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).

Written by Robin Glas, John Russell Slosson, and Alexa Stathis

Greenhouse gases like methane and carbon dioxide don’t just reside in our atmosphere; they are constantly moving through the soil as well.  Plants and microbes underground are undergoing respiration and other processes that can significantly affect the health of an environment, “breathing out” and producing these gases that are then released into the atmosphere.  Students in the EMPOWER Water-Energy Seminar recently discussed soil gas exchanges and how movement of certain gases through the soil could be affected by climate change.  The students learned about how to measure these gases in the soil at different scales: from small probes that can be inserted into the soil, to meter- scale chambers that capture gases moving in and out of the soil, to larger scale measurements that involve atmospheric circulation.  This was the students’ first glimpse into some of the methods they will be using this upcoming summer, when they will complete a field course in the Hubbard Brook Experimental Forest, which is in the White Mountains of New Hampshire.

Students also read the article Climate Variation and Soil Carbon and Nitrogen Cycling Processes by Groffman et al. (2009), which used changes in elevation as a proxy for the climatological changes expected to occur with warming temperatures in the Hubbard Brook Experimental Forest. Students considered some of the challenges of using this model to simulate climate change in soil processes. Students also discussed the broader implications of the research, including possible increased susceptibility of soils to freezing in warmer temperatures due to the loss of insulating snowpack and lowered rates of nitrogen mineralization and nitrification.

Amanda Schulz, EMPOWER trainee and Earth Sciences Ph.D. student, has recently been selected as a grant recipient for the 2017 American Association of Petroleum Geologists (AAPG) Foundation Grants-in-Aid Program.

The award, from the Pittsburgh Association of Petroleum Geologists Named Grant scholarship fund, is designed to support a graduate student attending a university in the Appalachian Basin Area who is studying Appalachian basin geology. Schulz’s research is focused on characterizing temporal changes in naturally-occurring methane in shallow groundwater in the Marcellus Shale region of New York and understanding how these changes relate to variability in climate and water use. Proceeds from the $2750 award will be used to add two more domestic wells to Schulz’s sample that will fill a critical spatial gap in coverage of her study area. According to Schulz, “the data will provide information on temporal variability of methane, as well as spatial variability between wells, which will fill a data gap and can be used to inform policy regulations.”

Schulz’s project is an outgrowth of ongoing research through Project SWIFT at Syracuse University. Professors Laura Lautz, Greg Hoke, Zunli Lu, and Don Siegel (all from Earth Sciences) are involved in Project SWIFT.

For more information about Project SWIFT, please visit the Project SWIFT webpage.

For more information about the AAPG awards, please visit the AAPG Grants-in-Aid webpage.

EMPOWER trainee, Kristy Gutchess, presented her research at the 2017 Geological Society of America Joint Section Meeting. Her presentation, entitled “Evaluating the Natural Transport Pathways of Iodine in Headwater Catchments,” was co-authored by Shannon Garvin, Li Jin, Wanyi Lu, Zeno Levy, Laura Lautz, and Zunli Lu.

Have you ever wanted to travel back to a time before humans roamed the planet, when strange plants and organisms populated the land and seas? While time travel is not possible, unique systems exist on Earth today that can provide us with a glimpse into the past. One such time-warping ecosystem exists in Fayetteville Green Lake, one of two fascinating meromictic lakes located in Green Lakes State Park, near Manlius, NY. The term “meromictic” refers to lakes in which the water separates into layers with distinct physical and chemical properties due to a lack of turnover (physical mixing of lake waters) between deep lake water and surface waters. Green Lake is meromictic due to the highly saline groundwater that flows into it at depth, preventing the lake from overturning due to density differences between heavy, saline bottom waters and light, fresh top waters. Meromictic lakes like Green Lake are extremely rare (less than 1/1000 lakes in the world!). The unique water chemistry that results from the distinct layers of lake water is thought to be similar to those of ancient oceans, making Green Lake the perfect place to investigate questions about ancient marine systems, including: 1) the potential causes of the Permian–Triassic extinction event; 2) how methane and oil bearing deposits form; and 3) the microbiology of extreme ecosystems (high sulfide, low oxygen). The EMPOWER group discussed the unique conditions found in Green Lake, including the purple sulfur bacteria that are similar to those that lived millions of years ago and the chemistry profiles that reveal high sulfur and metal concentrations at depth.

This discussion was held in preparation for the program’s upcoming field course (August 2017) during which students will have the opportunity to study this intriguing lake. By studying unique lakes such as Green Lake, scientists can travel back in time to learn how the environment responded to different conditions, and potentially apply this knowledge to how aquatic environments might be affected as the climate changes in the future.

Story submitted by Emily Baker, Changcheng Pu, and Laura DeMott

Every growing season at the mouth of large rivers, there are large areas where nothing lives. Of growing concern is eutrophication in the ocean, or ‘nutrient overload,’ in many of our nation’s waters. Excess algae grows and, as it dies and decomposes, oxygen is consumed to the point where animals can no longer live there. EMPOWER students recently discussed how scientists can better understand this phenomenon through nutrient addition experiments.

While the idea of artificially adding nutrients that can have such devastating effects might sound suspect to an environmentally concerned public, the quantity from these experiments pales in comparison to the amount coming from agriculture in the Midwest and other anthropogenic sources. By elevating nutrients like ammonium in stream channels, researchers have been better able to understand the fate and processes that control nutrient cycling in our environment. They found that nutrients may be consumed in smaller streams and never reach the ocean but that these systems cannot handle ever increasing nutrient loading.

The group began formulating how best to design their own nutrient addition experiments in preparation for a field course at Hubbard Brook Experimental Forest that many of the students will be attending this summer. Although not all trainees will use these techniques in their own research, exposure to these methods and research findings left the group with a renewed interest in the complexities inherent in natural systems and the challenges studying them.

Story submitted by Nathan Chien, Emily Gaub, and Amanda Schulz

Graduate students in EMPOWER attended the 183^rd Meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) in Boston in mid-February. This year’s conference theme was “Serving Society Through Science Policy” and offered a packed schedule of workshops, exhibits, panels, and career development opportunities. During the 5-day event, EMPOWER students attended scientific sessions ranging from “Accelerating Low-Carbon Innovation Through Policy” to “Supporting Silly-Sounding Science,” learned about best practices for career planning, attended a new members reception, and enjoyed “Family Science Days” in the exhibit hall.

Attending this conference was a unique opportunity for students who may usually participate in discipline-specific conferences. JR Slosson, an MS student in Earth Sciences, said “I really enjoyed learning about the importance of our role as scientists in broader legal and economic spheres and how critical it is for scientists to work across disciplines towards the creation of informed public policy.” Yige Yang, a PhD student in Civil and Environmental Engineering, has research interests in green roofs. Her favorite session at the conference focused on sustainable cities in Europe, which challenged her to “start thinking the transportation system in the future” and inspired her to explore these ideas further with urban planning professors on campus.

EMPOWER graduate students Sara Alesi, Megan Daley, Caitlin Eger, JR Slosson, Alexa Stathis, and Yige Yang attended the AAAS Annual Meeting. Attendance at the conference was supported by an EMPOWER Professional Development Training Mini-Grant.

More information about the Seed Grant Program can be found in the “Training” section of the EMPOWER website.

The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) is a popular method for people to learn more about themselves. The MBTI tries to assess preferences in each of four dichotomies: Extraversion or Introversion; Sensing or Intuition; Thinking or Feeling; and Judging or Perceiving. Results from the assessment, which consists of a series of straightforward questions, provide a 4-letter code that describes one’s personality profile based on the interactions of these preferences.

Dr. Kate Lewis, Associate Professor in Biology, uses this assessment in her lab group to help the members work more effectively as a team. Last week, EMPOWER trainees and STEM graduate students participated in an MBTI workshop that was led by Dr. Lewis. In this event, co-sponsored by Syracuse University’s Women in Science and Engineering (WiSE), the students learned more about each of the personality types and identified what their own preferences are. Throughout the workshop, Dr. Lewis stressed that there is no ideal personality type and that the MBTI measures preferences only and does not measure trait, ability, or character (myersbriggs.org).

Overwhelmingly the students really enjoyed learning more about themselves and agreed that exercises like this can help with understanding group dynamics, which are so essential for collaborative projects. Amanda Schulz, a PhD student in Earth Sciences, said “I really enjoyed the workshop. I only wish that it had been longer than three hours!”

More information about the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator can be found on their website (myersbriggs.org).

More information about Syracuse University’s Women in Science and Engineering (WiSE) can be found at suwise.syr.edu

R2-D2 made his annual visit to the exhibitor’s hall at The American Geophysical Union (AGU) Annual Conference in December 2016. With approximately 24,000 attending, this is the largest Earth and space science meeting in the world (https://fallmeeting.agu.org/2016/). EMPOWER trainees Emily Baker, Robin Glas, and Alexa Stathis traveled to San Francisco to attend the meeting, network, and present their research.

The titles of the posters reflect the range of research topics EMPOWER trainees participate in:

Emily’s poster: The Effect of Channel Geometry and Diurnal Discharge Fluctuations on Modeled Stream Temperatures

Robin’s poster: Integrating multiple geophysical methods to quantify alpine groundwater- surface water interactions:  Cordillera Blanca, Peru

Alexa’s poster: Photolysis Kinetics of Toluene, Ethylbenzene and Xylenes at Ice Surfaces*

*Alexa’s participation in the AGU meeting was funded by an EMPOWER Professional Network Development Grant.

Kristy Gutchess, who is a PhD student in Earth Sciences and an EMPOWER trainee, recently learned that her proposal to study the influence of weather patterns on runoff and de-icing salt at Syracuse University was funded through the “Campus as Laboratory for Sustainability” program. Her research team includes Drs. Zunli Lu, Laura Lautz, Christa Kelleher, Don Seigel (all from Earth Sciences), Teng Zeng (from Civil & Environmental Engineering), and Stephen Shaw (from SUNY ESF).

To learn more about the “Campus as Laboratory for Sustainability Program,” please see sustainability.syr.edu.

Congratulations, Kristy!