Meaghan Daly is a Ph.D. student in environmental studies at CU. She says that, even though the economy has been rocky the last four years, she hopes Obama will balance short-term solutions to things like higher gas prices or energy independence with long-term environmental benefits.
NEWS SOURCE: Public News Service
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As the DOPE announcement stated, the paper competition "seeks to recognize graduate students who are making important contributions to the way political ecologists use and make theory in light of rapid environmental change and crisis, from climate change, to agriculture, to molecular biology, or in any number of other contexts".
The panel of judges consisted of scholars from the Cultural and Political Ecology Specialty Group of the American Association of Geography, the Anthropology & Environment section of the American Anthropology Association, and the American Sociological Association section on Environment & Technology.
NEWS SOURCE: Environmental Studies Program
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The newly elected AGU Fellows are Professor William Emery of the aerospace engineering sciences department, Professor Bruce Jakosky of the geological sciences department, Professor Cora Randall of the atmospheric and oceanic sciences department and Professor Mark Williams of the geography department. The four CU-Boulder faculty members join 57 other AGU Fellows elected from around the world in 2012, including 41 from U.S. institutions.
Only one other person in Colorado, Daniel Murphy of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, was elected an AGU Fellow for 2012.
Established in 1919 to further advance the science of geophysics both on Earth and on other planets, the international, nonprofit organization now has more than 60,000 members worldwide. Elected AGU Fellows, who make up no more than 0.1 percent of AGU members in any given year, are honored for their exceptional scientific contributions in the fields of earth and space sciences.
Trailing CU-Boulder in the number of AGU Fellows elected for 2012 were eight universities with two each: the University of California, Los Angeles, the University of California, Irvine, Johns Hopkins University, the University of Michigan, Penn State, Texas A&M University, the University of Tokyo and the University of Durham in England.
“This is a great honor for the University of Colorado Boulder and shows once again our faculty are working and teaching at the frontiers of science,” said CU-Boulder Vice Chancellor for Research Stein Sture. “To lead the world in the number of fellows elected by the American Geophysical Union in 2012 is indicative of the quality and depth of CU-Boulder’s research and education in both earth sciences and space sciences.”
Emery, of the Center for Astrodynamics Research in the aerospace engineering sciences department, was cited for advances in the remote sensing of ocean surface phenomena, including sea surface temperature variations and ocean surface currents. He also helped develop processing hardware for weather satellites and studies high-resolution satellite imagery for detecting urban change and mapping disaster effects. Emery also has applied high and moderate resolution satellite imagery to the study of terrestrial vegetation.
Jakosky, associate director for science at the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics, was cited for his illuminating studies of the climate of Mars, and of life in the solar system. Jakosky is the principal investigator on NASA’s $670 million Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution mission, or MAVEN, the first mission devoted to understanding the upper atmosphere of Mars and which is slated to launch next year. His studies include the geology of planetary surfaces, the evolution of the Martian atmosphere and climate and the potential for life beyond Earth.
Randall, who also is affiliated with LASP, was cited for her contributions to our understanding of the impact of energetic particles on the atmosphere. Randall is principal investigator for the Cloud Imaging and Particle Size experiment on NASA’s Aeronomy of Ice in the Mesosphere satellite, or AIM, which is studying long-term changes in ice crystal clouds in the mesosphere and their relationship to global climate change. LASP designed and built two of the three instruments for AIM, which is controlled by a team, primarily undergraduates, from CU-Boulder.
Williams, who is affiliated with CU’s Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research, was cited for outstanding research that has made fundamental advances in mountain hydrology and biogeochemistry. He has worked in the Rocky Mountains, Sierra Nevada Mountains, the Himalayas, the Andes and the Alps and is the principal investigator on a $5.9 million grant to CU from the National Science Foundation to continue intensive studies of long-term ecological changes in Colorado’s high mountains, both natural and human-caused, over decades and centuries.
NEWS SOURCE: CU-Boulder News Center
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Election to the National Academy of Engineering is among the highest professional distinctions accorded an engineer. Academy membership honors those who have made outstanding contributions to “engineering research, practice or education” and to the “pioneering of new and developing fields of technology, making major advancements in traditional fields of engineering, or developing/implementing innovative approaches to engineering education.”
McKnight was recognized for making clear the interrelationship between natural organic matter and heavy metals in streams and lakes.
Her research expertise is in the interactions between freshwater biota, trace metals, and natural organic material in diverse freshwater environments, including lakes and streams in the Colorado Rocky Mountains and in the McMurdo Dry Valleys in Antarctica.
In the Rocky Mountains, she has focused on the impact of metal contamination in acid mine drainage streams and the influence of climate change and nitrogen deposition on alpine lakes and wetlands. McKnight has interacted with many state and local groups involved in mine drainage and watershed issues in the Rocky Mountains.
“Diane is a worldwide leader in the interactive effect of metals in our water system with natural organic matter,” said Professor Ross Corotis, who was dean of the College of Engineering and Applied Science when McKnight joined the faculty and the Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research in 1996. “In addition to her advanced research for protecting environments from the Antarctic to the Rocky Mountains, she is a leader in developing books for children to help them learn about the water cycle.”
McKnight has been working in Antarctica since 1987, and is a leading investigator studying extreme life at the McMurdo Dry Valleys Long Term Ecological Research site funded by the National Science Foundation. In the harsh polar environment, stream channels flow only a few weeks out of the year and the only life forms inhabiting the area are microorganisms, mosses, lichens and a few groups of invertebrates.
She wrote and published a children’s book, “The Lost Seal,” in 2006, that tells the true story of a wayward seal discovered near the research camp in 1990 and its eventual rescue. The story gives children an understanding of Antarctica’s extreme environment and the work of scientists there.
She earned three degrees from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, including a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering in 1975, a master’s degree in civil engineering in 1978 and a doctorate in environmental engineering in 1979.
She was a research hydrologist with the U.S. Geological Survey’s National Research Program for 17 years before she came to CU-Boulder. She was named a fellow of the American Geophysical Union in 2004 and of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 2009.
She is a former member of the National Research Council’s Water Science and Technology Board and Polar Research Board, and she received a Meritorious Service Award from the U.S. Geological Survey in 1995.
Other CU-Boulder faculty who have been elected to the National Academy of Engineering, and their years of election, are: Bernard Amadei, 2008; George Born and Kaspar Willam, 2004; Ross Corotis and Fred Glover, 2002; Frank Barnes, 2001; Delores Etter, 2000; Martin Mikulas, 1999; Valerian Tatarskii, elected a foreign associate in 1994; Earl Gossard, 1990; Don Hearth and Richard Strauch, 1989; Jacques Pankove, 1986; Richard Seebass (deceased), 1985; Klaus Timmerhaus (deceased), 1975; and Max Peters (deceased), 1969.
NEWS SOURCE: University of Colorado at Boulder News
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The Earth is still getting hotter, but those terms have nearly disappeared from political vocabulary. Instead, they have been replaced by less charged and more consumer-friendly expressions for the warming planet.
President Obama’s State of the Union address Tuesday was a prime example of this shift. The president said “climate change” just once — compared with zero mentions in the 2011 address and two in 2010. When he did utter the phrase, it was merely to acknowledge the polarized atmosphere in Washington, saying, “The differences in this chamber may be too deep right now to pass a comprehensive plan to fight climate change.” By contrast, Obama used the terms “energy” and “clean energy” nearly two dozen times.
Read the rest of the story at The Washington Post.
NEWS SOURCE: The Washington Post
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There’s much to explore about the challenges in teaching about the evolving relationship between people and their climate.
This subject was once pretty straightforward. After all, it was a relationship that was largely a one-way phenomenon. Climate changed. People adapted or moved. (The extraordinary books of Brian Fagan are an ideal guide.) ...
One such experiment is a new course at the University of Colorado, “Inside the Greenhouse,” that’s focused on the second area — the interface of climate and society. The course melds the arts and environmental studies. Here’s more on the course from one of its creators, Maxwell Boykoff, an assistant professor of environmental studies at the University of Colorado (and author of a valuable new book on climate in the press):
This week, at the University of Colorado, Boulder, Professor Beth Osnes from the Department of Theater and Dance and I begin teaching a new interdisciplinary course called ‘Inside the Greenhouse.’ (We are embarking on this interdisciplinary effort thanks to funding from local residents Grace and Gordon Gamm.)
Read the complete full article here.
NEWS SOURCE: The Opinion Pages, New York Times
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This spring, the University of Colorado's Theater and Dance department is joining forces with Environmental Science to offer an upper-division course, Inside the Greenhouse: Using Media to Communicate Positive Solutions for Climate Change.
The interdisciplinary course will combine assistant professor Beth Osnes's narrative theory with the science, politics and policy of climate change, taught by assistant professor Max Boykoff.
NEWS SOURCE: Boulder Daily Camera
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The U.S. government is deploying Colorado scientists to lead a $5.4 million effort to gauge the impact of shrinking Himalayan glaciers on water supplies across Asia.
The question: Are rivers that sustain more than 2 billion people fed primarily by water from rainfall, by seasonal snowmelt or by the glaciers that are vulnerable to climate change?
A significant drop in water supply could lead to food shortages and, according to U.S. Agency for International Development officials, create new conflicts in already volatile areas.
NEWS SOURCE: Denver Post
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To many of the hundreds of thousands of visitors who travel each year to the red rock country of the West and to national parks like Arches and Bryce Canyon, the landscape can feel timeless. The strange wind- and water-carved formations speak of ages past, presented to the modern tourist as a finished work, often cast quite literally in stone.
Yet in interviewing researchers in fields like climatology and geology for an article about the growing body of scientific study on dust in the Western skies, I found that one thing resonated over and over. The Colorado Plateau, the high arid region that stretches through parts of New Mexico, Arizona, Utah and Colorado, is anything but static.
The scars of the recent past, including disruptions to fragile soils from cattle grazing and ranching, and the looming forces of what is expected to be a drier and even more arid future have combined to create a place in motion, with more dust up and swirling.
“You know the air quality has changed,” said Jason C. Neff, an associate professor of geology and environmental studies at the University of Colorado, Boulder. “But it’s an emerging problem in the West that we haven’t gotten a handle on yet.”
NEWS SOURCE: New York Times
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Oh say, can you see across the Grand Canyon? Not as well as you used to on some days.
The question of how clean the air is in the American West has never been an easy one to answer, strange to say. And now scientists say it is getting harder, with implications that ripple out in surprising ways, from the kitchen faucets of Los Angeles to public health clinics in canyon-land Utah to the economics of tourism.
NEWS SOURCE: New York Times
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