algal blooms are usually linked to inputs of nutrients that fuel the growth of the microscopic aquatic organisms. But didymo grows most prolifically in unpolluted streams and rivers with low levels of nutrients like phosphorus, which typically limits growth.
Sarah Spaulding (INSTAAR and USGS) surveyed the growth of stalked diatoms, including didymo, in the Snake River from Jackson Lake to Moose, Wyoming. The survey, to determine the extent of blooms of stalked diatoms in Grand Teton National Park and appropriate management response, was funded by the National Park Service. Photo: Sarah Rushforth, August 2008. A team of scientists, including Sarah Spaulding (INSTAAR and U.S. Geological Survey) and researchers from South Dakota School of Mines and Technology and South Dakota State University, examined how high algal biomass is formed in low-nutrient conditions. The researchers published their study in the journal Geophysical Research Letters last week. The scientists conducted their study in Rapid Creek, a mountain stream in western South Dakota where didymo was first observed in 2002. The creek often experiences didymo blooms, with 30 to 100 percent of the streambed covered with didymo over an area up to six miles long. They discovered that didymo uses a biogeochemical process to scrub phosphorus from flowing waters. It does so with a little help from its friends--in this case, bacteria--which allow it to make use of nutrients like phosphorus.
Didymosphenia geminata in Rio Espolon, in the Patagonian region of Chile. Extensive blooms of didymo were first reported in South America 2010 in Rio Espolon and Rio Futaleufu by river guides. Sarah Spaulding (INSTAAR and USGS) was invited by the Chilean Institute, Centro de investigacion en ecosistemas de la Patagonia (CIEP), Coyhaique, Chile to investigate the blooms. Photo: Sarah Spaulding, July 2010. The stalks of didymo concentrate iron and phosphorus on their surfaces. Bacteria living in the mat then interact with iron to make the phosphorus biologically available to the algae. As didymo mats develop, new stalks grow at the surface and older stalks--with their already-bound phosphorus--are displaced to the mats' inner regions. The process results in abundant phosphorus for cell division, and explains why didymo thrives in low-nutrient rivers and streams. The results of the study will help scientists and managers identify water bodies susceptible to didymo blooms. “The growth of this diatom in low nutrient rivers has been a paradox,” explains Sarah Spaulding. “By examining the chemistry of the stalk, we think that we are starting to understand how a tiny cell has ecosystem impacts around the globe.”
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GRAD STUDENT GREENS INSTAAR LABS INSTAAR biology labs are using less energy and water and recycling more than they used to, thanks to graduate student Samantha Weintraub and a new CU program. Weintraub is leading small changes in laboratories that add up to significant changes in sustainability through the CU Green Labs program. Begun in 2009, Green Labs is a collaborative effort to promote the efficient use of energy, water, and materials in CU laboratories without compromising safety or scientific integrity. Weintraub and fellow student Liesl Erb are the lab liasions for the Ecology and Evolutionary Biology (EBIO) department, which gives them the job of advocating for changes within their department and INSTAAR and recruiting “ecoleaders” to become point persons in as many labs as possible. The voluntary Green Labs program relies on convincing people to think about and change their habits. “Sometimes it’s challenging,” Weintraub comments. “People have worked out ways of doing things, and…they’re afraid of the effect of changes on their samples—they worry about the integrity of their science.” But Weintraub feels that INSTAAR scientists are receptive to greening their labs as long as changes do not impact the quality of their science or come with high associated costs.
Sam Weintraub (INSTAAR and Ecology & Evolutionary Biology) collects Syrofoam packaging for recycling from the biology labs at INSTAAR. Photo: Shelly Sommer, INSTAAR, June 2011. The students have convinced several biology labs to make concrete changes. For example, in April the students received authorization to put low-flow aerators in lab sinks, which will save hundreds of gallons of water during the endless dishwashing that accompanies lab operations. Several labs now collect Styrofoam, a common packing material, for recycling. Weintraub drops off Styrofoam from the three INSTAAR biology labs to add to the campus pickup. The labs pay a small fee to Eco-Cycle to pick up and process it. The Green Labs program just held a national “Freezermania” contest, with a goal of reducing the energy used by Ultra Low Temperature (ULT) and other freezers here at the University of Colorado as well as UC Davis, Harvard, UPenn and others. Refrigerator is a huge energy use for labs, and “cooling from -70 to -80 degrees C takes a lot more energy than it does from -40 to -30,” explains Weintraub, “Raising the temperature on ULT freezers to -70 degrees C can reduce electricity use by nearly 10%.” The Freezermania contest ran from May 2 through May 27. It used incentives, like gift certificates to local restaurants, to drive change. As well as energy savings through turning up freezer temperatures slightly, the contest encouraged labs to green their freezers through other measures.
An Ultra Low Temperature freezer set to -70 degrees C, storing properly inventoried samples. Photo: Shelly Sommer, INSTAAR, June 2011. “Inventorying freezer units can make a huge difference,” said Weintraub. Freezers can accumulate samples at a rapid clip. While some samples should be kept indefinitely for future work, others outlive their usefulness after a project is concluded. Implementing inventory systems in freezers, which ensures that a person’s name is attached to each group of samples, keeps freezer contents under control. “You might not have to buy another fridge if you first make sure the contents of your old one are still useful,” says Weintraub. “A component of being an academic scientist is service: giving back to your department and community,” says Weintraub. “I saw there was a departmental committee on energy efficiency in labs, and I thought, that’s how I want to make my mark. I’m doing research because I care about the state of the planet’s ecological systems, yet I produce waste and consume water in the process. I hope that by making improvements in our labs we can make environmental research more sustainable.”
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HIGH SCHOOL STUDENTS WORK WITH INSTAAR RESEARCHERS; WIN AWARDS AT COLORADO SCIENCE FAIR New Vista High School students Kelly Muller and Remy Barrows-O’Neal won several awards at the 56th Colorado Science and Engineering Fair April 7-9 for their project “How Climate Affects the Spread of Invasive Species.” They worked with INSTAAR graduate students Janet Prevéy and David Knochel in Tim Seastedt’s terrestrial ecology lab to study the effect of varying rainfall amounts on the competitive ability of an invasive grass (cheatgrass) grown in competition with a native species (western wheatgrass).
Fast-growing cheatgrass seedlings in pots, several weeks after germination. Muller and Barrows-O’Neal compared cheatgrass and western wheatgrass growth under different conditions. Photo: Janet Prevéy. The students won the Senior Division Environmental Sciences Category Team Award, placed third in the Senior Division for Best Team Project in the state, and received the American Meteorological Society Denver/Boulder Chapter Special Award. Their findings demonstrated that rainfall amounts influenced the success of the invasive grass. Janet Prevéy, who served as the primary mentor on the project, believes the study made an original contribution to our knowledge about the competitive abilities of cheatgrass. “Their project showed that cheatgrass was more competitive than the native western wheatgrass at all resource levels, but especially at low resource levels,” she explained, “contrary to the theory that non-native species benefit from high resource conditions and native species are better able to compete in low resource conditions.” Muller and Barrows-O’Neal worked on their project for six months in the terrestrial ecology lab, counting seedlings, weighing biomass, and taking other measurements.
New Vista High School students Kelly Muller and Remy Barrows-O’Neal work with graduate student David Knochel (INSTAAR and Ecology & Evolutionary Biology) in the CU greenhouse on their award-winning science fair project. Photo: Janet Prevéy.
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JAMES SYVITSKI APPOINTED CHAIR OF INTERNATIONAL GEOSPHERE-BIOSPHERE PROGRAMME The International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme has announced that James Syvitski will chair the Scientific Committee, IGBP's main decision-making body, beginning 1 January 2012. Sponsored by the International Council for Science, the IGBP is an international research program to study the phenomenon of global change and provide the scientific leadership to improve Earth's sustainability.
A co-author of more than 150 scientific papers, Syvitski is an INSTAAR Fellow and its former Director. He is also a Professor in the departments of Geological Sciences; Applied Mathematics; and Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences and in the Hydrological Sciences graduate program. Syvitski is Executive Director of the Community Surface Dynamics Modeling System, a community of earth surface process modelers that provides resources for hosting, coupling, and running models and making data available. He has been involved in IGBP projects since the program's inception in 1987. "This is an important time to join IGBP," says Syvitski. "The defining research question of our age is how do we manage the Earth system - the planet's physical, chemical, biological and social components - responsibly, whilst feeding, clothing and protecting a population predicted to grow to nine billion people? IGBP and its partners are at the center of this research." Syvitski's research ranges widely through sedimentology, oceanography, hydrology, numerical modeling of earth-surface dynamics, marine geophysics, slope instabilities, and land-ocean interactions. Syvitski adds, "IGBP faces a public with limited understanding of the complexities of global-change science. We have a duty and a responsibility to communicate to the widest possible audience the gravity and consequences of the global changes we are revealing."
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NEW BOOK REVEALS EVOLUTION OF HUMAN 'SUPER-BRAIN' Landscape of the Mind: Human Evolution and the Archaeology of Thought, a new book by INSTAAR fellow John Hoffecker, will be released next month by Columbia University Press. The book addresses the origin of the mind from an evolutionary neuroscience perspective, but also draws on linguistics, philosophy, history, and the archaeological record.
Hoffecker argues that the most significant feature of the modern human mind is creativity—the capacity for recombining large quantities of non-genetic information in the brain into a potentially infinite range of structures in the form of sentences, artworks, musical compositions, technologies, and other media. The source of this capacity, he suggests, lies in a rare ability to externalize complex thoughts or mental representations (the honeybee may be the only other animal with this capability) that evolved more than a million years ago. Characterizing modern humans as an “information animal,” he attributes the rise of their creative mind to the formation of a “super-brain”—a neocortical internet based on the sharing of mental representations—no later than 75,000 years ago in sub-Saharan Africa.
CU-Boulder researcher John Hoffecker, shown here working at a site in Russia dating back 45,000 years, believes there is mounting archaeological evidence for the evolution of a human "super-brain" no later than 75,000 years ago that spurred a modern capacity for novelty and invention. Image courtesy Vance T. Holliday/ University of Arizona.
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195 MIDDLE SCHOOL STUDENTS VISIT INSTAAR AND NSIDC DURING ANNUAL OPEN HOUSE 195 eighth graders toured labs, ran science experiments, and played science games on Friday, April 8th during an Open House hosted by the Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research (INSTAAR) and the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC). The students, from Boulder’s Southern Hills Middle School, divided into small groups for a morning of fast-paced activities.
Photo: Ethan Welty. The Open House was designed to expose students to many of the research areas and methods pursued at INSTAAR and the NSIDC. Students learned how scientists can estimate the age of an object by measuring the relative amounts of different isotopes of carbon present in organic material, such as bone, charcoal, shells, or wood. They watched a demonstration of equipment used to measure trace amounts of gases and improve environmental models, and found out how sediment cores are analyzed to give information about past climates. In the Supercomputer Lab, students played a science game that pitted different computing methods—parallel processors vs. single processors—against each other, using Duplo blocks to perform tasks. Scott Peckham, the chief software architect at the Community Surface Dynamics Modeling System (CSDMS), conducted the games. “It was interesting—right away the students came up with refinements that mirror stuff we do in programming,” Peckham said.
Photo: Ethan Welty. Filmmaker Ryan Vachon presented Core Catchers, a video showing scientists studying past climate climbing to a glacier in the Andes to drill an ice core. John Hoffecker gave a dynamic presentation on the People and Climate of Alaska’s Cape Espenberg 1000 Years Ago, and Craig Lee provided an overview of the archeological and paleobiological materials recovered from melting snow and glaciers around the world. Boulder Creek was the site of a number of hands-on experiments that had students scouring underneath rocks in the stream for invertebrates; sampling water quality and pH; and measuring flow with a flow meter, tennis balls, and oranges.
Photo: Ethan Welty. The Open House and collaboration with Southern Hills Middle School is an INSTAAR tradition entering its third decade. Many people at INSTAAR and NSIDC helped organize and run the Open House. Organizers included Craig Lee, Bruce Vaughn, Ryan Vachon, Ursula Quillmann, and Susan Ponsor. Many graduate students and research assistants acted as tour guides, shuttling groups between labs, presentations, and the creek. Scientists and grad students gave tours, conducted demonstrations and hands-on activities, and made presentations. “The opportunity of see science in action demystifies it,” said Open House co-organizer Craig Lee. “We hope that these small group interactions, where you participate in forming a question, collecting data, and coming to conclusions, plants a seed about how science works.” He adds, “Also, no one is wearing lab coats. Maybe we’ll show that scientists are just normal people doing interesting things.”
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“HORIZONTAL ICE CORE” HELPS UNDERSTAND HISTORY OF ATMOSPHERIC METHANE Vasilii Petrenko (INSTAAR Postdoctoral Researcher) was interviewed by Public Radio International (PRI) while helping drill shallow ice cores on the Taylor Glacier in Antarctica. The interview opens with a bit of fun, listening to the eerie pinging sounds created by dropping leftover ice blocks back into a borehole 20 m (70 ft) deep. LISTEN
Photo: Robb Kulin. Petrenko was part of a team that drilled numerous and unusually large ice cores (9.5 in / 24 cm diameter) and melted them in the field to collect ancient air trapped inside the ice. This air contains a record of past atmospheric composition, including methane, a potent greenhouse gas. The ancient air was shipped to the United States for laboratory analyses that will include the carbon-14 content of methane. Petrenko's collaborators in this project include Jeff Severinghaus (UC San Diego) and Ed Brook (Oregon State). The team collected ancient air from boreholes spread along the ice surface in Taylor Glacier’s unusually long ablation zone –where ice is being removed from the surface either by sublimation or melting. Ice in this zone formed long ago and far up the glacier, and is very old by the time it flows downhill and becomes exposed at the surface. The team surveyed more than 20 km (12.5 miles) of the ablation zone during their first field season (2009/2010). They found the age of the ice surface changes with distance, spanning a time interval from 8,000 to 70,000 years ago. In this way, Taylor Glacier presents an opportunity to collect a “horizontal ice core”. In a regular, vertical ice core (such as the WAIS Divide core that INSTAAR scientists like Jim White are also working on), ancient ice is laboriously recovered from a glacier’s accumulation zone – where snow is being added to the surface and slowly compressed into ice. Drilling downward as deep as 2 miles below the surface of the accumulation zone takes great effort. In contrast, the ablation zone of Taylor Glacier exposes ice of many of the same ages right at the surface. What’s more, it exposes essentially unlimited amounts of it (as compared to relatively small amounts recovered from vertical ice cores). This allows the team to analyze gases present in ultra-trace concentrations, such as carbon-14 of methane.
Photo: Robb Kulin. Petrenko participated in a similar project in Greenland from 2001-2005 that used chain saws to collect ice samples of sufficient size. Subsequent analysis of carbon-14 of methane in the Greenland ancient air samples suggested that a spike in the greenhouse gas methane about 11,600 years ago originated from wetlands rather than the ocean floor or from permafrost. Petrenko and his colleagues want to verify their Greenland-based results at Taylor Glacier, which has the added advantage of cleaner ice samples, with less organic matter. The Antarctic team is interested in not only the abrupt spike in methane from 11,600 years ago but an earlier spike from about 15,000 years ago. Their analyses of carbon-14 of methane will provide a more definitive test of whether melting methane hydrates from the seafloor were chiefly responsible for these spikes in methane as the last Ice Age waned and the world warmed.
Photo: Robb Kulin. The team’s results could also tell us something about what might happen in the future. As Petrenko pointed out to the PRI radio crew, the ancient methane spikes provide insight as to whether future warming will destabilize methane hydrates and release methane into the atmosphere. And that’s particularly important because methane is itself a potent greenhouse gas. More methane in the atmosphere leads to more warming, which could in turn lead to the release of more methane.
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JOHN BEHRENDT WINS DISTINGUISHED ALUMNI AWARD John Behrendt was selected by the Department of Geoscience at the University of Wisconsin-Madison to receive a 2011 Distinguished Alumni Award. He was selected from thousands of alumni for his contributions to the study of Antarctica and continental rifts and rifted margins, including his efforts to protect and manage Antarctica for the scientific benefit of the world.
Behrendt will receive the award at a departmental ceremony and his name will be inscribed on a plaque hanging in the departmental lobby.
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AUTHORS, TEACHERS, SCIENTISTS COME TOGETHER TO ADVANCE CHILDREN’S BOOK SERIES Colorado teachers and scientific researchers joined forces with authors, illustrators, and book publishers at INSTAAR on 28 February and 01 March for the NSF LTER Schoolyard Children’s Book Series Workshop, hosted by Diane McKnight and Mark Williams of INSTAAR. Participants worked out next steps for the popular LTER Schoolyard Book Series (http://schoolyard.lternet.edu/book_series), which includes My Water Comes from the Rocky Mountains, My Water Comes from the San Juans, The Lost Seal, and Sea Secrets. They discussed how to develop web-accessible curricula associated with each book and move ahead with Spanish-language editions. “We learned that there is a great need for children's science literature in Spanish and in a bilingual format,” said McKnight, “so we have plans for a Spanish-language version of the My Water books.”
INSTAAR artist-in-residence Lynne Cherry shows one of the Young Voices on Climate Change films she produced and directed. Photo by Matt Corliss, www.findmeoutside.com The books are an education and outreach effort of the Long Term Ecological Research (LTER) Network (http://www.lternet.edu), in which scientists and students at sites across North America and Antarctica collaborate to look at ecological processes over long temporal and broad spatial scales. INSTAAR scientist Diane McKnight, a Co-Investigator at the Niwot Ridge LTER site in Colorado and the Principal Investigator of the McMurdo Dry Valley LTER site in Antarctica, was a primary driver behind the first two books in the series. “Most of the book series authors have been LTER researchers,” remarked workshop coordinator Margi Dashevsky. “One of the goals of the workshop is to have established authors help orient them to the children’s book universe—story development, use of narrative.” Panel discussions and breakout sessions helped participants grapple with applying ideas from the workshop to books from their LTER sites.
David Sobel (Antioch University New England) gives the workshop’s keynote speech on best practices in place-based environmental education. Photo by Matt Corliss, www.findmeoutside.com Keynote speaker David Sobel (Antioch University New England) related best practices in developmentally appropriate, place-based environmental education and outreach. Award-winning children’s science author and illustrator Lynne Cherry, who is artist-in-residence at INSTAAR, showed one of the Young Voices on Climate Change (http://youngvoicesonclimatechange.com) films that she produced and directed and spoke on age-appropriate civic engagement. Some participants also attended a pre-workshop event, Community Perspectives on Watershed Education, at the Keystone Science School in Keystone, Colorado. They discussed best practices for place-based watershed education, experiential learning, the Schoolyard books’ accompanying educational resources, and extending the book My Water Comes from the Rocky Mountains to other watersheds. Contact
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NEW STUDY TIES WARM NORTH ATLANTIC WATER TO HEATING ARCTIC North Atlantic water flowing into the Arctic Ocean is warmer than it has been in at least 2,000 years, which is likely amplifying global warming in the Arctic, says a new international study involving INSTAAR fellow Tom Marchitto. The study showed that water from the Fram Strait, a major carrier of oceanic heat to the Arctic Ocean, has warmed roughly 3.5 degrees Fahrenheit in the past century. Fram Strait water temperatures today are about 2.5 degrees F warmer than during the Medieval Warm Period that affected the climate in Europe and North America. The team believes that the rapid warming of the Arctic and recent decrease in sea ice extent are tied to the enhanced heat transfer from the North Atlantic Ocean, said Robert Spielhagen of the Academy of Sciences, Humanities and Literature in Mainz and Leibniz Institute of Marine Sciences in Keil, Germany, who led the study. According to Marchitto, the new observations are crucial for putting the current warming trend of the North Atlantic in the proper context. “We know that the Arctic is the most sensitive region on the Earth when it comes to warming, but there has been some question about how unusual the current Arctic warming is compared to the natural variability of the last thousand years,” said Marchitto. “We found that modern Fram Strait water temperatures are well outside the natural bounds.”
Photo of the German research vessel Maria S. Merian moving through sea ice in Fram Strait northwest of Svalbard. The research team discovered the water there was the warmest in at least 2,000 years, which has implications for a warming and melting Arctic Credit: Nicolas van Nieuwenhove (IFM-GEOMAR, Kiel). The team drilled ocean sediment cores dating back 2,000 years to determine past water temperatures. The researchers used microscopic organisms called foraminifera--which prefer specific water temperatures at depths of roughly 150 to 650 feet--as tiny thermometers. In addition, the team used a second, independent method that involved analyzing the chemical composition of the foraminifera shells to reconstruct past water temperatures in the Fram Strait. Spielhagen concludes, “We must assume that the accelerated decrease of the Arctic sea ice cover and the warming of the ocean and atmosphere of the Arctic measured in recent decades are in part related to an increased heat transfer from the Atlantic.” A paper on the study is in the Jan. 28 issue of Science. |
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