NRT trainee Kristina Gutchess is lead author in a paper entitled “Chloride sources in urban and rural headwater catchments, central New York.” This study, co-authored with Li Jin (SUNY Cortland), EMPOWER Director Laura Lautz, Stephen Shaw (SUNY ESF), and Zunli Lu (Kristy’s PhD advisor), was published in the journal Science of the Total Environment (565:462-472).
Congratulations, Kristy!
On Friday, April 15, Dr. Marcia McNutt presented the annual Geoffrey O. Seltzer Lecture & Norma Slepecky Lecture titled “Climate Intervention: Promise and Peril.” This special event was co-hosted by the Women in Science and Engineering (WiSE) program and the Department of Earth Sciences in the College of Arts and Sciences. Preceding her presentation, the Norma Slepecky Research Prize Award Ceremony recognized the research accomplishments of two undergraduate female students from the biology and physics departments. Marcia McNutt is a well-known geophysicist and currently the first female editor-in-chief of Science. She will also be the first woman to lead the National Academy of Sciences for her six-year term beginning on July 1st.
Dr. McNutt’s presentation covered what is known about climate change and explored the government’s response options. She focused on the polarizing topic of intervention through geoengineering of the earth’s climate. She thoroughly went through the current methods of climate intervention and discussed their benefits and drawbacks. Overall the presentation seemed to hinge upon the moral hazards of intervention and how relying on intervention may lead scientists and policy makers to disengage from mitigation and adaptation efforts. However, we should still proceed with research on climate intervention and “the government should maximize benefits of research [on climate intervention] while minimizing the risks,” stated McNutt. The bottom line of McNutt’s message was that the government is stalling mitigation efforts, not serious about adaptation, CO2 removal is too slow of a processes, and that certain intervention methods, such as albedo modification, should not be the answer.
News submitted by Chilisa Shorten, Caitlin Eger, and Tim Stagnitta
About 30 graduate students from a range of disciplines, including chemistry, engineering, earth sciences, and physics, participated in the AAAS Science Communication workshop on April 22. In the workshop, they discussed the reasons why they should engage the public in their research, their goals for public engagement, and how they can relate to their audiences. They practiced delivering their research messages and explored opportunities for engaging the public.
In addition to a 3-hour workshop in the morning, there was a lunch and public seminar. The event was co-hosted by the IGERT Soft Interfaces at Syracuse University.
GSA Research Grants were awarded at the recent meeting of the Committee on Research Grants, on behalf of the Council of the Geological Society of America. Trainee Robin Glas received a GSA Research Grant. Congratulations, Robin!
Trainee Jacqueline Gerson was just designated as a Mamont Scholar as part of the Explorer’s Club and she received an Exploration Fund Grant. Congratulations, Jackie!
For more information about the Explorer’s Club, please see their website at www.explorers.org.
Jennifer Murphy from the University of Toronto will be presenting a talk titled “Surface-Atmosphere Exchange of Reactive Nitrogen” on Tuesday, April 19 at 4:00 pm in CST 1-019 (snacks available at 3:45).
On Friday, April 1, Sherburne Abbott presented a seminar titled “Loops, Lags, and Limits of Climate Science and Policy” to Earth science, civil and environmental engineering, and geography students and faculty. Sherburne Abbott is currently the Vice President for Sustainability Initiatives and Professor of Sustainability Science and Policy at Syracuse University. Previously, she served as the Associate Director for Environment of the Office of Science and Technology Policy in the Executive Office of President Obama (2009-2011), the Director of the Center for Science and Practice of Sustainability in the Office of the Executive Vice President and Provost at the University of Texas at Austin, and the Chief International Officer of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
Ms. Abbott’s presentation explored the current state of climate science, including both public and scientific perceptions of the issue. She emphasized that the climate is already undeniably changing with impacts manifested in recent extreme events. She discussed the implications if we don’t take immediate action to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions and adapt to climate change. Nevertheless, she expressed hope that the Paris Climate Talks would forge the path forward both domestically and internationally to curb greenhouse gas emissions. “Climate change is a tough public policy problem,” said Abbott, “due to its global nature, the challenge of collective action, multigenerationality, and the linkage of greenhouse gas emissions with the economy.” At the end of the presentation, she discussed the need for scientists and policy makers to work together to bring about effective measures to address climate change.
News submitted by Emily Baker, Jacqueline Gerson, and Alex Johnson
Dr. Shemin Ge, the 2016 Geological Society of America’s Birdsall-Dreiss Lecturer, visited Syracuse University on March 22, 2016. Dr. Ge is currently a professor at the University of Colorado-Boulder in the Geological Sciences Department. During her visit, Dr. Ge spoke with Earth Sciences and Engineering faculty and students, and her visit culminated with her talk entitled “Fluid-Induced Seismicity – a pore pressure perspective.” Dr. Ge explained how earthquakes can be induced by human activities, such as fluid extraction and injection, enhanced oil recovery, and hydraulic fracturing. Her research on the increase in earthquake frequency in the U.S., which is caused by high rates of deep wastewater injection for waste disposal and enhanced oil recovery, was featured in the journal Science in 2015. In this study, earthquakes within 15 km of a wastewater injection well were considered to be spatially associated with the earthquake. Dr. Ge and her colleagues also considered earthquakes to be temporally associated with injection wells if active wastewater or fluid injection was occurring at the time of the earthquake.
Dr. Ge and her colleagues concluded that the frequency of earthquakes not associated with injection wells has remained relatively constant (approximately 10-25 earthquakes per year) while the frequency of those associated with injection wells has increased by orders of magnitude in recent decades (ranging from a few earthquakes per year in the 1970s to >650 in 2014). Approximately 85% of associated earthquakes have occurred in Oklahoma, Kansas, and Texas. Dr. Ge and colleagues also concluded that high rate injection is a major contributing factor in high pore pressure generation, which may result in a higher likelihood of earthquake occurrence. This work can guide oil and gas industries and regulatory agencies to decrease the likelihood of earthquakes associated with injection wells in the future.
News article submitted by Sara Alesi, Kakonkwe Christian, Robin Glas, and Nicole Ng
On Tuesday, March 8th, as part of the Syracuse University EMPOWER program’s Water-Energy Nexus Seminar, Dr. Emily Elliott visited campus. Dr. Elliot is currently an Associate Professor in the Department of Geology and Planetary Science at the University of Pittsburgh. She received her B.S. from the University of Virginia in Environmental Science, and her M.S and Ph.D. from Johns Hopkins University in Geography and Environmental Engineering. Dr. Elliot began to examine the stratification of nitrogen isotopes in the Earth’s water, air, and land while a Ph.D. Student at Johns Hopkins University, and has continued to provide vital contributions to the field of reactive nitrogen as both a postdoctoral associate with the U.S. Geological Survey, Water Resources Division, and as an Associate Professor at the University of Pittsburgh. Students and faculty from both the Civil and Environmental Engineering and the Earth Sciences Departments had opportunities to meet with Dr. Elliott while she was on campus
Dr. Elliott discussed her recent work regarding the links between anthropogenic activities and distributions of reactive nitrogen in atmospheric, terrestrial and hydrologic systems using stable isotope biogeochemistry entitled “What Goes Up, Must Come Down: An Isotopic Perspective on Reactive Nitrogen Emissions and Deposition.” During the seminar, Dr. Elliott explained how nitrogen isotopes can be used to determine the emission sources of NOx deposition. Despite atmospheric processes complicating analysis, Dr. Elliott shared that deposition in remote regions appears to be mostly from coal burning, while NOx emitted from vehicles are deposited on a local scale.
News article submitted by Kristina Gutchess, Geoff Millard, and Ting Wang
The Central New York Earth Science Student Symposium is scheduled for Saturday, April 2. Students from across upstate and central NY will have the opportunity to present their research, meet with potential employers, and network with peers. Dr. David Fastovsky, from University of Rhode Island, will be the keynote speaker. Also, the SU Lava project will be doing a special lava pour for the symposium.
For more information, please contact sugeoclub@gmail.com or click here.