EMPOWER students have varied interests: MS student Sara Alesi studies chemical weathering in soils in the Catskills region and PhD student Geoff Millard is interested in biogeochemical cycling in the western Adirondacks. Both participated in the recent Northeastern Ecosystem Research Cooperative (NERC) Conference, which was held in Saratoga Springs in late March.
NERC is comprised of researchers, students, resource managers, and policy makers who study the health of terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems in the northeastern U.S. and eastern Canada. “I went to NERC because it is a great regional conference,” Millard says. Millard’s research was well-aligned with the work of many other researchers at the conference and he was able to have in-depth conversations with experts who have interests similar to his own.
“At the NERC conference, I was able to meet with researchers who I’ve only cited in my work or have emailed with, so it was exciting to meet with them in person and receive additional feedback on my research,” Alesi says. “I was able to hear about the different analyses being done and made note of how I can implement some of them into my own research.”
In addition to attending sessions and meeting colleagues, Alesi and Millard presented their research at the conference. Alesi’s poster, “Estimating the Rate of Release of Base Cations via Chemical Weathering in Soils in the Catskills Region,” was co-authored by EMPOWER faculty member Chris Johnson. Millard had several collaborators on his poster, including EMPOWER faculty member Charles Driscoll, Mario Montesdeoca (from SU’s Civil & Environmental Engineering Department), and Doug Burns and Karen Riva-Murray (both from the U.S. Geological Survey). Alesi and Millard agreed that presenting their research in poster format offered opportunities for additional feedback, insights, and conversations with other ecosystem scientists.
Millard says “I enjoy this conference so much, I volunteered to be a member of the Steering Committee.”
For more information about the Northeastern Ecosystem Research Cooperative, please visit their website (http://www.nercscience.org).
